Every day, the folks of Taos, N.M., walk on broken glass without a scratch. That is because the town diverts its bottles from the Taos County landfill and, using a pulverizer, turns the glass into sand for use in landscaping and street applications.

The pulverizer, from Richfield Springs, N.Y.-based Andela Products, consists of primary and secondary mills, and it crushes glass to a consistency ranging from fine sand to gravel. The town uses the unit to crush all colors of glass, producing multi-colored sand that it stockpiles in its transportation yard.

“On average, we produce approximately 15 tons of [pulverized glass] a week,” says Archie Trujillo, superintendent of transportation and recycling for Taos. The sand is then used in a variety of applications, including soil stabilization, deicing, landscaping and cross-walk construction.

Historically, the town's departments have used the sand, but, according to Trujillo, Taos may soon be selling the granules to residents and other buyers. “It's a nice, sparkly sand,” he says. “You've got greens, blues, browns and reds in there. We're thinking people might want to use it for their planters and landscaping.”

Even if Taos is unable to turn the sand into a revenue source, it is pleased with the environmental benefits of pulverizing. “Bottles occupy a lot of space [in the landfill], and they break and become dangerous,” Trujillo says. “[By pulverizing them], we save storage in the landfill.”