No Stupid Questions

There are ways to clean glass passively, it sounds like your residue is organic.

• acetone, the pure kind you buy in a tin can at the hardware store. it will require some form of sealed container to put the glass in (acetone evaporates quickly and eats almost all organic matter) - finding a container big enough for your glass might be the hard part of this but it works (soak for days, and do not touch acetone with hands or use organic gloves - internet search for proper gloves)
• ZAP heavy duty citrus cleaner, comes in a gallon jug. soak the glass in it for days or longer, doesn't need a sealed container. This is the same stuff you can use to clean your sink drain and is pretty safe to handle but still, wear basic gloves just in case.
• high-purity (like say 70%) iso alcohol with table salt as an abrasive (standard grocery store things). This is more of for the inside, where you can put in alcohol + salt and seal with your hand and vigorously shake to let the salt scrub the residue and the alcohol to eat it. Uses a lot of alcohol due to it's evaporation, so buy a bigger jug.
• specialty products found on 420-friendly websites or your local 420-friendly store; weed residue is a thing for bongs, bubblers, pipes and any other sort of smoking apparatus and they need cleaned and are hard to get inside; products are made to soak the glassware in to try and get the junk out. generally expensive and hit or miss on quality but they exist

Hope this helps. (edit: acetate -> acetone, oops) (edit2: 90% -> 70% alcohol per comment)

As a lazy fuck who has let his dishes get gross and moldy more than once, i doubt these glasses are too gross to clean.

Hot water + degreaser. Soak overnight. Rinse.

Glassware is frequently not recyclable, due to additives during the manufacturing process.

my bong has a bunch of crevices/nooks that get gunked up with resin n' such. Put in some salt, a healthy splash of alcohol, and shake it up! you'll be surprised how much that gets.

Size depending, an ultrasonic cleaner and alcohol will do the trick. That's how I clean my glass pipes from resin and debris, and it always comes out spotless with no manual cleaning effort.

Not sure if this is the most environmentally-correct answer, but I've usually put old, beyond redemption glassware into a thick bag (like a dog food bag) and sealed it up. Those bags are usually thick enough that even if the glass breaks, it usually won't break through.

Sealing the glass up in the same bags, I've also smashed them to pieces small enough that they're no longer shards (depends on what i'm throwing away).

Glass is typically able to be cleaned in all but the worst cases, so I don't throw it away often. Usually it's when a glass or plate breaks and I don't want to risk injury to the sanitation workers.

Peroxide and then hypochlorite bleach. Not at the same time. There are products that contain them if you can't get them neat. In fact I recommend those.

Try the peroxide first. Dilute as necessary. Wipe or spray on. Leave it on for a while to loosen anything and everything it can. After a while fill with hot (60-80C) water, but beware of thermal shock. Leave to stand until warm, not hot. Try to clean the glasses as best you can. This may be all you need.

If not, try the bleach. Same steps, but make sure you're in a well ventilated area. I've found that while it stinks up the place, the mould just peels right off and into the hot bleach solution.

If the glasses smell of bleach afterwards, fill with warm water and leave for a day or two. Repeat as necessary. The bleach will dissipate eventually.

Probably depends on where you live but if its gross just put it in the garbage. If you are concerned about the workers safety, put it in a box and fill the box with other trash so it doesn't present a danger. Not all glass can be recycled even if its put into the recycling bin. But even glass that is not recyclable can be used for lots of other things. One of the cool things I discovered a bunch of years ago is that junk glass that isn't recyclable can be used to capturing methane from old landfill (they create a thick layer of crushed glass on the top of the old landfill and then cover that with a membrane and then they can suck the gas that is stuck between the glass layer and the membrane.)

Strong acid, strong base. Bake at 500C over night if it's borosilicate to bake off all organics. It won't get much cleaner than that.

have you tried using bleach or drain cleaner (prills; sodium hydroxide) to clean it

Me, I'd put them in general waste. I might wrap them or put them in a sturdy paper bag if I had any, and put that in a plastic bag to contain the evil.

A jet wash will undoubtedly remove whatever gunk is there.

bottle brush

Just lob it in the bin.

call your local recycling center and ask. Seriously, they'll usually be very happy to help you, especially if you're asking something like this. Most people never bother to check what is and isn't supposed to be sent to them.

Here's the thing. Glass is damn near infinitely recyclable in theory. It, however, isn't usually economically realistic, so it varies a lot from location to location whether or not it actually gets recycled. A lot of it ends up in local landfills.

But, bleach will kill off anything that would be a problem. Mix up a 1:10 solution, soak that shit, then let it air dry thoroughly. Won't be anything left on it that's dangerous.

Put them in the glass recycling. This might be different from your general recycling bin.

To recycle glass they break it down into tiny shards, it gets industrially cleaned and then melted and formed into new glassware.

Glass doesn't has to be clean to be able to be recycled, just mostly separated into colours.

Coarse Salt. Add just enough water to move it around + a little dish soap and shake. Works like a charm.