Portland-Based Windshield Recycler Recognized for Green Efforts
June 24, 2010

A Portland, Ore.-based company that utilizes a patent-pending process to recycle windshields and make them into new products, such as shower doors, kitchen cabinet fronts, and more, has been named to Sustainable Industries’ list of the top-ten green building products. Second Glass president and founder Ron Sunderholm thought of the idea for recycling windshields when he had his own windshield replaced several years ago and was bothered by the fact that the glass was headed for the dumpster—so he decided to do something about it.

"I looked in the dumpster and I wondered, what do they do with these?" he recalls. "I thought, this can't be happening, and then I thought of a lot of different applications. That was back in 2000." (CLICK HERE for related story.)

Sunderholm continues to await the patent for his recycling process, which he notes is a cold process and is green in itself, and he says the recycled windshield products have become popular among homeowners looking to remodel.

“People are ordering partitions, dividers, kitchen cabinet fronts,” he says.

Second Glass’s newest product in development is a frameless shower made from recycled windshields.

“These walk-in type showers are getting kind of popular, so rather than creating a shower enclosure, I came up with an idea of hanging sheets of finished windshields and suspending them,” he says. “It saves a lot of money, and this way it’s just sheets of glass and we clamp them at the top and suspend them with cables.”

He adds, “Right now I’ve got three people working on that concept.”

Sunderholm continues working with four glass shops in the Portland area to obtain their discarded glass, but also is working to license glazing contractors across the United States to provide a similar process.

CLICK HERE for more information on Second Glass.

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