Young entrepreneurs bring glass recycling to Chelan Valley

MANSON – Manson High School seniors Megan Clausen and Devyn Smith became interested in glass recycling last year during their junior year after the recycling center in Chelan stopped operations.

“Our families are big recyclers and that impacted us,” said Clausen. The girls knew that other community members and business were affected by the recycling shut down.

In order to help not only their families, but also the businesses they decided to look into glass recycling and glass crushing as an option.

After talking to locals, Clausen and Smith did some research. “It’s taken a lot of time to look at companies and machines,” said Clausen, however they were able to narrow it down.

The GLSand is a four feet tall and two feet wide on wheels machine that “can crush a wine bottle or beer bottle into a fine sand or grit that’s safe to handle.”

The five gallon bucket has the capacity to hold 160 beer bottles or 60 wine bottles which are equal to 85 pounds of sand. It takes about three to five seconds to crush one single bottle.

Some of the extra costs Clausen and Smith will face include the replacement of machine parts. “The pieces and parts do have an amount of bottle you can crash with them before you have to replacement,” said Clausen.

The total cost to purchase one GLSand is of $6,000, “we also have the option for leasing it, one of the plans was of $325 per month.”

A GoFund Me was started by Clausen and Smith to raise funds to purchase the machine. “Within three days we had raised over $1,000, lots of people were asking questions, it was pretty cool,” said Clausen.

Smith created jars that will be placed at local wineries, “if people want to donate, they can donate. It’s got all the information on it about the machine and how it works,” she explained.

Their main goal is to raise enough funds to purchase one machine, so far they have raised $1,250.

The repurposed product doesn’t contain silicosis dust and it can be used for gardening, asphalt for roads and “it can also be reused to make glass work again, so it can be melted down to make glass art,” explained Smith.

However, at the moment their plan is to “put it in sand bags and we will try and sell those sand bags through Lake Chelan Building Supply in Manson and Chelan and the sand will be available to the community too.”

“The big plan for this project is presenting an opportunity to the community, it’s not a money maker and it has a lot of flaws,” clarified Clausen.

To give the machine a first go, the girls are going to start exploring crushing with local businesses and see how that goes.

At the moment Glass to Sand has partnered up with local wineries to get crushing started. “We will have them rinse and clean their bottles and then for the first few months set a limit of boxes they can bring to us, that way we don’t get too overloaded,” explained Clausen.

Once the GLSand is purchased, it will be housed at the North Shore Cafe owned by Carman Fretwell in Downtown Manson. 

Before the girls graduate they want to create a system that will be sustainable through the school. “Students will be able to go down, crush glass and get community service hours through that. They can also learn more about recycling,” said Clausen.  

The two will be meeting with Mike Steele in hopes of some contribution from the Lake Chelan Chamber of Commerce.

By the end of the month they are hoping to have the GLSand here in the Valley ready to crash some glass. Both Clausen and Smith know that this is not a permanent solution to glass recycling, but only one of many solutions out there.

If you have any questions regarding Glass to Sand at Lake Chelan contact Megan Clausen and Devyn Smith at glasstosandlc@gmail.com or find on Facebook under glasstosand at Lake Chelan.

To donate to their project visit their GoFund Me https://www.gofundme.com/glass-to-sand-at-lake-chelan.