Juniors Alex Meysman and Paul Schmidt have turned Bottles to Glassware, a class project, into a small business.

“We would say it’s fun for us to give people something back when they give us bottles,” Meysman said.

Operating out of Schmidt’s garage, the duo creates unique drinking glasses from empty alcohol bottles.

“First, we take a bottle. We then snip the neck off the top using a saw,” Schimdt said. “Once we have that rough edge, we sand it for hours on end. Then we clear-coat it and seal the label on the bottle.”

Using a tub saw, Schmidt separates the neck of the bottle, smoothes the edges and clear-coats the labels.

“We used to do a process where we’d etch it and then use a hot and cold method to split the bottle, but the turnout ratio was like 50 percent, so we scratched that,” Meysman said.

Their goal is to repurpose bottles that would normally be sitting around college campuses collecting dust.

“Instead of people throwing them away, we decided to recycle it rather and give it that new purpose and life and have people continue to make new memories with bottles,” Schmidt said.

Meysman and Schmidt said they are happy with the success of Bottles to Glassware and plan to keep repurposing bottles

“We’re really just trying to have some fun,” Meysman said. “We really enjoying doing this. It’s kind of our hobby. And if it picks up, and people really want to keep buying it, maybe we’ll keep it going.”

Joey Anderson, Jordan Kruger, Sofia Brown and Simeon Lancaster contributed to this report.