This Maltese Potter Has A Very Creative Solution To Nation’s Glass Waste Problem
Nowadays virtually everyone is well aware of the importance of recycling and reducing waste, and Malta has taken massive strides in attempting to recycle plastic.
However, many people don’t know that glass doesn’t always get recycled in Malta; a lot of glass waste either ends up in Maltese landfills or is recycled outside of Malta at a cost to the public purse.
This is where Broken Bottle and Mark Ciavola come in.
Ciavola is a professionally trained ceramist and a Vitra-Surface Design award winner based in London, and is the founder of Potters Thumb, a London-based pottery studio.
His pottery can be found in several restaurants, including some with Michelin stars, coffee shops and private collections in the UK, Germany, the USA and the Middle East.
Mark Ciavola (right)
His latest venture is Broken Bottle, which involves the use of glass waste to create accessories and home decor items such as crockery, tiles, and light fittings.
“Broken Bottle is committed to contributing towards a better planet,” Ciavola explained to Lovin Malta.
“The company aims to be able to contribute towards the reduction of single-use glass together with reducing the carbon footprint and thereby creating a sustainable product by bringing the material back into production. In so doing also satisfying the principles of a circular economy.”
Asked about the origins of Broken Bottle, Ciavola explained that the concept all started in Brighton as a challenge from his good friend Doug McMaster, who owns Silo – a restaurant which prides itself on being zero-waste and which received a Michelin award for sustainability.
“With Silo being a zero-waste restaurant, having single-use glass demanding a bin in a no-bin restaurant was an issue undermining the zero-waste principles Silo has set out.”
“The challenge was accepted after Doug had suggested to me to consider ways we could close the loop on the ever-growing concern of single-use glass.”
“As a potter, I possibly had the advantage of approaching the exploration as a ceramicist rather than as a glassmaker taking silica which is present in both materials and finding a middle ground to create a new material.”
“This has been so far a six-year journey and discovering positive solutions to what is a serious waste issue and the birth of a new material we are calling Glass Porcelain.”
Ciavola said Broken Bottle aims to promote sustainability.
“Our aim is to be a leading sustainable business, trusted and respected by our stakeholders for the ethics we adopt and the products and services we supply.”
“Our focus on the circular economy drives the efficient use of single-use glass in packaging form or in flat sheet throughout their life cycle to bring the wrongly named ‘waste’ back into circulation.”
“We improve resource efficiency through reuse, recovery and/or recycling of waste materials in our production processes and, where feasible, minimize the need to source overseas and supplying the local industry encouraging a greener approach.”
“Locally in Malta (pre-Broken Bottle) we do not recycle glass and currently is a cost to the public to collect, sort, store and ship out to another country as we accumulate around 10,000 tonnes of single-use glass yearly.”
“We are able and we do re-purpose all glass and are not limited to any kind of bottles; oil bottles, wine bottles, beer bottles, glass jars or even perfume bottles.”
“I strongly believe that we are able to create a green economy locally and to utilize and explore all materials we wrongly call waste in particular as we are an island that lacks in raw materials. We are throwing away an opportunity to be innovative into generating a circular economy.”
“Purchasing these items not only repurposes single-use glass but also reduces the carbon footprint as no importation traveling hundreds of miles is required thus again fulfilling a carbon reduction and circular economy.”
People can get in touch with Broken Bottle by sending an email to: [email protected] or through their social media pages on Facebook and Instagram @brokenbottleltd.
Broken Bottle will be displaying and selling glass porrcelain products for the first time in Malta over the next few days at a couple of pop-ups.
They will be at the I AM CONTEMPORARY Gallery in Valletta on 4th and 8th December from 10am till 6pm, as well as at the Tigne Point Christmas market from 10th till 13th December.
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