Glass to Sand girls crush 217 wine bottles in one weekend

MANSON – The Friday after New Year’s, Megan Clausen and Devyn Smith founders of the Glass to Sand project received the GLSand machine to start crushing glass bottles.

After receiving over $3,000 in donations, Clausen and Smith had to rely on a loan to cover the reminder cost of the GLSand. “We are going to take out a loan and you are going to learn how to do this,” said Clausen’s mom to them both.

Once the machine was ordered, a few weeks later it was delivered at the North Shore Café. Soon, they realized that the machine couldn’t be plugged into an electrical outlet.

“There weren’t any parts to plug it into, so we rewired it, we talked to some electrical people,” Clausen explained.

After the machine was rewired and ready to go, during one weekend Clausen and Smith got together and crushed 217 bottles and produced eight sand bags. It took about one hour to rinse the bottles and to press them. Each of them had took a chance to work the machine which was easy to use said Smith.

The sand bags are selling for $5.00 at Lake Chelan Building Supply. Clausen and Smith receive $4.00 of that profit for each bag sold.

Now that they have the sand, the girls are planning on collaborating with members of Chelan Earth Day to experiment with the sand. This will also serve as a way to spread the word out to the community on the different ways the sand can be use.

At the moment, the Glass to Sand girls have partnered up with different wineries around the area to crush their bottles and are not accepting the public’s bottles.

Even though Clausen and Smith have raised more than half of the money to pay off the loan, they still need help raising money. Donation cans are available at Ancestry Cellars, Radiance, Wine Girl Wines, Hard Row to Hoe, Northshore Café and Vin du Lac. The GoFund me account is still up and running https://www.gofundme.com/glass-to-sand-at-lake-chelan. Checks can also be made to Glass to Sand and mailed to 944 Green Ave. Manson, 98831.