I’m a sucker for re-using. I hate wastage, love a charity shop, you’ll certainly never catch me leaving food, and hey, don’t we all need to start taking this a LOT more seriously?
Before the whole Covid debacle, we all seemed to be talking about the planet, and the environment was up there at the top of the agenda, and we were shouting about the pointlessness of plastics, and not littering, and recycling, and then – well didn’t it seem like everyone just forgot about it when the pandemic was the word on the street?
That’s the thing about making glass. Sure, it uses energy. Will racks up a heck of a gas bill (and let’s face it, nobody’s envious of that right now), but what he makes are items that last forever. Seriously, actually forever. You can buy a Shakspeare Glass tumbler and never need to buy another one in your life, providing you don’t drop it out of a tenth floor window.
And you can feel the quality, and know that in that one tumbler, you just saved us all from a hundred stupid, environmentally disastrous plastic cups.
Remember when your parents got given something useful, and then they’d use it until they literally couldn’t get any more use out of it? And then maybe they’d give it to you, and perhaps you still use that item, or look at it, and just enjoy it.
What happened to that? When did we just think, “I don’t need to keep this, I’ll just order another one from China”?
Because although we don’t want to admit it, that’s what we’re all guilty of a little bit. Well, most of us anyway. Hats off to those who don’t.
And Will’s glass is beautiful to look at, as well as practical, and lifetime-lastable, and the trade-off for the gas useage is worth it because these items last, and they don’t pollute the seas, and they don’t involve plastic packaging. And they encourage us to enjoy what we have.
I posted up a video on Facebook the other day - something that Johnny had filmed, looking around the workshop. Everything (honestly, everything) is repurposed – a rake to hang blowing irons from, wooden wall partitions used for worktops, chicken coops turned into shelving, it’s ingenious, the whole place.
And so buying something that’s made with such care, and with nothing left to waste, means that you are helping rekindle that passion for the world and our environment.
It may seem a bit of a leap, but buying a piece of glass that lasts forever could honestly help the planet. Assuming you’re still not buying all that plastic tat from China, that is!