Ideas for Recycling Glass

• There are lots of creative ways to recycle glass.glass bottles and phial image by Maria Brzostowska from Fotolia.com
  
  There are endless ways to recycle glass without taking it to the recycling center. Easily reuse glass in craft projects to cultivate your creative side and to decorate areas of your house. Alternatively, reuse glass products that you already own and would otherwise throw away to serve useful functions around your home.
  
  

Jars

• Save jars of tomato sauce and pickles and use them to store dry goods, such as pasta, rice, flour and sugar. Rinse out each jar carefully. Add dish detergent and scrub the inside of the jar, dislodging any clinging bits of food. Wash and scrub the inside of the lid as well. Lay the lid on a dish towel to drip dry. Start peeling away the label from the jar with hot water. Use a tool such as a screwdriver or a butter knife to carefully scrape away the parts of the label that are stuck on with glue. If necessary, use a cleaning agent that is specialized for the removal of dried glue. Wipe away the remaining bit of adhesive and allow the jar to air dry. Using craft paint, paint the lid of the jar for a decorative touch.
  
  

Wine Bottles

• One of the most common ways to recycle a wine bottle is to simply use it as a candlestick. Take a long, narrow candle and either trim the bottom edge of it carefully with a knife, or let it melt off slightly by holding a lighted match to it. The goal is to make the candle narrow enough to fit into the bottle. Another ingenious way to recycle wine bottles is to use them as a moss garden. Rinse out a wine bottle thoroughly and let it drip-dry upside down. Go outside, find some fresh soil and stick bits of it through the mouth of the bottle. Add pieces of clumped up moss, shoving them in through the mouth of the bottle with a chopstick. Line them up with the chopstick, and the moss will grow into a thick carpet.
  
  

Beer Bottles

• Probably one of the easiest and most creative way to recycle a large amount of beer bottles is to collect them and create a beer bottle Christmas tree. This works best with beer bottles that have green glass. In addition to beer bottles, you need several pieces of circular glass in decreasing diameters. For example, one piece of glass should be 30 inches in diameter, the next one should be 20 inches in diameter and the final one 10 inches in diameter. Place the largest piece of glass on the floor and arrange the beer bottles so that they line the circumference of the circle. Glue them in place. Repeat this step with each piece of glass. When all the bottles have dried on their respective glass bases, stack them carefully on top of each other, with the largest piece acting as the base. You can glue them in place if you'd like the structure to be extra sturdy.