Glass

Can I Recycle Broken Glass, Wine Glasses, Drinking Glasses, Window Panes?

/ Liesl Clark / 6 Comments

We’ve broken a couple of wine glasses lately and although I knew our recycling facility in our home town won’t take glass from wine or drinking glasses, I thought I’d look up the reasons why. According to Washington State’s Department of Ecology: “The combination of ingredients used to make glassware is different from what goes into container glass for bottles and jars. If these two types of glass are recycled together, the resulting glass will not be suitable for container glass. In fact, glassware, ceramics, window panes, or mirrors can pose a threat to equipment in a glass recycling plant.”

So that’s our answer for wine glasses, and likely the answer for all glass recycling facilities. We don’t want to contaminate the glass used for containing food. But if you break your mason or mayo jar, you can still put it in your glass recycling. It’s the material that counts, not whether it’s broken. I simply put the glass shards inside another jar that I’m recycling, as tightly as I can, so it all just melts down together.

So, for the non-recyclable glass, here are a few reuses I came up with that also might help:

1. Will anyone else take your broken drinking glasses? If they’re made of pretty colors, you might try a local potter or ceramics artist since glass mixed in with other glazes can make pretty colors in a firing.

2. Have windows that you want to recycle? Try your nearest Habitat for Humanity Store or save them and turn to our Trash Backwards app for window reuse inspirations:

3. If you have a tumbler hanging around, save your broken glass to make your own tumbled sea glass.

 

4. Recycle This in the UK has some interesting reuse ideas, like using your broken glass under your wood shed to deter rats!

5. Take the stem of your broken wine glass and glue it to the bottom of a teacup for a pretty teacup wine glass.

6. If your wine glass only has a chip or crack in it, or if it’s etched from your dishwasher, you can transform it into an adorable tea candle lamp. And if your kitty breaks enough of your wine glasses, then you can make a whole set of ’em.

7. Put your glass shards in the bottom of a plant pot to help with drainage?

What do you do with your broken glass? Send us your comments below or if you have a great solution you’d like to include in our app, please submit it through our contributor’s page.

10 Toughest Steps to Reduce Your Plastic Footprint

/ Liesl Clark / 3 Comments

If you’ve followed our guides to zero waste, which are simple ideas to get you thinking about reducing unnecessary plastics in your home environment, you’re doing really well! But you’ll likely still have plastics in your trash can every day, like I do. These are the toughest steps we take to get beyond our fear of being judged and push through the next level of plastic-free(dom) and even closer to zero waste:

1) Figure out what your biggest plastic vice is and find a plastic-free alternative. One of my family’s weaknesses is Amy’s frozen organic burritos. My children love them and they’re easy to heat up for school lunches. But we also love to eat burritos and enchiladas for dinner from delicious dried black beans that we slow cook and then assemble the burritos and enchiladas from scratch. Solution? Make an extra-large batch of burritos on burrito night and save them for school lunches. You can even freeze quite a few so you have your very own Amy’s-style yummies to keep the earthlings happy at school.

Amy's Burrito Packaging Isn't Recyclable. So, We Try To Make Our Own. Photo © Liesl Clark

If your vice is raw bars or granola bars and snack bars, find a baker near you who makes them and order them plastic-free. On Bainbridge Island, Rebecca makes Rawbecca Bars that are better than anything I’ve ever purchased in a store. She’ll make them for you in bulk, in many flavors, and totally plastic-free. We’ve ordered them in bulk to take on our expeditions in the Himalayas because they last over a month. Our local bakery also makes some unbelievably tasty peanut butter raw bars that I can order up waste-free.

We love crackers but can’t find our favorite varieties without plastic packaging. And our homemade crackers are better than any bought in a store. So, once in a while, we’ll make our own to help reduce our impact. And we’ll make enough for 2-3 days. They go fast.

Homemade Seed Crackers, Recipe at Slim-Shoppin. Photo © Liesl Clark

 

2) Stop buying plastic containers and come to love glass. I love glass containers of all sizes and can’t find anything that I can’t store in them.

Peek in my fridge and you'll find jars of all shapes and sizes: Patron bottle for flax seed oil, homemade yogurt in a large mason jar, homemade salad dressing in a jam jar and bulk yeast for our bread in another mason jar. Photo © Liesl Clark

3) Buy your cheese plastic-free. This might take some hutzpa on your part, but if you talk sweetly to your deli counter people, they’ll likely let you buy their bulk (often gourmet) cheese without any of their packaging. Just bring your own container and act confidently when you ask if they can just put their cheese it it. Smile, say “cheese.” Then, at home, store it in a beautiful glass cheese container. It stays fresher longer and looks delicious in there.

IMG_3147 Photo © Liesl Clark

We store our cheese in a large glass container, like our friends in France do. © Liesl Clark

4) Same goes for meat and fish. Buy it fresh, bring your own container, and store in glass.

5) Just say “no” to plastic clamshells. Clamshells? These are the polystyrene boxes that hold fresh berries and cherry tomatoes. Yes, it might mean you’ll have to say goodbye to these delicious food items until they’re in season and you can get them at your local farmer’s market. Refusing them sends a message to your grocer that you just won’t buy produce in that packaging. Better yet, take a letter to your grocery store’s customer service department and let them know that you, and a whole lot of other people in our community, are refusing to buy fresh produce in clamshells.

Clamshell Polystyrene Packaging Can't Be Recycled Where We Live. Photo © Liesl Clark

6) Say “no” to plastic mesh produce baskets (see above.) And use our letter to your grocer to do some good.

Plastic Mesh Produce Basket

7) Flowers don’t need to be wrapped in plastic for the journey home. First let your florist know you’ll carry them home sans plastic in your bag or basket, or your own two hands like you do at the farmer’s market or from your garden to your table.

Plastic-free flowers have less impact. Photo © Liesl Clark

8) Try a less plastic toothbrush. It’ll make you feel good. Some are so plastic-free they can be used as kindling when you’re done with them.

Toothbrushes Made Entirely of Bamboo are an Excellent Plastic-Free Alternative

9) Switch to homemade powder toothpaste. I’m still perfecting our recipe, but it’s basically baking soda, a few drops of stevia and a few drops of organic peppermint extract. The kids like it and we’ve reduced our toothpaste tube waste significantly.

DIY Zero Waste Toothpaste and Miswak Toothbrush Sticks, photo by Rebecca Rockefeller

10) Exert your buying power by choosing products that are entirely plastic-free. You’ll thank yourself later when your wood/metal/rubber/glass item is still functioning years later. I can attest to this for useful household items I’ve bought like pencil sharpeners, colanders, cheese graters (ones with plastic handles break), rakes, rubber spatulas (that’s why they call them rubber and the wooden handles are nicer to hold), soup ladles, straws (glass ones have a lifetime guarantee). My list could go on and on. I’ve never regretted purchasing a sometimes more expensive plastic-free item.

What are the toughest steps that you’ve taken to reduce the persistent plastics that you can’t seem to eradicate from your bin? Please let us know in the comments below so we can all try to come up with solutions together to help you reduce them.