LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Ever wonder what recycled glass can do? At Walt Disney World’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, it’s definitely reusable.
“We’re using it predominately on the horse trail out here because those have to be refreshed quite a bit,” Jarrod Stewart said.
Stewart is with Disney Environmental Integration and said used glass collected from EPCOT’s World Showcase and catering events across the resort all gets dumped into a big blue machine used to pulverize glass as part of a pilot program that started in 2022.
The machine can pulverize up to 2,000 pounds of glass in an hour.
“Its technical term is ‘glass cullet’ but people identify it more when we call it sand-like material. You can run your hand through it. It’s soft. There’s no sharp edge, you can move around your hand, it’s not going to cut you,” Stewart said.
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The sand-like material is used across the resort’s horse trails, filling holes on gravel roads.
“We’ve been estimating that there’s about 4 million pounds of glass on property,” Stewart said.
From Fort Wilderness Resort, News 6 took another trip to Walt Disney World’s nursery, home to 12 greenhouses.
Cast members there showed News 6 how they use pulverized glass for their plants.
“We have our original floor base is coquina, which coquina is crushed shells, and we are mixing it with the pulverized glass,” said Debbie Mola Mickler, Disney’s Horticulture Area manager.
Who would’ve thought, right? Plants and glass together. An idea from Mickler and Stewart that became a reality to try and make the world a greener place.
“This helps us with drainage so as we are watering our baskets, watering our plants, it doesn’t sit on a hard surface floor, it actually goes right through the sand, or now the glass,” Mickler said.
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