Tempered glass is recyclable but only at the manufacturing level. You can’t put it in your curbside recycling, but tempered glass byproducts can be de-tempered and repurposed in new products. So, yes, our claims of using 60% recycled glass are genuine, but we don’t want to create the impression you can simply chuck your old glass doors, cookware, or screen protectors into the recycling bin.

By using 60% recycled glass, we’re able to save a ton of sand, literally. Pure 3 is made from 42% sea sand—a highly coveted type of sand that’s also used in everything from concrete and ceramics to golf courses and sports fields. In comparison, our previous line of Pure 2 glass is made from roughly 60% sea sand. With Pure 3, we’re also using less virgin material for our alkali, aluminum oxide, and magnesium oxide additives. And with our competitors scrambling to develop their own recycled glass screen protectors, we’re making the entire industry more sustainable.

No, sand is not a renewable resource, but it is the second most used resource in the world, next to water. It’s used to make concrete, glass, paper, plastics, plaster, paint, food, wine, cosmetics, and a ton of other stuff. And we’re running out of it—especially the smooth sand used in high-quality glass manufacturing. The looming sand shortage isn’t just an environmental and economic concern. It’s also a human rights problem as sand mafias have formed to hoard and leverage the stuff to further an agenda of power and control. We alone can’t solve the sand shortage problem, but we’re proud to have created a screen protector that slows our consumption of this surprisingly critical resource.

Like many recycled materials, the environmental benefit isn’t just using less virgin material but using less energy as well. We recognize that energy consumption for producing tempered glass depends on several factors. We already use methods like loading efficiency to minimize the energy used to make our tempered glass, but recycled glass is making our operations even more energy efficient. According to the EPA, producing glass from virgin materials requires 30% more energy than producing it from crushed, used glass.

Probably about 15%. According to a recycled glass market research report from The Insight Partners, “every 10% of recycled glass or cullet used in production results in an ~5% reduction in carbon emissions.” While we don’t have independently verified numbers from our factories, this figure is in line with what our manufacturing partners are reporting from the production of our Pure 3 screen protectors.