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Louisiana's coast is eroding. One engineer found a fix in her wine bottle [View all]
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/27/g-s1-74600/louisiana-coast-eroding-engineer-found-fix-wine-bottleIn 2020, Franziska Trautmann and her boyfriend, Max Steitz, had just polished off a bottle of cheap wine when a disturbing thought struck them.
"We were like, 'Hold on — this bottle is going to end up in a landfill' because Louisiana had virtually no glass recycling," Trautmann recently told NPR's Manoush Zomorodi.
-snip-
With a little more research, Trautmann and Steitz discovered a machine that could turn glass into its original form: sand.
-snip-
With help from her professors, Trautmann and the team won a grant from the National Science Foundation to research how their sand could help with coastal erosion. They learned that they could use biodegradable sandbags and plant native grasses to build back the marshes.
-snip-
"We were like, 'Hold on — this bottle is going to end up in a landfill' because Louisiana had virtually no glass recycling," Trautmann recently told NPR's Manoush Zomorodi.
-snip-
With a little more research, Trautmann and Steitz discovered a machine that could turn glass into its original form: sand.
-snip-
With help from her professors, Trautmann and the team won a grant from the National Science Foundation to research how their sand could help with coastal erosion. They learned that they could use biodegradable sandbags and plant native grasses to build back the marshes.
-snip-
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