ORLANDO, Fla. — Walt Disney World is using some magic to turn glass jars and bottles into a sand-like substance used for roads and trails.


What You Need To Know

  • A pilot program at Disney World is collecting recycled glass and pulverizing it into a sand-like substance

  • Disney is using the sand-like substance to fill holes on roads and trails

  • Currently, the pilot program is only collecting glass from Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground

  • If successful, Disney plans to pulverize more glass from across the resort

OK, maybe magic and some heavy equipment. A pulverizer is used to crush glass into gravel and sand-like materials.

“This isn’t pixie dust, but it is certainly part of the Disney magic,” said Jarrod Stewart, an environmental integration project manager at Walt Disney World.

It’s a pilot program, collecting just about any glass — except glass slippers — from recycling bins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground. It’s dumped into a container where it goes up a conveyor belt to be pulverized into tiny pieces the size of a grain of sand or a small piece of gravel.

“I can pick it up, I can squeeze it, no sharp edges on any of it,” said Stewart.

It takes under a minute to turn a broken glass jar into soft sand-like material.

“I grew up coming to Disney two or three times a year,” said Stewart. “And it’s sort of fun to think about all that fun I had here growing up and now bringing it full circle. Not only working here, but working toward helping the company meet goals.”

One of those goals is zero waste to landfill by 2030.

At Walt Disney World, they get over 2,000 tons of glass a year.

Currently, the gravel and sand-like material is being used to fill holes on gravel roads at Disney’s Fort Wilderness.

“It makes a very angular sand and it seems to stay in some of the patched-in areas a little bit better than the other materials we’ve been using (for roads),” said Stewart.

The glass-made material is also being used on horse trails at Fort Wilderness.

“It’s very exciting to see it come this far,” he said. “I’ve been working on this project from the very concept of it.”

In the future, this glass mixture might be used in roadbeds, filtration systems and sidewalks.

Right now, only glass collected at Fort Wilderness is being pulverized into sand, but if this pilot project proves successful, then they’ll start collecting from other areas of the resort.