Article content

CALGARY – The two-metre-tall pile is composed almost entirely of glass shards, although it’s hard to tell to look at it.

Hundreds of crows swarm over the detritus littered with plastic milk caps, pens, glittering iPhone cases, shattered mugs and dollar-store combs. Next to it towers a six-metre pile of what would seem to be sand if it didn’t glisten so much in the sunlight.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Calgary to use its massive, unwanted pile of glass to pave its roads Back to video

Together, the piles represent more than two years’ worth of recycled glass.

Calgary started collecting mixed glass products in 2009. Since then, about 15,000 tonnes of glass have been sorted, crushed and pulverized into, essentially, imperfect sand that has been left in a giant pile in the waste management lands in the eastern part of the city. It’s been there so long weeds and a few sunflowers have sprouted on the slopes facing the sun.

It costs about $29 a tonne to move and process glass to the point where crows are no longer interested in picking through the remnants for tiny clues of food — to the point where the shards are reduced to the size of bearing balls and coarse meal.