AmericanWinery.com

I’m hip to upcycling.

I like the idea of remaking a product over for use again and again. Recently I came across TerraCycle, a website that creates products out of used plastic bags, drink pouches, corks and more. Of course, it’s best to reduce waste as much as possible, but we can also make new uses with what we have. Since we are prone to some heavy cork popping in this business, may I suggest you collect your corks (natural or synthetic) and send them to TerraCycle so those smart folks can upcycle them into some cool looking stuff. It’s very easy to do.

You can send as little as 10 corks or 10,000 (Wow, now that’s a lot of wine!) Visit this page to learn more about the cork upcycle program. I like what I saw and also enjoyed checking out the blog…read more here.

I have run into a problem – a predicament of sorts. I drink a good amount of wine (this is not the problem) and Walla Walla, despite being home to well over 100 wineries, does not have a glass recycling program for most types of glass (THIS is the problem). So at the end of the month, I end up with a number of empties which I am reluctant to just toss in the garbage. This is an understatement – the thought of such waste seriously irritates me and occasionally makes me flat-out mad.

Recently, however, I have turned to a few fellow avid wine drinkers who share my sentiments regarding unnecessary waste and concern for the growing number (and size) of unseen and untalked about garbage piles with heaps of perfectly reusable glass. From these conversations as well as some research on the internet I have come up with some creative uses for wine bottles ranging from the difficult and eccentric to the simple and resourceful.

courtesy of weburbanist.com

1. Wine Bottle HOUSE! This first one requires some skill, lots of time, and a high consumption of wine over a long period of time. If you are dedicated to the cause, however, there is no reason why you can’t team up with a few wine drinking-friends and accomplish a similar feat even if it is on a smaller scale. For most of us, this might be a MUCH smaller scale. A dog house maybe. A yurt? I don’t know, but the basic idea is fascinating. Water is a very good insulator and I bet the type of lighting this would create inside the house would be very unique…

courtesy of junkyardcrafts.com

2. Wine Bottle Tree. A much less daunting endeavor. At first I was hesitant to mention this because I read that Martha Stewart had featured it on her show, but hey!, if its up your alley, this is a good use of glass. I haven’t actually seen one of these creations in person, but I would imagine that on a sunny day, sunlight filtered through variously colored bottles would be a pretty addition to any backyard.

courtesy of davesgarden.com

3. Wine Bottle Garden Border. This is the one that I have been working on. Very simple, yet resourceful. All it takes is collecting a bunch of bottles and shoving them half-way down into the ground, neck first, and voila! a border. I like to mix up the colors to make the border less monotonous. Although the wine bottle border isn’t the best at keeping grass from invading your flower patch, it is a great way to make watering those plants a much simpler task by significantly decreasing the run-off.

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