How to Make Drinking Glasses Out of Recycled Glass

Drinking glasses are the epitome of a new “make-do” attitude. If you save every last old bottle, jar and bit of glass like I do, you no doubt have enough material for a 10-piece set of drinking glasses that can be made in about an hour. And it’s so simple you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before, considering how fragile department store glasses are.

1. Soak a heavy, mostly cotton-type string in alcohol. Rubbing alcohol works best, so no need to break out that bottle of Beaujolais you were saving for the meal.

2. Tie that string around the bottle or jar at whatever height you think looks best. The height where you tie the string will be the height of the brim of the glass once it gets broken off.

3. Light the string on fire and let it burn for about five or ten seconds, depending on the thickness of the bottle or jar.

4. Put the fire out under cold, running water

5. Tap the burn mark sharply on the edge of a table or counter

6. Buff away sharp edges of the brim of the glass with a Dremel, or by hand using a sponge-pad sanding block available at your nearest hardware store or paint store.

Tips

For sturdy but attractive glassware, I choose Apollinaris, a bottled mineral spring water. After you have finished the water, which tastes like it has to be good for you, the deep green, thick glass bottles complement a holiday colour scheme. When I’m using my drinking glasses, I like to remember that all my glasses—water, wine or juice—are not in a landfill, taking up space and wasting precious natural resources.

[ background=”#b6c4b3″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px solid #cccccc” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #eeeeee”]Jeanne Roberts[/]

image:  Steve A Johnson (Creative Commons BY)

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After leaving the corporate world (as a California reporter and then a communications specialist at a large public utility), Jeanne Roberts returned to her true love, freelance writing – a love she had pursued for most of her life under one guise or another. For the past eight years, she has blogged for Celsias, Cooler Planet, DeSmogBlog, Energy Boom, SolveClimate.com, Adventures in Climate Change, Earth Techling, Clariity and CarHelp. Currently she is working for Green Home Gnome. She also works now and then as an honest-to-gosh reporter for the regional Shoreview Press (Minnesota), under assignment to Press Editor Michelle Miron. When all else fails, she writes SEO-quality articles for various sites, from medical issues and holistic healing to pets, gardening, interior décor and fashion. In 2009, she wrote a book on alternative energy sources, sustainable home building, and environmental initiatives for homeowners. You can see the book on Amazon. Her interests are environmentalism, sustainability, social justice, health, politics and the natural world, but as a copywriter she has written about almost everything under the sun. Religious Views: quantum dualist Political Views: it's complicated Briggs-Meyers: INTJ

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