NSF Convergence Accelerator Track E: Using Recycled Glass Sand to Promote Resilience and the Blue Economy in Coastal Communities

People rely on coastal resources for food, water, and energy. However, extraction of these natural resources over the last century has led to pollution and coastal land loss. Protecting and restoring coastal environments, while continuing to support local economies, has never been more urgent.

This project’s vision is to establish recycling programs in coastal communities that will divert glass from landfills and turn it into glass sand products to restore coasts and preserve historic sites. In this networked blue economy approach, new products are also created to generate revenue for operating the glass recycling facilities. In partnership with the New Orleans-based glass recycling startup company Glass Half Full, this project brings together local university researchers from the fields of chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, river and coastal engineering, and ecology and evolutionary biology to identify new markets for recycled glass products, determine where recycled glass sand should be used to prevent coastal land loss, ensure that recycled glass sand is safe to use in coastal environments, and engage local communities in preserving important cultural sites that are currently threatened by land loss.

This project will also create service, research, and training opportunities for local students of all ages to learn about the complex, ever-changing connections between technology, economics, history, and the coastal environment.

A networked blue economy based on glass recycling will be established in the greater New Orleans area through a convergent research approach that brings together multiple science and engineering disciplines capable of engaging a broad range of stakeholder interests, from potential industry partners (chemical engineering) to conservationist groups (ecology) to residents whose homes are threatened by coastal land loss (professors of practice with training in community engagement) to the wide network of government and non-profit groups currently working in this area (river and coastal science and engineering). The research plan accelerates the translation of laboratory materials innovation into practice with consideration of all perspectives engineering, ecological, societal, and economic to accomplish the following deliverables: (i) develop value-added products and identify potential markets for these products, including (a) stimuli-responsive natural clay particle-based additives to recycled glass sand that release surfactants to sequester oil/chemical contaminants only when needed and (b) recycled glass sand treated with natural polymeric additives to improve material properties (e.g., erosion resistance); (ii) obtain approval from relevant State and Federal agencies for use of recycled glass sand as an Erosion Control Product on the Louisiana coast; (iii) disseminate results of vegetation ecological testing and suspended sediment exposure experiments with marine animals to demonstrate safety to conservation groups and residents; (iv) identify demonstration project sites by combining coastal modeling and community engagement; (v) broaden participation through (a) outreach to coastal Native American communities to identify historic sites threatened by coastal land loss; (b) engagement of undergraduate students in service-learning and research projects through elective and core courses in the Tulane Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Departments; (c) participation of graduate and undergraduate students in cross-disciplinary research project meetings; and (d) development of a K-12 outreach workshop on soil stabilization to be delivered to students in partnering communities as well as Tulane’s biannual outreach programs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.