Using Recycled Glass Cullet For Coastal Protection: A Review of Geotechnical, Biological, & Abiotic Analyses

Throughout the world, critically eroded shorelines pose a myriad of social and environmental concerns. As an increase in natural geologic and climatic events (e.g., coastal earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, weathering) occur to facilitate erosion of the Earth’s coasts, shore protection becomes critically important as a preventative measure against catastrophic environmental and socio-economic damage. However, as more and more offshore sand resources are either used up or contaminated with pollutants (e.g., crude oil sub-buoyant plumes settling at the benthic interface), there is an imperative effort to explore alternatives to more traditional sand sources. One alternative involves the use of recycled glass cullet as coastal beach fill in erosional ‘hot-spots’. The cullet is obtained by processing any type of glass product (e.g., bottles, containers, tanks, etc.) in such a way that it will closely match the grain size of the current native beach sediments. This specific type of recycled processing has been successful in adequately matching natural said grains. However, before the recycled glass can be directly applied to the shoreline, a series of analyses had to occur in order to determine the suitability of the cullet for a natural beach environment. This paper is a concise review of the geotechnical, biological, and abiotic analyses conducted on the recycled glass cullet for coastal protection.