Louisiana loses a soccer field’s worth of land to coastal erosion every 100 minutes. This erosion is worsened by rising sea levels and human activities, such as oil and gas extraction and changes to the Mississippi River’s flow. In the last century, Louisiana has lost 4,662 square kilometers, or 1,800 square miles, of land. The loss of wetlands and changes to estuaries put coastal communities, ecosystems, and the economy at risk, including Louisiana’s seafood industry, which is valued at $319 billion. The state has invested billions in restoration efforts, using materials like offshore sand and river sediment to rebuild its shorelines and barrier islands. However, there is a lack of suitable sediment for these large-scale projects.
Since 2020, a New Orleans company named Glass Half Full has been exploring a new approach: converting used glass bottles into sand and gravel for building small experimental islands and berms aimed at coastal restoration. Before these projects can be expanded, researchers must understand the environmental effects of using recycled glass materials. To address this, Glass Half Full partnered with Tulane University in New Orleans to start Project ReCoast, a five-year study supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. This project investigates the use of sand created from recycled glass for restoring coastlines. A study resulting from this project, published in Restoration Ecology in April, showed that there were no significant differences in the survival of various native estuarine animals when exposed to recycled glass sand compared to other materials. This article was originally published on Mongabay.
What do you think about using recycled materials for coastal restoration?
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Source: Mongabay Animals, by Autumn Spanne