Starting Monday, Nov. 2, the Kansas City area will have its first free, areawide glass recycling program thanks to Ripple Glass. The company announced the endeavor at an Oct. 15 press conference at Boulevard Brewing Co.

Ripple Glass, the brainchild of the Boulevard Brewing Co., will be providing 49 large recycling bins across the Kansas City area to allow people to recycle their glass.

Twelve of those bins will be north of the river, with bins in Kearney, Smithville, North Kansas City, Kansas City North, Weston, Liberty, Riverside, Parkville and Excelsior Springs. The Liberty bin will be at 400 Suddarth.

The bins, said Stacia Stelk, executive director of Ripple Glass, should provide access to glass recycling to almost everyone in the metro, regardless of location.

“There should be one within 5 minutes of about most people in Kansas City,” she said. “Everyone should be close to a container and if not, call me and I’ll help you get one near you.”

Ripple Glass will haul the glass from the containers to its new $3.5 million glass processing facility at 1642 Crystal in Kansas City to be crushed into a substance called cullet. The cullet will mostly be sold to Owens Corning in the Fairfax District of Kansas City, Kan., to be used in fiberglass insulation.

The project, said Jeff Krum, co-founder of Ripple Glass and chief financial officer at Boulevard Brewing Co., has been years in the making and the company hopes it will be the answer to what they see as Kansas City’s glass recycling problem.

According to Krum, the Kansas City area goes through 160 million tons of container glass every year, including 10 million bottles of Boulevard beer, and only 5 percent of that glass is recycled.

The national average, Krum said, is close to 30 percent, putting Kansas City dead last in the 30 largest metro areas in the country in glass recycling.

But Ripple Glass is the company’s “grand experiment” to try to boost that figure while providing a closed loop recycling system where the material will not only be recycled and processed in the metro, but reused in the metro as well.

When the processing facility opens in November, it will have the capacity to process 5 tons of glass per hour and Ripple Glass has contracted with Owens Corning to purchase 85 percent of that capacity.

Tom McDonnell, chief executive officer of DST Systems in Kansas City and a partner in Ripple Glass, said the processing center, when operational, should provide recycling for about 20 to 25 percent of the glass containers used in the city, bringing Kansas City in line with most other metro areas.

In addition to the larger bins, Ripple Glass will also be providing smaller, 14 gallon containers to store glass containers in before taking them to the larger bins. Those containers will be available at local Price Choppers for $5 starting in November.

For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.rippleglasskc.com.

NORTHLAND BINS

- Kearney recycling center — 1820 Stonelake Drive

- Smithville recycling center 219 N. U.S. Highway 169

- Harley Davidson — 11401 N. Congress, Kansas City North

- North Kansas City — 1901 Howell

- Harrah’s — 1 River Boat Drive, North Kansas City

- Excelsior Springs — 1290 S. Marietta St.

- Weston recycling center — 725 Market St.

- Liberty recycling center — 400 Suddarth

- North Oak Marketplace — 4820 N. Oak Trafficway, Kansas City

- Riverside recycling campus — 2950 N.W. Vivion Road

- Gomer’s — 6298 Missouri Highway 9, Parkville

- Kansas City Community Recycling Center — 400 N.W. Barry Road, Kansas City

For more information and bin locations, visit the company’s Web site at www.rippleglasskc.com.

Staff writer Michael Westblade can be reached at 389-6636.