Quick question: what do you do with empty wine bottles, pasta sauce jars, and pickle jars? If you've been tossing them in your curbside recycling bin hoping for the best, you're not alone — and you're also not helping.
Here's the deal: Cobb County does not accept glass in curbside recycling. Every glass bottle and jar that ends up in your blue bin gets pulled out at the sorting facility and landfilled anyway. Worse, broken glass contaminates the paper and plastic around it, sometimes ruining the entire batch.
The good news? Glass is infinitely recyclable. It can be melted down and reformed endlessly with no loss of quality. For every six tons of recycled glass used in manufacturing, one ton of CO₂ emissions is avoided. But it only works if the glass actually gets to a facility that processes it.
The Solution: Ripple Glass Purple Bins
Ripple Glass operates free glass-only drop-off bins across Atlanta, including two convenient locations in East Cobb. Just drive up, toss your glass in, and drive away. No sorting by color, no peeling labels, no fees, no membership.
Drop-Off Locations Near You
🟣 Whole Foods at Merchants Walk
1311 Johnson Ferry Road, Marietta — the purple bin is near the rear parking area.
🟣 Jackie's Wine & Spirits
3140 Johnson Ferry Road, Marietta.
Both locations are open whenever the parking lot is. You can even drop off on the way to a grocery run — it takes about 30 seconds.
✅ What You Can Drop In the Purple Bin
- Glass food and beverage containers — all colors (labels can stay on!)
- Wine bottles, beer bottles, liquor bottles
- Pasta sauce jars, pickle jars, mason jars
- Candle jars (leftover wax is okay)
- Drinking glasses and cosmetic bottles
- Windows and shower doors (remove frames and hardware first)
❌ What to Keep Out
- Ceramics, porcelain, and china
- Mirrors and milk glass
- Pyrex, Corningware, and Corelle
- Light bulbs and TV screens
- Windshields and laminated glass
- Dishware and cardboard packaging
Ripple Glass's rule of thumb: "If you can see through it, we can likely recycle it."
A Quick Prep Checklist
- Rinse: Empty and rinse out any food residue.
- Caps off: Remove metal and plastic lids (those go in your curbside recycling).
- Labels stay: No need to peel — the processing handles that.
- Transport carefully: Collect in a reusable bin or crate to avoid breakage.
Why It Matters
Ripple Glass collects more than 800 tons of glass every week from purple bins across the country. That's 800 tons of material that would otherwise sit in a landfill essentially forever — glass bottles take more than a million years to decompose.
Every bottle you drop off stays out of the landfill permanently and gets turned into new bottles or fiberglass insulation. It's one of the rare cases where "recycling" really does mean what you think it means.
Want to Collect Glass at Home?
Ripple Glass offers a free purple tote bag for home collection. You can request one on their Atlanta page, which also lists every drop-off bin in the metro area.
Questions?
If you're a TrashTastic customer and want help figuring out what goes where, reply to any of our emails or call us at 470-664-3100. We're happy to walk through it with you.
Next time you're heading to Whole Foods or Jackie's, toss your glass in the purple bin on the way. It takes 30 seconds and keeps real material out of the landfill — forever.