Ideas from forgotten glass bottles
Every day, thousands of glass bottles are left behind after parties, cafes or restaurants. Many glass bottles become waste because they are difficult to collect, have high recycling costs and few units choose to treat them.
However, for Mr. Cao Minh Ngoc (25 years old), founder of the ''Lọ Lamp Glass Recycling Workshop'' in Dong Van (Tuyen Quang), each old bottle is the beginning of a new story.
That idea originated from a childhood memory. Once, while bathing in the stream, he stepped on a piece of glass that was thrown away and was injured. That experience made him always wonder why bottles that were still valuable were thrown away.
At that time, I wondered why bottles that are still valuable are not reused, while plastic has a relatively common collection and recycling system," Mr. Ngoc shared.
According to Mr. Cao Minh Ngoc, if plastic has formed a relatively complete recycling chain, glass is still a material that is "forgotten" due to its heavy, fragile nature and high transportation costs. That gap made him decide to choose glass as a material to start a business.
In 2023, when he was still a student in Hanoi, he started his journey with 5 million VND and a small rented room. The first product were night lights made from glass bottles but were not well received by the market.
The product at that time was not complete enough to convince customers. I realized that recycling alone was not enough, the product must be beautiful, useful and have its own value for people to be willing to own it," Mr. Ngoc recalled.
After the failure, he spent a lot of time researching and improving the design. More than three years later, he brought all the machinery and more than 5,000 glass bottles from Hanoi to Dong Van to develop the ''Lop Lamp Glass Recycling Workshop''.
From seemingly discarded bottles, he and his colleagues create 3D handmade paintings, decorative lights and handmade gifts.
A wine bottle can be associated with a meeting, a gift or a celebration. When you turn it into a painting, you not only recycle the material but also preserve a part of the owner's memory," he shared.
Spreading green lifestyle from old bottles
The raw materials of the workshop are currently collected from cafes, restaurants, homestays and even customers who actively donate. On average, each month, the workshop recycles about 200 - 300 glass bottles.
This number is not large if viewed from an environmental perspective, but what is more precious is that each regenerated bottle will make one more person change their perspective on waste," Mr. Ngoc said.
According to him, customers are quite diverse, from young people, interior decoration lovers to coffee shop owners, homestays or businesses.
There is a order that I will always remember, which is a painting commissioned by a young child to give to a friend who is fighting cancer.
At that time, I realized that what I was doing was not only recycling glass but also helping to preserve very beautiful human memories," Mr. Ngoc shared.
In addition to manufacturing products, Mr. Ngoc's workshop also organizes a recycling experience workshop, creating opportunities for many people to directly create from old glass bottles and understand more about the value of reusing materials.
What I am most happy about is that more and more people keep bottles associated with memories to recycle into gifts or souvenirs. However, many people still think that recycled items have low value, while making a handicraft product sometimes takes more effort than a new product," said Cao Minh Ngoc.
In the near future, Mr. Ngoc hopes that the workshop will become a creative space for more people to look at waste from a different perspective.
Living green does not necessarily have to start from really big things. Sometimes just keeping a bottle instead of throwing it away, you have opened up opportunities for it to have a new life," Cao Minh Ngoc advised.
