Rebottled: the Dutch brand giving wine bottles a second life

Every year, 440 million wine bottles get thrown out after a single use. Recycling them still consumes about 85% of the energy needed to make new glass. Rebottled asked a simpler question: what if we skip the furnace entirely?

Founded in 2016 in the Netherlands, Rebottled collects empty wine bottles directly from restaurants and cafés -picked up by electric bus- and transforms them by hand into drinking glasses. Each bottle is cut, sanded, polished, and stamped. No raw materials. No industrial recycling chain. Just a bottle and skilled hands.

Every glass saves 150 grams of CO₂ and 150 litres of water compared to new glass production. To date, more than 577,000 bottles have been rescued. The factory also runs a traineeship programme for people with barriers to the standard job market, because for Rebottled, this is as much a social project as an environmental one.