Sustainable glass design: designing a better and more beautiful future
Climate change and sustainability are terms we are hearing more and more each day. Whether it’s at industry events, on the news, or through social media. So, what are we doing here at Deadalian Glass Studios to respond to these environmental calls through sustainable glass design?
Glass is made from natural raw materials such as sand, soda ash and limestone, combined at very high temperatures. This wonderful material is sustainable, endlessly recyclable, and provides great environment benefits. By endlessly recyclable, we mean that glass can reused over and over, today’s waste glass can be melted down, reshaped, and re-purposed as a new product tomorrow.
Architects are now using glass more often in their projects to reduce energy cost because glass provides natural light into buildings. Studies have also proven that glass buildings contribute towards peoples well-being and improve health conditions, whilst also enhancing living and working environments.
At Daedalian Glass Studios we pride ourselves not only in the quality of glass we produce but also the procedures we follow to ensure we minimise wastage in production and recycle whenever possible. We respect the environment we live in, and the materials it affords us to create our glass installations. In this blog, we will showcase a couple of designs created with the theme of sustainability in mind.
Sustainable Glass Design 1
The first design we will showcase is made with the excess glass (off cuts) from production of our Tesseract design.
Tesseract Glass by Daedalian Glass Studios
The tesseract design requires entirely uniform layers of glass to be cut and fused together – a process which creates off-cuts from stock sheets – but our design team created the design below using these stock sheet off-cuts to eliminate all wastage from the cutting process.
Close-Up Recycled Glass Design
Recycled Glass Design
Recycled Glass Design
Close-Up Recycled Glass
Sustainable Glass Design 2
Another example of sustainable design at Daedalian Glass Studios is our use of cullet (recycled cast glass). Glass is a temperamental material to work with and inevitably through a mixture of breakages, R&D testing, and various unforeseen issues; we build up a small stock of casting glass that is held back by our quality control team.
This glass can be refired and reused. However, it is no longer suitable for use when producing the highest quality clear lead crystal glassworks. We often recycle this stock for R&D work, or when creating indicative samples for clients as a way of reducing our footprint. However, we also tasked our design team with developing a new glass design for this stock.
Our design team came back with the design above from our sample library. They developed a process that coats the pieces of glass cullets in a veiling. During the process of casting into a new glass block, this veiling shifts to create a wispy 3d design.
Studio Recycling Policy
As well as the everyday recycling we all should be undertaking, Daedalian Glass Studios works with Recycling Lives to ensure that all materials that can be recycled, are recycled. They collect our skip and recycle any materials we might have missed.
Furthermore, when we receive parcels through the post all the cardboard and packaging is carefully opened and stored for re-use. When sending out samples or various other items to our clients, the packages are then wrapped in 100% recycled cardboard.
If you would like to learn more about our sustainable glass designs, please call +44 (0)1253 702531 or email enquiries@daedalianglassstudios.com.
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