Flatterned Box Design Bottle

Flatterned Box Design Bottle, originally uploaded by mandymooo.

I'm becoming green and crunchy; recycle, reuse and reduce as much waste as you can.

I used to think that recycling all my San Pellegrino bottles was good enough. Then I thought it would be better to not buy sparkling water at all. The cost to ship and the number of bottles I drank (I buy by the case from Costco) must increase my carbon footprint.

Giving up SP was a bigger problem than you might expect, I love sparkling water, it settles my stomach, it makes me drink more water and gosh darn it, I just like it. So as a compromise I bought a soda siphon and tried carbonating my own filtered water. It was not the same and I couldn't keep up with my own demand LOL! It is fine for emergencies, but I missed my bottle with lunch.

Also, as I get older the list of things I cannot eat or do gets bigger; lower your calories, cut down on cookies, don't drink so much coffee, reduce your alcohol intake...the list of fun stuff is dwindling. I made a decision that I would go back to buying sparkling water.

Now I buy the larger bottles :-) and I'm trying to reuse them. After some dinking with my kiln and experimentation with molds and slumping forms I have come up with a flattened bottle I like. I have some friends "beta testing" them - that just means I gave them a bottle to see if they like it and they have promised to let me know if there is anything they don't like about it or if I have overlooked a major design issue. Hopefully they will also let me know if they come up with any improvement ideas!!!

I like the idea of using my flattened bottles as sushi plates, so I'm working on wasabi bowls made from small SP bottles. The first couple of experiments have produced very shallow bowls, so I'm trying a completely different process that I hope will work better.