ATLANTA - Vitro Minerals announced the completion and start-up of a 40-million-pound-per-year recycled glass powder plant in Jackson, TN. The glass powders are designed to provide a 100 percent recycled, crystalline silica free alternative to traditional mined mineral fillers and extenders such as calcium carbonate, clay, silica and nepheline syenite.

Glass has a fairly low recycling rate due to collection and processing difficulties. Vitro Minerals has developed a variety of post-consumer and post-industrial glass sources and unique processing schemes to make glass powders with excellent particle size control and brightness standards equal to traditional mineral fillers. The resultant glass powders act as cost-effective functional fillers in coatings, plastics, adhesives, sealants and concrete. The powders are available in different glass chemistries in particle sizes from 0.5 microns to 500 microns. They also offer a lighter weight, corrosion/abrasion-resistant filler for polymer systems, and they come from recycled content.