LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Ahead of Earth Day, Walt Disney World is ramping up sustainability efforts by turning recycled glass into a sand-like material.

What You Need To Know

  • Disney World is expanding its test program to pulverize recycled glass into sand-like material

  • Sand-like substance is now being used at Disney’s greenhouses

  • Recycled glass is now being collected at EPCOT’s World Showcase

Sand has been a common theme in Jarrod Stewart’s Disney career.

“I started in sand-base greenhouses and now I make sand,” he said.

Stewart, who started working in the EPCOT greenhouses for more than a decade ago, is now working on innovative and sustainable ways to reduce, reuse and recycle at Disney World.

Glass bottles and jars thrown into recycling bins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground are collected and put into a machine where it’s pulverized into gravel and sand-like materials.

“It’s very angular, but it doesn’t have any sharp edges,” Stewart said of the gravel-like substance. “It’s still safe to touch. Won’t cut me.”

Last year, Spectrum News showed how the sand-like material was being used to fill holes on horse trails and dirt roads at Fort Wilderness.

A year later, the pilot project is expanding.

“I was home watching the news, and I saw Jarrod on the news talking about the new pulverized glass initiative,” said Debbie Mola Mickler, area manager at Disney’s Horticulture.

Mola Mickler, who knew Stewart when he first started working at Disney, thought the pulverized glass could help on greenhouse floors, as a sturdy but porous surface.

Stewart agreed to bring some of that sand-like material for the greenhouses, where they grow the flowers for the parks and resorts.

“We’ve been using it in our greenhouse floors,” she said. “We feel like it’s a great mix with our existing coquina shell and we’re going to apply that to the whole greenhouse, mixing the materials together.”

But in order to get all this soft-like sand material, Stewart needs more recycled glass.

“Catering is bringing all their material right now from all of their events, so we’re getting a lot of material from them,” he said.

Besides Fort Wilderness and catering events, recycled glass is now collected from select spots at EPCOT’s World Showcase.

EPCOT alone could bring in more than one ton of glass a day.

“The expansion at EPCOT is allowing us to start pushing the boundaries and start understanding what we could do and where we could take this in the future,” said Stewart.