U.S. recycling rates for glass declined by nearly 50% over the past 10 years, according to the Container Recycling Institute. In the early years of TROC's recycling program, the sales of recycled clear glass were a major portion of revenues from recovered products. Towards the end of the 1990s, U.S. glass processors began shuttering furnaces throughout the U.S. as market share declined as a result of competition from lighter weight plastic and aluminum, and the use of glass for milk containers is virtually nonexistent.

There is limited demand for using recycled glass cullet, the product made by purifying post-consumer glass, to make new beverage containers in the U.S., and EPA estimates the national recycling rate is slightly over 25%. Much of WMRA's recycled glass is sold to a major U.S. processor which utilizes advanced optical sorting technology and multiple sorting steps to prepare products for sale to overseas markets. Few domestic markets exist for making new glass from recycled glass, primarily because of potential contamination of the processed glass cullet; common impurities include ceramics and leaded glass.