Our philosophy behind the recycled glass is to make sustainable design easier to achieve by offering a product which is both aesthetically pleasing and environmentally responsible.

Low Transport:

All of our glass comes straight from the waste stream generated in the greater Toronto area. The total distance from the recycling facility to our factory is 50 miles. This component constitutes 95-100% of the glass by weight.

By concentrating our marketing to within a 500 mile radius of our factory, our outbound trucking distance is greatly reduced. This keeps our green house gas emissions as low as possible and also provides local employment in both direct labour and in locally sourced inputs like the glass and packaging materials. Most glass sold in North America has up to 10,000 miles of transport CO2 emissions just to bring it to the distribution centers.

No direct CO2 emissions in production:

Our process uses a method called sintering to fuse the glass into a tile or lighting lens. This process is more time consuming than the traditional method of fully melting the glass but it completes the process at a much lower temperature. This lower temperature, sometimes less than half, equates to kilowatts of saved energy.

Our furnaces are entirely fired using electricity. Many glass manufactures use kilns which are fired with gas or coal; all sources of CO2. We are currently negotiating with our electrical company to allow us to buy our power from certified green sources.

A "Natural" feel:

Do to the nature of the raw material and the manufacturing process, no two pieces of Barbican Recycled Glass will ever look the same. Each batch of glass is composed of a unique blend of post-consumer glass products, crushed into a rough sand-like state. Since the "sand" is never fully melted into a homogenious mixture, the glass appearance will be as varied as the material it is made from.

The variety of the glass gives it a "natural" feel, similar to natural occuring minerals like granites and marbles. However unlike natural minerals which must be quarried (a process which often results in local environmental destruction), Barbican Recycled Glass uses readily available post-consumer waste.