Over the past 7 years, I have been reusing (not recycling) glass wine bottles from a variety of sources.  This includes friends, family and the help of freecycle.org.  This process has allowed me to successfully reuse approximately 2000 wine bottles.  Since each wine bottle weighs approximately 1 lb, I had finally reached the milestone of 1 ton of reused glass.  There are some benefits to this approach and let me highlight them:

Cost Savings

  • $2000 – New bottles are around $1 each, so I have saved myself and others this amount. 

Environmental

  • 1785 lbs of CO2 from not having to create 1 ton of new glass
  • 1330 lbs of sand saved
  • 433 lbs of soda ash
  • 433 lbs of limestone
  • 151 lbs of feldspar
  • 15,000,000 BTUs – Glass furnaces require a lot of energy

Now, there are some costs to me in my processing of the bottles:

  • 150 Miles of driving – approx. 120 lbs of CO2 produced and 5 gallons of gasoline
  • 200 gallons of water – 20% hot water
  • Time – delabelling and triple rinsing/sanitizing takes time.

I’m proud of what I have done mainly for my wallet, but also for the environmental benefits.  Let me also say that I plan on reusing these bottles forever, so each time they go through the reuse process, I’m increasing the benefits.

wine bottles