Crack open the champagne, then save the bottle. Recycling glass in Birmingham is about to get much easier, although it won't be free.

The Alabama Environmental Council's new recycling center is ready to open Monday at 1st Avenue South and 43rd Street in Avondale. The AEC operated its previous recycling center downtown at 2nd Avenue North and 25th Street for 33 years, and built a steady stream of local residents who were willing to go the extra mile to keep their trash out of landfills.

"It would've been great to stay downtown, but we needed more space and we're about five years too late," said AEC Recycling Director Alan Gurganus, referring to the increase in downtown real estate prices. "This is only two miles from the old facility, so hopefully it won't deter anybody."

The old center saw a steady flow of customers from downtown apartment-dwellers and businesses who did not have regular curbside recycling pick-up, as well as Birmingham homeowners whose curbside pick-up did not take glass.

Gurganus said the AEC collected about 10 tons of glass every week at the old location, but now they'll be better equipped to handle the remnants of wild nights that generate a lot of empty bottles.

One of the major advantages of the new center is the large blue glass pulverizer that stands more than 12 feet tall in the facility's parking lot. The massive machine sifts and pounds glass bottles into a multi-colored mix of pebbles, no larger than 3/8 of an inch, and with no sharp edges to worry about.

The AEC received a $25,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to purchase and refurbish a used glass pulverizer they found at a nearby recycling company and bring it into working order.

"It looks like a brand new piece of equipment, but it's actually older," Gurganus said. "A new piece of equipment like that would cost around $90,000, which is another reason why glass recycling isn't everywhere."

Recycled glass has 'negative value'

The primary reason glass isn't recycled everywhere is that it's a "negative value" product, i.e. the value of the recycled material is less than the cost of producing it from the old bottles. Glass can't be recycled into new bottles unless the color matches exactly, which means tedious separation, or expensive optical sorting equipment.

Almost all glass that gets recycled is pulverized into an aggregate gravel-like material that can be used to make an asphalt substitute that can be used to pave sidewalks, parking lots or low-speed roads. The cost of gravel or other fill material is so low that replacing it with glass doesn't save much money.

Most Birmingham-area recycling programs that do accept glass have to ship the heavy material hundreds of miles to facilities that use the aggregate in Georgia or Tennessee.

"There's no market for it, and the markets that are there, you have to ship it," Gurganus said. "We did some shipping calculations and if we were to ship it to Tennessee, even after they paid us for the glass, it would cost us $400 to send it there."

In other states, glass has been used to pave city streets. Perhaps most famously, the city of New York paved a section of Fifth Avenue in front of the Plaza Hotel with "glassphalt," much to the delight of hotel owner and now-Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who reportedly liked the way it glistened.

Gurganus said an Alabama state law prohibits the use of recycled glass in roads, but it can be used in other applications, and the AEC is seeking a buyer for the pulverized glass rubble.

"We're actually going to demonstrate its uses with this little parking area just outside the wall," Gurganus said. "All these [bottles piled at the center] will all end up over there once they're pulverized.

"We also have one manufacturer who is interested in getting a half ton to do some tests."

However the crushed glass is used, Gurganus said recycling is better than allowing it to pile up in landfills.

"Glass is one of those materials that just doesn't break down," he said. "It's going to be around forever."

Fees charged, materials accepted

Because of the negative value of the finished product and maintenance costs on the equipment, Gurganus said the center will have to charge a fee of $1 per bin of glass brought in. The fee is based on the standard 18-gallon curbside bin, which can hold about 50 pounds of glass.

"We struggled with that," he said. "Do we charge, or do we not charge? Ultimately it came down to math. Math told us that we need to charge something."

The center will offer $10 punch cards for the glass dropoff, and will accept other household recyclables like plastic, paper products, aluminum and steel free of charge. The center will also take less common items like batteries, electronics, ink and toner cartridges, and textiles though fees may apply for some of those items as well.

The AEC also collects glass from several local restaurants, who pay them to collect the material and keep it out of the waste stream. They also offer free collection of several recyclable materials to K-12 schools in Jefferson County.

Gurganus said eventually the center would purchase equipment needed to compress and ship polystyrene foam (often called Styrofoam, though that name refers to one specific product).

"Styrofoam is over 90 percent air, so in order to make shipping Styrofoam affordable, you have to remove the air," Gurganus said. "If you can imagine a 53-foot transfer trailer stuffed with Styrofoam, if you took all the air from it, it would fit on your kitchen table."

Some of those items do have a value greater than the cost of shipping and collection operations. Gurganus said there are almost 30 manufacturers in Alabama alone that rely on recycled materials to make consumer goods, and that supplying those manufacturers is a $6 billion industry.

"We're an environmental group and everyone tends to know the environmental benefits of recycling, but it doesn't run on good intentions and magic," he said. "It's actually a global commodities-driven market that we have no control over.

"We just try to fit in. Obviously if there was a lot of money to be made in recycling, a non-profit wouldn't be doing it."