Our Story
PIONEERING THE CIRCULAR + REGENERATIVE ECONOMY WITH
CREATIVE GLASS RECYCLING IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO
Founded in 2020, Broken Arrow Glass Recycling is a creative glass recycling studio providing residential curbside glass collection services in New Mexico. BAGR services the Santa Fe and Taos areas, collecting a little over fifteen tons of glass recycling a month and steadily growing this quantity. The glass recycling is then processed into handblown glass art and crushed glass material that can be used for flood diversion, erosion control, landscaping, eco-construction material, terrazzo, raw art material and more. By processing and creatively utilizing glass recycling locally, BAGR is creating a closed loop system for glass waste in New Mexico.
AWARDS
Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year award 2022
Waste 360 40 Under 40 Award 2024
Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce Green Business of the Year award 2024
OUR STORY
It All Started With A Bottle
In 2019, we found ourselves consuming a lot of store bought kombucha. We soon realized this craving was both expensive and created a lot of glass waste for our home. This was when we had the idea to turn the bottles into a new viable product that could divert the bottle from the landfill and generate money for our home. The first creative product designed for BAGR was the kombucha bottle candle votive, pictured below. This moment marked the first creation of our creative closed loop system for diverting glass waste into viable art. Later, we found ourselves asking the question....if we can transform our own glass waste....can we process and divert others glass waste as well?
It All Started With the Pandemic
Durning the Pandemic of 2020, the local recycling centers shut down all drop off locations for glass recycling across the Santa Fe area. The community had nowhere to recycle their glass waste, as it is not picked up curbside from the local recycling center. We knew this meant that people were either throwing their glass recycling away or stock piling it for future hope of recycling. This is when we had the idea to ask on facebook groups if anyone would like for us to drive to their home to pick up their glass recycling. We continued to do this until we had about 25 people on our route and then in the fall of 2021 we pivoted to create the first private doorstep glass collection service in Northern New Mexico.
How Has BAGR Grown
BAGR knew from the beginning that up-cycling glass bottles into home goods would not translate to the amount of glass recycling that is in need of being recycled across the local community. This is why BAGR started crushing glass recycling into raw material and is now the only glass processing studio in Northern New Mexico. BAGR has gone from upcycling a couple hundred bottles at a time to processing tons of glass recycling a day at their studio. We are happy to announce that we have just upgraded from a single hand fed glass crushing machine to a small scale industrial glass crushing machine.
Where Its Going
From our experience as trained glass artists, we know that the material of glass is magical and infinitely recyclable. We know that Santa Fe has a need for a curbside glass collection program, a need for a local glass processing facility, and an even greater need for application solutions for the raw glass material. We are going to achieve this by closely studying the material science behind the raw glass recycling material. BAGR is working with the Los Alamos National Labs, under an NMSBA project, to study the raw glass material. BAGR is becoming a global leader in their innovative and diverse products manufactured from raw glass recycling material.
PIONEERING THE CIRCULAR + REGENERATIVE ECONOMY WITH
CREATIVE GLASS RECYCLING IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO
