According to the company president, Lania Rivamonte, Huntsville-based Alabama Glass Recyclers, may be about to close. The firm recently laid off its 15 employees and needs about US$ 300,000 in operating capital to stay in business. Launched as Green Mountain Glass in June 2010, the company changes old bottles and jars into stylish glass countertops and landscape cover. It was recently chosen by the U.S. Green Building Council to supply the countertops for what is being billed as the nation's most sustainable home near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. "There's such great business potential," Rivamonte said, "But we just have not been able to get any investors. We've been looking for quite a while." Over the past year, the company has collected an estimated 560 tons of used glass from 63 Huntsville-area businesses, and also operates 14 public drop-off sites. Rivamonte said the firm is in the process of removing all its collection bins. "People who still want to recycle their used glass can drive it to Allied Waste's sorting facility, just southwest Huntsville," she said. Glass was removed from the local curbside recycling programme in 1995, but Allied keeps bins for clear, green and brown glass in its parking lot and has, for the past year, given all its glass to Alabama Glass Recyclers.
