Ray DelMuro began his career as an engineer – working in a co-op program at Toyota while still a college student before moving on to a leading aerospace company where he quickly advanced to a director-level position.

By the time he was in his late 20s, he’d become disillusioned with the routine mundanity of his position. “I fell out of love with just making widgets that didn’t have any emotion to them,” DelMuro recalls. “The maker artistic aspect was lost with the deep engineering, and then they didn’t let me play with the toys anymore. They made me manage people and money and schedules.”

So, he quit his corporate job in 2006 to travel around the world for a year, visiting 21 countries and 39 cities as part of a soul-searching quest to rekindle his passion and discover his calling. By 2008, he’d found it: loading used wine bottles into the back of his Toyota 4Runner and shuttling them to his garage where he would transform them by hand – and 1,500-degree heat – into high-quality drinkware.

The scope of Tempe, AZ-based Refresh Glass (asi/81255) has broadened since those early garage days. DelMuro and his company have upcycled more than 1.6 million wine bottles into drinking glasses, carafes, planters, votive holders and more, as part of its 10 million bottle rescue plan.

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The process is fairly simple: Refresh Glass partners with local restaurants to collect their empty bottles, diverting them from the waste stream. The bottles are cleaned and sorted by color. The labels are removed, and the rims are melted using custom tooling. The glasses are stress-relieved in an oven, custom engraved, washed again and then polished.

This short video demonstrates the Refresh Glass production process.

The “big dirty secret” of glass recycling is that so much of it doesn’t get recycled, DelMuro says. Only about a third of glass bottles actually end up being recycled in the U.S., he adds, noting that glass – though it’s 100% recyclable – can be a challenge to recycle because it needs to be separated into three colors and foreign objects need to be removed before it’s chopped into small pieces. It can’t easily be bundled or “palletized,” so it’s difficult to collect and transport. (Indeed, a number of cities and counties stopped accepting glass for recycling, citing contamination, heavy weight and high transport and processing costs. Though a number of companies are working to reverse the trend, there’s still a long way to go before it’s fixed, according to a 2021 report in WasteDive.)

The Arizona Recycling Coalition actually honored Refresh Glass as small business of the year in 2010 “because we’re moving so many tons of glass that they couldn’t have done anything with,” DelMuro says.

“The difference between saying I advocate something and I’m actually doing something about it is massive – it’s the difference between a noun and a verb.” Ray DelMuro

It wasn’t too long before the promo potential of Refresh Glass’ products also became apparent. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency held an America Recycles Innovation Fair, and gave out Refresh Glasses to attendees, DelMuro says.

After DelMuro connected with industry veteran Charley Johnson, a former executive at Top 40 suppliers HPG (asi/61966) and Snugz USA (asi/88060), Refresh Glass began a concerted push into the promotional products industry, with Johnson hired on as vice president of sales.

“We don’t approach this as a glassware company,” Johnson says. “We approach this as the most eco-friendly organization in promo because we’re the only ones pulling product from the landfill. That’s something we really hammer home.”

He adds that many products that purport to be recycled are still primarily made of virgin materials, with only a small percentage coming from recycled materials. “People are sick and tired of being greenwashed into thinking something’s been recycled when it’s not, so we’ve been such a breath of fresh air for these people,” Johnson says.

Refresh Glass transforms discarded wine bottles into drinking glasses, carafes, planters and more.

Refresh Glass is a great product for gifting, particularly for the client who already has everything, DelMuro says. “If you have a Fossil budget, and you’re gifting someone with a Rolex lifestyle, what do you give these people?” he asks. “We’re a hyper-unique gift that will be kept, used and talked about often from your key relationships internally or externally.”

Recipients can demonstrate in a clearly tangible way that they’re helping to protect the environment and keeping waste out of landfills just by using a Refresh Glass, DelMuro says. “The difference between saying I advocate something and I’m actually doing something about it is massive – it’s the difference between a noun and a verb,” he adds.

Refresh Glass tells a story that improves that status of both the giver and the receiver, DelMuro explains.

Distributors have been receptive to Refresh Glass’ message. Hal Sheppard, owner of Philadelphia-area Better by Blue Star (asi/141977), has given out self-branded glasses from Refresh as part of end-of year gifting – a practice that has often sparked clients to place their own order. “I think it obviously tells the story and shows that we’re walking the walk” when it comes to sustainability, Sheppard says.

Eventually, DelMuro plans to expand Refresh Glass into other waste commodities, to help keep even more products out of landfills. “I want to change the tide and replicate our glass offerings with aluminum and plastic in the future,” he says.

For now, though, “We still have a lot of room to grow in glass.”

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