The Hipcycle Blog Materials Series: Glass

(This blog post is the first in a new series we will be writing here at Hipcycle on the materials that go into our products. Hope you enjoy this and the ones that come.)

I recently read that it takes 1 million years for a glass jar to decompose. ONE MILLION YEARS! Not only that, but we get 27.8 pounds of air pollution for every ton of new glass produced. Creating a ton of new glass requires an incredible amount of raw materials, including 1,300 pounds of sand, 410 pounds of soda ash, and 380 pounds of limestone.

The US produced more than 38 billion glass bottles in 2006, but only an estimated 30% was recovered in recycling programs, still leaving us with 26.6 billion to leave rotting in landfills for the next million years.

This is why part of our mission here at Hipcycle is to provide consumers with smarter, greener options. Our goal is to divert as much of this waste as we can. Let’s face it, consumption is our world, but if we can create an environment that allows for people to divert waste, then our great-grandkids may still have playgrounds.

The awesome thing about glass is that it can be recycled and upcycled an infinite number of times.

Recycling glass involves crushing the container down to its natural state (silica sand, soda ash and limestone.) to be reformed. The glass recycled in a jam jar today can be a juice bottle next month, then a coffee jar, a milk bottle, a pickle jar, a ketchup bottle, and on and on forever.

And, while recycling glass is great, upcycling glass takes out the “crushing” process altogether. Upcycled glass takes the glass in its current form and simply modifies it into a usable product. Therefore saving a step (and the required energy and resources) in the creation of a new product.

Some of our upcycled glass products have been converted to tumblers, platters, pendant lights, ashtrays, goblets, vases, bowls, votive candles, bird feeders and more! We are proud to do our part in converting glass waste into attractive, durable and environmentally friendly products.

Susan is Goddess of Marketing at Hipcycle. She spends her weekends chasing after two active boys, sifting through her husband's garage sale finds and attempting to work on upcycling projects of her own.