Meet Rebecca Davies

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rebecca Davies. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rebecca below.

Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
There is a human element to business, it isn’t as simple as just running production. I always try to keep that top of mind, even when we’re under pressure. We’re affected by everything going on in our lives. There’s certainly limits to what we can do for eachother, but its important to make the space when we can.
My genorosity comes from my core. I couldn’t picture owning a business for any other reason than to create improvements. I guide decisions by considering people, planet, and value in responding to the needs of the community we have built.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Glass isn’t waste, it has incredible potential. Remark Glass is our recycled glass blowing studio and Bottle Underground is our glass recirculation project. Remark Glass is excited to be designing and producing small batches of new ideas this year. We’ve built an incredible material collection and envision modifying some unique bottles to transform them from single use containers into beautiful treasured pieces. Creativity really drive us!
Bottle Underground is excited to have recycled glass sand available for sale this year. We participated in a research project last year to ensure that glass sand was safe and effective to replace the use of nautral sand in gardens, and the results were positive.
It is clear that the community here in Philadelphia is interested in participating in our project by donating their material. This year we’re considering expansion options to scale our impact.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Growing up, I was a dancer. It is a completely different art, but helped me build some critical skills. First of all, that practice requires both time and effort. Secondly, that effort and practice may also lead to “failure” if I only defined it as “winning”. Thirdly, that by acknowledging progress and continually redifing sucess feels a whole lot better than “failing”.

All that is to say, this really isn’t easy. It doesn’t even feel like it is getting much easier. As soon as I let me gaurd down, I turn around and one of our departments is breaking down, or a job gets messy or falls through.
I think the skills that I developed dancing, practicing, creating effort, not “winning” and ultimately finding peace in what I have accomplished despite the outcomes have prepared me with the grit to stick with these companies even when they feel broken or impossible. On a bad day now I look at what we’ve accomplished by employing people, creating a community and striving toward a positive change!

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Our challenge at this point is balancing our ability to process glass and create products with our ability to impact glass recycling and our community.

Remark Glass and Bottle Underground operate in the basement of a large building in Philadelphia. Logistically, it isn’t ideal for scale because all of our material needs to be transported from the sidewalk to the basement and back. That being said, we currently process around 10,000 lbs of glass each month here. That is a lot of glass, but it hardly makes an impact compared to the thousands of tons of glass not being recirculated just in our city.

To resolve this, Bottle Underground is connecting to larger opportunities and businesses that share our impact goals to build the support and resources we would need to scale our model to be more impactful for the environement and beneficial to the community.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Zara Neifield Photography (all)

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