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The Baton Rouge Gallery has entered into a partnership with Glass Half Full, a New Orleans-based nonprofit glass recycler, that will see the local art gallery turn its empty wine bottles into a buffer against coastal erosion.
Starting in June, all wine bottles emptied during BRG’s increasingly popular First Wednesday openings will be processed by Glass Half Full into fine sand. That sand will be used in projects aimed at restoring Louisiana’s vanishing coastline, like building barrier islands and sandbars.
Glass Half Full got its start in 2020 and has recycled more than 10 million glass bottles to date. Its new Chalmette facility has the capacity to process over 300,000 pounds of glass each day.
Jason Andreasen, BRG’s president and CEO, tells Daily Report that his gallery goes through about 10 to 12 cases of wine at each of its First Wednesday receptions. Those receptions are free events held on the first Wednesday of each month that showcase the work of the artists featured in that month’s exhibition. Beer, wine and food are offered at no charge.
“It’s been really exciting to see our First Wednesday openings grow in recent years,” Andreasen says. “We’re seeing 500 to 600 people come out on a Wednesday night to support local art in our city. As a byproduct of that, we’re certainly going through wine bottles.”
According to Andreasen, the idea behind BRG’s partnership with Glass Half Full began to take shape when one of the gallery’s artist members shared a TED Talk by Glass Half Full co-founder Franziska Trautmann on social media. Andreasen and his team were intrigued by the presentation and contacted the organization to explore a collaboration.
“Glass recycling is just not something we do a great job of in our city or in our state, and so when we came across Glass Half Full, we reached out and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got glass bottles that could surely serve a better use in your hands than in a landfill.’ … It was a partnership that seemed to make a lot of sense and one that would do a lot of good,” Andreasen says.
To bring the partnership to life, BRG turned to longtime supporter Dr. Khanh Ho, who agreed to sponsor the effort.
“She jumped at the opportunity to make this possible for us,” Andreasen says.
