Source
Bottles from bars, restaurants and rooms
Materials indexMaterial record / Glass
Bottles from bars, restaurants and rooms
Waste glass
Hotels handle a steady flow of whisky, wine, spirit and water bottles. Once separated by colour and contamination, that familiar pile becomes a precise mineral feedstock rather than an anonymous bin of glass.
Why it’s worth recovering
Visible in the finished surface
Colour and particle size remain legible, so the new material keeps a direct visual connection to the bottles it began as.
Inert and durable
Clean glass is stable, hard-wearing and suited to surfaces where texture and longevity matter.
A local, repeatable stream
Hospitality sites produce bottles every day. Keeping that stream separate makes collection and material development more consistent.
From waste stream to part
The production process.
- 01
Collect
Bottles are kept separate at source and moved out of the operational waste stream.
Step 1 - 02
Clean and sort
Caps, labels and contaminants are removed; glass is grouped where colour control matters.
Step 2 - 03
Crush and grade
The glass is reduced to controlled particle sizes, from visible chips to a sand-like aggregate.
Step 3 - 04
Form
The graded material is combined with an appropriate binder or fused in specialist production, depending on the product brief.
Step 4 - 05
Finish
Surfaces are cut, ground and polished to reveal the recovered aggregate, then assembled for use.
Step 5
Technical data
What it is, and how it behaves.
- Incoming form
- Clean container glass, separated from mixed operational waste
- Preparation
- De-labelled, cleaned, crushed and graded by particle size
- Visual character
- Colour and aggregate pattern vary with each collected batch
- Suitable processes
- Casting, pressing or specialist glass forming after material trials
- Quality control
- Contamination, grading and edge finish checked for each application
- Design principle
- Specify by performance and range, not an artificial promise of perfect uniformity
Manufacturing into new things
Design starts with grading
Particle size changes both the look and behaviour of the mix. Samples establish the right balance before a component is drawn.
Edges matter
Cutting and polishing trials define safe, durable edges and reveal how the aggregate reads at the surface.
Batch character is retained
Rather than disguise variation, the design uses it as evidence of the original glass stream.
Where it doesn’t belong
- — Final performance depends on the forming system and must be tested for each use.
- — Mixed colours create variation between batches.
- — Impact-critical and structural uses require application-specific certification.
Sample recipe / Glass
A product sample begins with a controlled recipe.
This record keeps the source, preparation and production decisions together, so a promising sample can be reviewed and repeated.
MadeBy material recipeSample 01 / indicative
- 01 / Feedstock
- Container glass
- Clean, de-labelled and colour-sorted
- 02 / Particle profile
- Graded aggregate
- Visible chips through to fine mineral fraction
- 03 / Forming route
- Cast, press or fuse
- Selected after application trials
- 04 / Surface finish
- Ground and polished
- Reveals the recovered aggregate
- 05 / Quality checks
- Purity, grading, edges
- Checked against the intended use
- 06 / Batch character
- Source-led colour mix
- Variation is retained, not disguised
Illustrative sample recipe. Binder, forming conditions and performance tests are set for the final application.
From source to specification
A stream becomes useful when its limits are understood.
Material development begins before the workshop. Separation at source protects identity and quality; sampling establishes variation; testing matches the material to an application. Only then can repeatable production be discussed.
Preparation
De-labelled, cleaned, crushed and graded by particle size
Best next job
surfaces, tiles, table elements and future product trials
Evidence
Samples, process notes and application-specific checks are kept close to the object.
Material record
The story should survive the sale.
Each application is intended to carry a useful record: what the object is, where its material came from, how it was prepared, what care it needs and what to do when its first use ends.
- 01 / Meet the object
- 02 / Follow the material
- 03 / Read the making
- 04 / Keep it useful