Recently Hipcycle Intern Extraordinaire Evan Hopkins chatted with Debby Zutant, co-owner of FSD Glass Studio and creator of our super cool wine bottle lanterns.
Here is what she said.
So, how did you get involved in upcycling?
My Partner Joe and I have been in the glass business for about five years. We started off doing traditional stained glass, which we still do. Even with our stained glass, we use every last piece of scrap glass. Very little goes to waste. We designed pieces to use the scrap glass, and when we have pieces of glass left over that are too small, we give them to mosaic artists to use. So, we have always been very conscious of our waste!
Several years into our stained glass business, we saw an artist at an art show that made wind chimes out of recycled wine bottles. And we loved them! So we went into research and development. We have always loved the effect of light on glass, so we wanted to come up with a way to achieve that using recycled bottles. After a couple of months in the studio, we developed the idea of the recycled bottle lanterns. We made our first prototype and gave it to a friend. We told him to "use and abuse" it and let us know what happened, and how it held up. He loved it!
So into production it went. It took us several months to really get the hang of cutting the bottles, but we got it. Then came the next step- finding our bottles. We went to the types of restaurants and bars who served the bottles we wanted. The majority of them were willing to partner with us and to go out of their way to make sure we got what we needed. They loved the idea of us turning their trash into treasure! But on the other hand, there were several that were downright hostile to the idea of recycling. We tried our best, but they just wouldn't get on board. Then we started selling them. And people just couldn't get enough of them. The lanterns were a hit! There are so many absolutely beautiful bottles out there. It would be such a shame to have them sitting in a landfill!
What brought you to Hipcycle?
Well, actually, Hipcycle came to us! It was last year, before they officially launched. Joe and I are on a website called Wholesale Crafts, which links up American artisans with retailers. Hipcycle loved our lanterns! We were very excited to get in on the ground floor of such a progressive company.
How do you create your products?
I'll tell you how, without divulging proprietary information! First we collected the bottles in New York, where they have mandatory business recycling. It wasn’t too hard; we just pilfer thru the recycle bins outside restaurants. But we recently moved to Florida, where things are a little different. There’s no mandatory recycling, so it's more hit or miss. Most of our bottles come from Key West (we live 30 miles north of KW). So once or twice a week, it's road trip time! We head down to KW with flashlights and gloves for a romantic evening of dumpster diving! We have found several bars and restaurants that DO recycle, and we hit them up first. Sloppy Joe's is our favorite, New Orleans House, and the fine wine bar Grand Vin, among others. We park our van, and ride around on bikes collecting bottles. There is actually fierce competition for bottles in KW, as there are a handful of artists making different recycled products! The other artists hire out the homeless to collect bottles, so we have to stay a couple steps ahead of them to get the best bottles for our customers! Then we go back to our studio and start cutting. Please note that our glass studio is operated 100% on solar power! We live in an artists' commune here in the Keys where we live totally off the grid (except for internet!). We even collect rainwater in cisterns for washing the bottles. So we cut the bottom off each bottle, then, we use two methods of grinding the inside edge, bottom and outside edge smooth. Then we soak and scrape all the labels off and clean the bottles. Joe then hand-drills each of the glass votive cups and we attach the chain assembly. We put them together, and ship them all over the country!
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