The past year was a good one for BIG Recyclers, a Walla Walla, Washington-based non-profit organization that focuses on glass recycling in eastern Washington. The company’s Walla Walla location diverted over 259,000 pounds of glass from the local landfill. Wineries contributed nearly 70% of that total.
“We had a very productive year,” says founder Chris Lueck.
Many areas of eastern Washington have posed a significant challenge for recycling glass. Due to the heavy weight per ton, the cost to transport glass back to the west side for recycling has been prohibitive. As a result, much of the glass has traditionally ended up in landfill, even though glass is infinitely recyclable. Another barrier to recycling glass has been a high contamination rate of comingled material.
BIG Recyclers has attempted to solve both issues by setting up a hub-and-spoke model that focuses largely on winery and restaurant glass. The glass is also checked when dropped off. This lowers the contamination rate and helps the glass command a higher price. Glass is brought to a local spoke location, aggregated in a regional hub, and ultimately trucked to west-side companies for reuse.
BIG Recyclers started off with two spokes, one in Walla Walla and one in Red Mountain. The Red Mountain site diverted 17,000 pounds of glass in 2024. Unfortunately, that was not enough to justify the expense. The spoke was subsequently shut down.
For 2025, BIG Recyclers has set its sights on Prosser, which is home to numerous wineries. “That is our focus this year,” Lueck says.
Yakima and Zillah, meanwhile, have been holding glass drop off events through Yakima Recycles Glass. Two events diverted more than 10,000 pounds of glass from landfill. At least another six events are planned for 2025.

Aggregated glass bottles at BIG Recyclers.
While BIG Recyclers had great success over the past year, 2024 was not without its share of challenges. Ardagh, one the of largest glass manufacturers, closed its Seattle plant temporarily in July and permanently in November. That shut off one of two primary materials recovery facilities and also an end-use manufacturer for BIG Recyclers’ glass.
“Because we had other avenues in place, we just moved to secondary end-use markets in the Portland metro area,” Lueck says. Currently, BIG Recyclers’ glass is transported with the help of Glass to Glass, the entity dealing with all redeemable glass through the Oregon Bottle bill, and Owens-Illinois, which operates two factories in the Portland metro area.
“They are helping us financially by not charging us to transport the glass westbound, which has always been the main financial hurdle for rural communities east of the Cascades to recycle glass at westside end-use manufacturers,” Lueck says.
BIG Recyclers is a 100% volunteer run organization. The non-profit was started in 2021 and has partnered with the Glass Packaging Institute, which represents U.S. glass manufacturers. People returning glass are charged a “tipping fee.” Memberships are also available, with prices based on the amount of clean food and beverage glass returned.
Overall, BIG Recyclers’ goal, which is shared by the Glass Packaging Institute, Glass to Glass, and others, is to increase the amount of recycled material that is used in every bottle of wine. Currently, the amount of recycled glass in a wine bottle is around 31%. The goal is to raise that to over 50%.
“The more wine bottles we recycle, the more recycled glass can go into a new wine bottle,” Lueck says.
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