Waste Not, Want Not

Handbuilt recycled glass stoneware

H: 14" D: 5"

Waste Not, Want Not was a major research project I undertook as my final project studying at Kutztown University. I was researching the composition of glass for another class and concluded it has a very similar composition to some minerals commonly used in ceramics. This began an 6 month endeavor of carefully combing through scientific documents to figure out how to take old soda bottles and turn them into new ceramics. The researcher Selvin Yeşilay, who authored Production of stoneware clay bodies by using industrial soda-lime-silica glass waste, produced data and procedures that I used to make recycled glass clay. After getting the clay composed, I used my knowledge as a glaze chemist and some supplemental data to make a “coke bottle blue” glaze made with mostly pulverized glass soda bottles. This research project is only the beginning of a much bigger project of tackling the waste we produces as humans and converting it into new and useful products.