The Ripple Effect

Text, audio and slideshow by Mary Bess Bolling
Photos by Sarah Andrews

Boulevard Brewing Co. produces enough beer to fill 16.6 million bottles each year in the Kansas City area alone. Before 2009, less than 5 percent of those bottles were recycled. That’s when the Midwestern brewery decided it was time to clean up their mess.

Mike Utz, plant engineer at Boulevard, says that he and two colleagues at the brewery saw the void in the glass recycling process in their community. Since they saw their bottling operation as part of the problem, they found a way to fix it.

Their solution: Ripple Glass, a glass processor facility and collection service, which has a goal of placing large recycling bins just five minutes’ drive from every house in the KC metro area.

Read more about Ripple Glass in the spring 2011 edition of Think magazine, available online or at locations throughout Des Moines.