Used Bottles

Bottles are becoming a serious problem in my life and I am hoping that somebody may have some thoughts and ideas for me.

I am convinced that there is really something wrong with me and if in Mozambique Africa we had analyst I would seriously consider consulting one.

In the normal world one has bins where all types of refuse gets separated and put into the appropriate bin. However sad to say not where I live we actually do not even have refuse collectors.

Now my problem is that I cant bear to see empty glass bottles piling up in restaurant back areas or lying all over in fields, roadsides etc.

So consequently many years ago I started driving around collecting the bottles and storing them on my property and as you can imagine the pile got higher and higher and I was fast becoming known as “the empty bottle Looney”.

It has got to the point that even restaurant and bar owners contact me to collect their bottles which I do with absolute glee. I have 1 person permanently employed removing labels and washing the bottles.

Actually it has come to being a game with me as to how many bottles per day, per hour I can actually collect. I told you I seriously need an analyst.

I then put my thinking cap and much switching to the right brain as to what I could do with these bottles. After much research found ways to turn them into glasses,vases, lampshades, bowls etc. Some examples are in the photo.

The major obstacle was in how to cut the bottles. My first attempt was burying the bottle in the sand to the level where I wanted to cut it pouring used boiling oil and cutting with a piece of wire. Strange it worked but oh so tedious.

Eventually I found a cutting contraption in the good ole US of A and duly imported it.

But that was short lived.

I then devised a method using a small transformer and heating up fuse wire. This method cuts through bottles like butter and has and does work like a dream.

I identified a market and a flourishing business developed mainly exporting the items to neighbouring African countries.

Due to the astronomically high fuel and other costs it is becoming less viable to export the finished goods and at this stage supply is far greater than demand. Yet I am still collecting these bottles.

Now this mania or sheer madness still raves in me so I then thought okay crush the glass, melt it, and pour it into small flat moulds to get sheet glass.

Once I had sheet glass I could then put it into a kiln over whatever shape let it melt and various types of bowls, plates etc would form and this would be far more saleable to the local market as against having to export.

Well here lies my problem bearing in mind I am a back garden worker I can not find anything that could get to the temperatures needed to melt glass. In commercial melting outlets I believe they use temperatures of up to 1,500 centigrade.

Now if we go back in history how did they make glass without all the modern methods of today.

C3000 B.C In Egypt it is supposed that someone lit a fire on a sandy bank by the side a lake. It seems that soda ash was deposited on the banks of a Lake and when this was mixed with heat from the fire and sand, glass was made for the first time.

C1500 B.C The Egyptians realized how useful glass could be and they started making bottles. These bottles were made from winding very hot melted glass around the side of a bottle shaped mould made of sand. When the melted glass cooled down it became hard. They then emptied the sand out of the bottle and could then fill it with anything they wanted.

From then and up until A.D 1904 glass was made in one form or another all in very simplistic ways. In 1904 an Irishman Michael J Owens living in Ohio USA invented the automatic bottle-making machine

Now bearing in mind that melting glass etc was prior to possibly 1904 done in one basic way or another surely there must be a way for me to melt glass without having to go to purchasing all the expensive furnaces which in any case would not be a consideration for me.

So in conclusion I am asking readers of my blog if they do not know themselves maybe they know people who could possibly find a simple and inexpensive solution for me to melt bottles.