Found as part of a 2nd century CE Roman shipwreck off the coast of the French island of Embiez, this group of broken stemware may not have been broken when the ship sank or even during the centuries they lay on the ocean floor. There is some evidence to suggest they were part of a shipment of already-broken glass destined for Roman glasshouses in Gaul (the Roman province encompassing much of Western Europe between modern Spain and Germany) to serve as cullet. Image from The Department of Underwater and Undersea Archeological Research, a division of Heritages Organization of the French Ministry of Culture.
Glass Recycling: Ancient History
When you put empty glass bottles in your recycling bin, you’re following a practice that is thousands of years old. Because glass is one of the only materials that can be repeatedly recycled without losing strength or purity, it can be melted down and reformed endlessly. The ancient Romans and subsequent glassmakers commonly used broken vessels as cullet—scrap glass melted in the furnace—to make new vessels.
In fact, the collection of broken glass to sell to glasshouses was a common enough practice to become a theme in Roman poetry. Those who exchanged sulfur-tipped sticks for bits of broken glass became an example of someone of low, vulgar character:
You imagine yourself Caecilius, a man of wit. You are no such thing, believe me. What then? A low buffoon; such a thing as wanders about in the quarters beyond the Tiber, and barters pale-coloured sulphur matches for broken glass… Martial (Roman, 40–about 103 CE), Epigrams, 1.41.3-5