Crazy though it may seem, the EPA has estimated that 7 out of 10 wine bottles ends up in a landfill.   Considering that over 300 million cases of wine are sold in the United States annually, that’s a whole lot of bottles not getting recycled.  About 2,376,000,000 bottles a year, if my trusty calculator is to be believed.

All images via Bottlehood

While they may not be able to make a huge dent in that statistic, Bottlehood is determined to do what they can by turning some of those unwanted wine bottles into fun vases and glassware.

And if you think a wine bottle makes a good vase, check out what they’ve done with some other types of bottles… Read the rest of this entry »

(clockwise from top) "Gold Coast", "Pompeii", raw safety glass in bag

Quick story – When I was a little girl, I found some broken windshield glass in the alley near our home.  My mother, being the crafty sort at the time, decided to bring it home to experiment with.  Her project, as I recall, involved gluing the pieces of glass around a flower pot for a sort of sparkly mosaic effect.   We’ll never know what the end result might have been, since my toddler sister decided that tempered glass would make a delicious appetizer to the lunch my mother had left the room to make.   Although a frantic trip to the doctor revealed no lasting damage, the great tempered glass experiment quickly made it’s way to the trash, never to be tried again.

I’m so happy that Ellen Blakeley, artist and owner of Ellen Blakeley Studio, had better results!  Just look at the amazing tiles she has created from recycling tempered glass…

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Have you ever wondered how Vetrazzo makes something like this…

Vetrazzo "Bistro Green" table top

From something like this… Read the rest of this entry »

Here are six stylish and sustainable countertops that have it all over granite:

"Floating Blue" by Vetrazzo - Joel Puliatti, ©2008 Joel Puliatti for Vetrazzo, puliattiphoto@yahoo.com.

1. Recycled Glass Terrazo – Terrazo is an age old method of creating hard surfaces by combining aggregate, such as marble chips, with concrete.  The resulting material is poured into place and smoothed out using grinders and polishers. Companies such as Vetrazzo, Enviroglass, and Icestone have taken this method and replaced the stone aggregate with pre and post consumer glass chips, creating eye catching surfaces. Read the rest of this entry »