Just read that 90% of Roman glassware was recycled

I was browsing a blog from the University of Leicester last night, one of those late night rabbit holes you fall into. They dug up this old Roman glass recycling center in London, near the Thames, and the numbers caught me off guard. Apparently most glass vessels were melted down and remade, not just tossed in a landfill. The article said something like 90% of household glass was recycled back then. I always pictured Romans tossing their broken cups in a pit, but they had a whole system for it. Makes you wonder how much stuff we think is ancient trash was actually just their version of a recycling bin. Has anyone else run across a stat like that that totally flipped your image of the past?

2 comments

2 Comments

owens.willow1mo ago

Wait, so they weren't just smashing old wine jugs and tossing them in a ditch? Honestly I always pictured Roman trash as just piles of broken pottery and glass in some corner of the city, like a medieval dump. Tbh this changes how I think about their whole economy, they must have had guys going around collecting the shards and hauling them to these melting centers.

sethmartinez1mo ago

Wait" is doing a lot of work there - they probably had guys hauling shards, but that doesn't mean it was a modern recycling program.