"Upcycling"

Glass Roots Gives New Life to Bozeman Glass

By David Nolt, 1-16-08

	Jennifer Pearson displays a recycled clear glass tile at the Glass Roots studio. Photo by David Nolt.

As the Bozeman City Commission moves ahead with curbside recycling, curiously absent from the list of recyclables is glass. When the Department of Environmental Quality ruled that the Holcim cement plant could no longer use recycled glass as an aggregate in cement, the city began crushing glass and using it as a cover on the landfill – not exactly what Bozeman residents had in mind when they took the time to collect and drop off their glass.

Now, with the landfill closing, even the pseudo-recycling of glass is not an option. The city continues to stockpile glass but without a long-term recycling solution.

In light of all this, Jennifer Pearson got a bright idea: this past summer she bought herself an industrial glass kiln and began giving glass new life. Glass Roots, her new business, uses solar power to melt glass and turn it into an array of bathroom tiles and lighting fixtures. The result is beautiful and, best of all, true recycling.

Pearson says there is a prevalent skewed perception of recycling. She references the book “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things,” and calls the Glass Roots process “upcycling.” Though Glass Roots is not alone a solution to Bozeman’s glass recycling woes, Pearson says it is an important example of what can be done.

“We’re taking the process full circle,” Pearson explained at the Glass Roots debut at Fantasia in downtown Bozeman. “We’re stopping the process and saying, ‘hey, this has value.’”

Pearson says dialing in the process has been a huge learning curve; using trial-and-error, Pearson and her partners began an intensive process of learning which glass to mix at which temperatures and durations. The process resulted in more than a few burns, as glass must be crushed and then fused at 1,600° Fahrenheit (all 1,600° are powered straight from the sun via photovoltaic solar panels.)

The finished products (works of art, really) vary greatly, from simple white, green and Bombay Gin-blue glass tiles, to colorful floral swirls and Terrazzo. Pearson says she has been able to price her product competitively as there is not cost for the initial material. There is also no waste in the Glass Roots process; glass sand and cullet is either reused in the kiln, in septic or backfill applications (glass sand is non-porous and bacteria cannot stick to it) or it is used ornamentally for fish tanks. Glass Roots is also partnering with Xanterra and Yellowstone National Park’s acclaimed recycling program to collect and recycle all the park’s glass.

Glass Roots products are currently available at Fantasia, 5 East Main Street in Bozeman. Pearson says she plans to eventually take Glass Roots to the West Coast market also, but for now is content to experiment and perfect the process at her Sourdough Road studio. The studio will soon include a showroom to display something Pearson says she and her team can be very proud of.

“With this process, we’ve taken something that’s just thrown away and we’ve given it a new life, and it’s a life that has sustainability and could surpass our own longevity.”

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