Hi! I’m Vihaan, a 17 year-old student from Delhi, India. My journey with GlassUp began in December 2022 when I was at a party with my friends and saw empty glass bottles being dumped unceremoniously into large black garbage bags. It was evident that most of these bottles were getting shattered simply by the act of throwing them into the garbage sacks. Upon talking to the manager there I realised that the waste collectors had stopped paying the few rupees per bottle that they did. Collection of glass bottles for recycling had become unviable for them because of dropping demand and because large storage spaces were needed and the transport costs were high. Empty glass bottles were not segregated anymore and started to go for dumping in the landfills. Scarce landfill space was already a concern for the local municipal bodies and glass takes a frightening 4000 years to decompose if left in the environment. Every time we leave a recipient of this kind in the countryside, we are putting the environment and its ecosystem at risk. As occurs with many of the elements above, animals can cut themselves on glass or ingest it without being able to digest it. The clear threat of landfills getting clogged with thousands of tonnes of glass waste is what prompted me to found GlassUp with a clear goal to reuse and repurpose glass waste to create new and beautiful products that would help in reducing the carbon footprint left by discarded glass bottles in the landfills. I set up a local collection drive in my city to collect glass waste from homes , restaurants & clubs on a weekly basis.
In 2022, Glass Up was founded with the motivation to turn empty alcohol bottles into something new and sustainable. From the very beginning, I wanted to make a product with the highest quality by reviving existing materials and increasing their life cycle, thereby reducing landfill waste and contributing to fewer carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. Glass Up makes a wide variety of products by upcycling empty and discarded glass bottles. I aim at continuing to create a product and a company that strives for a higher level of craftsmanship and care.