https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20462295
With Florida's beaches and associated businesses generating more than a billion dollars every year, their preservation is prioritized but becoming more and more difficult as the sand on these beachfronts face erosion from contact with the water. This creates gaps in sand quantity, and so in order to fill these gaps, glass might prove to be a useful alternative. Processes utilizing machinery can revert glass back into fine particles, basically mimicking the texture and appearance of sand. These fine particles can then be used to replace the eroded sand in beaches in order to maintain the part of South Florida's economy that relies on beach-related revenue.
Simultaneously, employing glass waste as a means for creating sand imitating materials will also reduce the amount of waste that would otherwise end up in landfills without any further use. Initially, to replace the sand in eroded beaches, sand from ocean floors would be excavated and transported to the shore, a process referred to as dredging. This project would fulfill the need material replenishment while also limiting the need of taking resources from other places, which undoubtedly serve a great use for aquatic systems.
The only limits of such a project would be how little sand it produces in proportion to the demand of replacement sand, which in 2006, 2.6 million tonnes were dredged from ocean floors, costing 45 millions dollars. However, the project of turning glass into sand would only produce 15,600 tonnes every year, a small fraction of what would be needed. There's still potential, of course, and can see many other uses in other areas as well, such as being used in materials related to construction. If it sees further development for expanded use, it'll alleviate stressors placed on aquatic systems from resource monopilization by humans, land fill conflicts, and so forth.