Frequently Asked Questions

All Ripple Glass recycling drop-off bins are open to the public and free to use. Just look for the purple bin! Choose your region and enter your zip code to search for nearby bin locations:
• Kansas City Metro Locations →
• Atlanta Metro Locations →
• St. Louis Metro Locations →
You can also use our interactive Find a Purple Bin Map to find 24/7 drop-off sites.

We wanted them to be attractive, distinctive, and easily recognizable across our communities—and we couldn’t figure out how to tie-dye ’em!

If you live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, you can find them in local retail partner stores here (including Price Chopper and Westlake Ace Hardware) or order one online. Totes are not yet available for Atlanta or St. Louis, but check back soon as we plan to expand! Questions? Contact us at info@rippleglass.com.

If you live outside of our direct service areas, contact your local recycling officials and ask about glass recycling opportunities! If you’re interested in learning more about glass recycling solutions that Ripple provides for surrounding municipalities and haulers through our Regional Glass Processing network, contact us at info@rippleglass.com.

Ripple Glass accepts all colors of food and beverage glass—beer bottles, wine bottles, liquor bottles, food and sauce jars, olive oil bottles, and spent candle jars. Labels can stay on. If you can see through it, we can likely recycle it! For a complete list of what can and cannot be recycled, please check out our What Can I Recycle Guide or view regional guidelines:
• Kansas City Guidelines →
• Atlanta Guidelines →
• St. Louis Guidelines →
Printable accepted material PDFs (English and Spanish) are also available for download on our What Can I Recycle page.

No, you don't! All brown, green, blue, and clear food and beverage containers can be mixed in the same collection bin. Our optical sorting technology at the processing plant separates colors automatically.

Nope! You can leave all the labels on your glass, unless you’re into label peeling for some reason. You can even leave your lids and caps on! Corks stuck inside wine bottles are okay as well. During our processing stages, metal and plastics are separated mechanically and magnetically.

Well, that would be nice, but it’s not essential. Emptying liquids is necessary, but a thorough wash isn’t required. You may, however, decide that rinsing containers keeps your home or garage storage smelling a bit fresher.

Sometimes! If the frames, bases, and hardware are removed, it is probably okay. You’ll also want to make sure it safely fits through the 3’x3’ windows on the purple bins. If it doesn’t, contact us at info@rippleglass.com and we’ll provide instructions on how to drop it off at our processing facility. We cannot accept glass that is laminated (think windshields) or safety glass that is designed not to break. When in doubt, email us at info@rippleglass.com.

Put simply – hard work and technological wizardry! It all starts with you and your neighbors, depositing empty glass bottles and jars into those strikingly handsome purple collection bins. When a bin gets full, a local company picks it up, brings it to our Kansas City processing plant, and dumps it into our receiving bunkers. Our operators feed the glass onto a conveyor, where it goes through multiple stages: decontamination (removal of all large non-glass materials), an initial crush to reduce whole containers into smaller pieces, drying, optical sorting to remove small contaminants and separate colors (the wizardry part), grinding and screening (guaranteeing size distribution matches customer specifications). The finished material – furnace-ready cullet – waits in silos to be loaded into trucks for transportation to our customers’ nearby facilities. Check out our Virtual Tour Video on our plant page to see it for yourself!

Glass cullet is the term for clean, crushed, furnace-ready glass prepared to precise customer specifications. It is ready to be melted and remanufactured into new products including glass containers, fiberglass insulation, reflective paints, abrasives, aggregates, and more. At Ripple Glass, we turn your recycled glass into cullet for local manufacturers, requiring 30% less energy to melt than virgin raw materials!

Clear (flint) and amber cullet is transported to regional container manufacturers to be turned back into brand new glass bottles and jars in as little as 30 days. Amber, green, and mixed colored glass is transported directly to Owens Corning in Kansas City, KS, where it is melted and spun into fiberglass insulation to make buildings energy efficient. Learn more on our Where Does The Glass Go? page.

Currently, we do not. The Ripple Glass processing plant is a heavy industrial environment, and we have a very small staff. You might be interested in our behind-the-scenes Virtual Plant Tour Video on our plant page, which shows the optical sorters, conveyors, and pulverizers in action!

Check out our Business Opportunities page, explore our Commercial Pick-up Services, or shoot us an email at info@rippleglass.com. We offer dedicated roll carts, scheduled collection service, and certified partner decals for businesses of all sizes.

Chances are good! We loan out small bins for glass collection with 2-3 weeks minimum advance notice in the Kansas City region, and we are expanding our event offerings soon to our other regions. For major events, please contact us at least 2 months prior to discuss needs. Email us at info@rippleglass.com with the details!