Recycled Glass = ART
- Sheetal Chailertborisuth
- July 29, 2013
- Sustainability
- art, broken glass, Design, FENN DESIGNERS, Glass Art, glass bottoms, glass jewelry, kiln, New Life, Recycled Glass, recycling, reuse, Sustainability, Upcycling
- 1 Comment
As I work on my blog this afternoon, I look at my glass of water and see how pretty glass is and how many uses glass has. It has been used for tens of thousands of years, as an object of beauty to adorn oneself, it has been used to help steer ships by stars, and today it is used in our everyday objects such as glasses, cups plates, and architecturally as windows, stained glass, there are so many uses with glass that it would be impossible to list them all. Glass is the essence of both beauty and use.
In my last article I had talked about how we should be recycling our waste and “glass” being used in so many forms should be recycled when needed rather than thrown away.
Once glass is thrown it ends up in a landfill, and will last several hundred thousands of years, it has an infinite lifespan.
As glass does not degenerate, but it is 100% recyclable in a much more effective way than recycling paper or plastic.
The glass is first cleaned and sorted out by colour, then broken down. Most manufacturers use 50% recycled materials in the production of new glasses, which would save the much needed scarce resources and cut down from the waste dumped in landfills .
The concept of recycling glass is not only for manufacturers but for artists and designers and anyone who appreciates the beauty of glass and would like to use it creatively.
As I have been researching, glass is very beautiful, green glass, found in wine bottles when broken and fused can be made into beautiful recycled glass soap holders.
Colourful broken glass, instead of being thrown away can be attached to any frame and can bring an object to life with the transparency of glass.
Glass from bottles can be recycled and blown to make beads either for jewellery or house decoration
The bottoms of bottles can make a very pretty stained glass window. It’s a smart way of using the glasses for their different textures and colours
With Glass being one of the prettiest materials, it is fascinating to find art made from recycled glass and it should convince us to find the inner artist in us to recycle glass and use it like the examples above instead throwing it away and wasting it.
Megan Alder
It’s interesting to see how glass can be used in so many ways to be converted into art. My husband and I are environmentalists and if one thing we know is that we always want to contribute. We will start looking for a recycles artist near us so we can contribute by recycling glass in the shape of art.