Recycled Glass Countertops: Transforming Waste Into Durable Beauty

Over the last few years, recycled glass countertops have become a popular option for people who are looking for something unusual, beautiful, and that also makes a personal statement about their environmental consciousness.

Terrazzo montage. Courtesy of Green Home Source.

The current spectrum of conventional countertops come in styles made from materials including: plastic laminates; quarried stones like granite; silicate minerals like quartz; metals like stainless steel; and butcher block woods.

While there’s nothing wrong with conventional countertops in terms of beauty and functionality, the biggest reason for considering recycled glass countertops or other terrazzo countertops is that they’re the kindest thing that you can do for the planet in terms of preserving natural resources.

For those that don’t know, terrazzo is the original recycled product, a composite material made for centuries by taking leftover pieces of materials like quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable chips and combining them with a cementing binder to cure and then polish for a beautiful, smooth, textured looking surface.

While terrazzo surfaces are beautiful, since they’re using already existing materials that would otherwise find their way to the landfills, they’re also not taking any existing resources from the environment.

Today, countertops made either exclusively or even partially of recycled glass are also gaining a lot of attention because of the broad range of colors and designs they come in.

Depending on the manufacturer, they require no special maintenance, to quite the bit, though they all have their unique charm. Three of the top makers worth taking a look at are: EnviroGLAS, IceStone, and Vetrazzo.

If you’re the sort that really doesn’t like maintenance, then you are really going to love EnviroGLAS because it doesn’t require you to do any waxing or resealing once the countertop is installed.

EnviroGLAS takes post-consumer and industrial glass and porcelain bound for landfills and creates products including countertops and flooring.

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