Recycled, Re-used, and Ridiculously Functional

Last Updated on January 8, 2020

As I perused the list of products and services we offer here at Granite Transformations, I was reminded that our Trend Glass line of countertop overlays is made with up to 72% post-consumption recycled glass. We like to return the favor to mother nature – no big deal, of course. Then we got to thinking: if we can create beautiful countertops made from recycled glass and precious stones what other products are available in vast lexicon of consumer wares that also employ a more than standard amount of recycled material?

Want to impress in that job interview you’ve got lined up? Need a key accessory to push your ensemble over the top for tonight’s date? Well look no further than a swanky set of recycled keyboard cuff links. Each set boasts the look and feel of real keyboard keys because, well, they were once used in a keyboard. They might not be suitable for a black tie event, but they’re certainly a quality conversation piece.

Why stop at only installing recycled trend glass in your home? Why not just live in a recycled home? In London, designers built a house using 150,000 free newspapers – stacked inside a wooden frame – to demonstrate how much paper is wasted in producing free publications. Though the home may not be glamorous (or particularly waterproof), at least they didn’t break the bank searching for building materials.

Milk bottles aren’t just for storing milk anymore (or for landfills, for that matter)! You can now find milk bottle lamps made out of recycled plastic milk jugs. Each jug is decorated and fitted with sockets and cords and is ready to use as a surprisingly attractive table lamp or a hanging lamp wherever you see fit. What you might originally see as just a piece of plastic junk ready to be tossed away, only to be replaced by another, but next time you see a milk jug think about the creative possibilities that it can bring.

This one falls a bit more in line with what we do here at Granite Transformations. The company Enviro Bath casts gorgeous metal sinks out of 100% recycled material, creating unique designs out of nothing more than waste. To think that such a unique looking fixture could find its way into our bathrooms and kitchens via a landfill it begs the question, “if everything looks this good, why don’t we recycle everything?” Well, we wish people did.

The Watts Towers: the Holy grail of recycled material structures. Over the course of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954, Italian immigrant Sabato Rodia spent his spare time constructing the intricate system of 17 intertwined structures, two of which reach higher than 99 feet. All of his building material is made up of common thrown away items; soda bottles, railroad tracks, old porcelain tiles, and whatever else he could find to decorate it. It still stands in Watts, a section of Los Angeles. Earthquakes, attempts from the city, nor vandalizing attempts could bring down these unmistakable garbage icons as they stand as they were for more than 50 years.

Next time you trot down to the curb to throw away your week’s waste take a second and think, ‘is there stuff in this trash bag that I will one day be using?’ More likely than not the answer is yes, and it would be a shame if we let perfectly good post-consumer products make the long, dirty journey to the landfill. Here at Granite Transformations we pride ourselves in using high quality, recycled materials to create our beautiful Trend Glass line of countertops. We think that if you can eat off of an elegant countertop whose partial ingredients were once considered rubbish then who knows what kind of treasures can be whittled out of even the most improbable pieces of trash.