PRESS RELEASE: Republic Services Seattle Recycling Center Certified Gold by Glass Recycling Foundation
The Seattle material recovery facility received recognition for its robust equipment line producing clean, high-value recycled glass.
ANN ARBOR, MI (September 9, 2025)—The Glass Recycling Foundation (GRF) announced Republic Services’ Seattle Recycling Center has been awarded Gold Certification. The facility qualified for the gold status due to its robust glass clean-up system.
Republic Services’ Seattle facility began operations in 1989. It currently processes 200 thousand tons of material per year, serving residential and commercial customers across Seattle, the greater Puget Sound, and distant communities in Alaska, Idaho, and Montana. The facility utilizes a glass breaker, vibrating table screen, an air separator, secondary fines screen, vacuum system, magnets/eddy current system, and lights removal equipment to sort incoming glass bottles and jars into a clean, marketable material stream. The clean glass is sent to a beneficiation facility that further sorts and cleans the material to produce glass cullet used for manufacturing new bottles, fiberglass, and other products.
“At Republic Services, we’re committed to partnering with customers to create a more sustainable world,” said Michael Alvarez, Republic Services general manager. “By keeping valuable materials like glass in the circular economy for the long-term, we’re preserving natural resources, supporting a circular economy, and helping Seattle-area residents and businesses meet their diversion goals.”
The free certification program offered by the GRF recognizes material recovery facilities (MRFs) with additional equipment and operational procedures to clean up glass in both single- and dual-stream systems, resulting in the production of higher-quality and marketable glass.
“Republic Services’ Seattle Recycling Center is the first facility in Washington state to receive glass certification,” says David Marcouiller, executive vice-president of sales engineering at Machinex and a member of the Glass Recycling Foundation’s MRF Certification Committee. “We congratulate Republic on their leadership and dedication to recycling glass and hope they serve as an inspiration to other MRFs to improve their glass recycling processes and increase the amount of glass recycled into new products.”
The GRF MRF Glass Certification program was originally launched by the Glass Recycling Coalition in the fall of 2019. In 2022, the glass certification criteria were updated to prioritize end market consistency and more thorough glass cleaning prior to beneficiation. Eligible applications are judged on their current MRF infrastructure and the results of a glass purity test that is aligned with ISRI’s Three-Mix Specification. An independent committee scores blind applications and awards MRFs with either gold, silver, or bronze certification. MRFs holding this certification will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
GRF’s website currently hosts an interactive map showing MRFs, glass processors, and end markets across the country. GRF-certified MRFs are noted on this map, along with public recognition of this certification.
Learn more about the Glass Recycling Foundation and apply for MRF Glass Certification at www.glassrecycles.org.
About the GRF: The Glass Recycling Foundation (GRF) is a non-profit foundation dedicated to raising funds for and distributing funds to intervention, demonstration, and pilot projects that address gaps in the glass recycling supply chain across the United States. For more information, visit www.glassrecycles.org or contact info@glassrecyclingfoundation.org.