Discontinuous fibres are most often made in a rotary process, in which fine streams of glass are flung outward through holes in a spinning dish and are then broken and blown downward by a blast of air or steam.
The haphazardly arranged red and ochre stuccoed walls of the buildings take on a tawny, sun-baked quality, children play by the little fountain, a grouchy black-clad old lady holding a yappy air-dog wanders by mumbling under her breath and an endless stream of full glasses and food-laden platters, held at head-height, dances through the packed tables.
"New York has a waste stream of some fifty thousand tons of glass per year," Baird explained, "and another forty-three thousare tons arecycledled, which sounds pretty good until you realize it's shipped all the way to Asia to be turned back into products, which is a crazy thing from a carbon perspective.
As a result, somewhere along the cup's path from the recycling bin to the recycling plant, it gets picked out of the stream of plastic, paper and glass as a contaminant and sent to landfill or exported.
Carlos's apartment, a two-hour bus ride from the school, is cramped and overcrowded, but Nicole's beautiful house, seemingly made of glass, with light streaming in from all sides, offers even less privacy.
It was long thought that a steady stream of tiny bubbles in a glass of champagne was a sign of quality.
She's a far cry from the prancing redhead in a billowing yellow dress exuberantly pouring a stream of "Vin Mariani" into her glass in the 1894 advertising poster by Jules Chéret.
And an unimaginably diverse stream of devotees files through the glass doors, from neo-punks with asymmetrical haircuts and sleeve tattoos to music nerds in "Save Ferris" T-shirts and middle-aged preppies straight off the golf course.
