Construction begins on glass recycling facility

By Mandy Coriston
Andover — Ground was broken in Andover Township on May 1 for what’s being billed as “the world’s largest post-consumer glass recycling facility.” Pace Glass Recycling, Inc., based in Long Island City, is building their state-of-the-art processing plant on Limecrest Road, on the 85-acre site of the former Limestone Quarry Developers quarry. The company was founded in 2014 and currently operates a facility in Jersey City, which will remain open. The new $55 million, 250,000 square foot facility in Andover is expected to be able to process 90 tons of glass per hour, or up to 15,000 tons per week, more than tripling the company’s current output.
The construction is expected to last eight months and operations are slated to begin early next year. Pace Glass executives would like to have the facility running at full capacity by July of 2019. The plant will employ 80 workers in two shifts, and it’s projected that up to 60 delivery drivers will also be hired to distribute the recycled product to manufacturers. Pace Glass officials chose the site based on accessibility to both highways and railways, and the company’s co-founder Michael Mahoney praised Andover Township officials for being very welcoming.
“This is major for Andover," Andover Mayor Janis McGovern said. "It will be bringing 80 jobs to our community.”
McGovern praised the support of U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) in beinging pace to the township.
“The attorney from Pace gave the Andover governing body accolades,” said Township Attorney Fred Semrau, saying that Pace “was pleased with how the township handled the process,” from the initial public hearings through the groundbreaking.
Councilman Ellsworth Bensley, Jr. said, “The Pace facility is a win-win. The glass stays out of landfills, and we get jobs in our town.”
In addition to its recycling operations, Pace plans to house a research and development department at the Andover facility. Pace is a leader in water-free post-consumer glass recycling and aims to keep improving the single-stream glass recycling process. Currently, they use optical scanning technology to separate glass by color. The sorting is performed with powerful jets of air, which also breaks the glass down into small pieces called “cullet.” The cullet is then either melted onsite or baled in airtight plastic, after which it can be stacked or shipped to be used in manufacturing. Even the dust created in the recycling process is captured and sold as a filler product.
The glass brought to the Andover facility will be collected from municipalities and landfills around the Northeast, and the recycled cullet will be delivered to manufacturers in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, as well as Massachusetts.