The Story Behind the Stone

The recycled-glass cleaning block was not invented in a consumer-products lab. It began in 1993 as an environmental campaign - an attempt to take the economic pressure off the pumice-rich mountains of northern New Mexico.

A Problem in the Jemez Mountains

The volcanic highlands of northern New Mexico - the same dramatic country that surrounds Bandelier National Monument and inspired artists from D.H. Lawrence to Georgia O'Keeffe - hold some of the richest pumice deposits in North America. Pumice's gritty, porous texture makes it a prime ingredient in scrubbing and sanding products, and per USGS minerals data the Southwest has long supplied much of the nation's demand. Demand meant mining; mining meant scarred mountainsides and silt-laden runoff into the region's scarce fresh water.

An Answer Made of Bottles

A Santa Fe entrepreneur reasoned that the surest way to slow the mining was to beat pumice at its own game. Working with a Santa Fe artist-scientist, his team developed a proprietary process for grinding recycled glass bottles and jars into a flour-fine powder and foaming it into white foamed glass - a material with all the abrasive virtues of pumice, made almost entirely from post-consumer glass. The new blocks were non-toxic and chemical-free, safe around children and pets, and they worked noticeably faster than the pumice products they replaced.

From Workshop to National Retail

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s the company built the idea into a full product family: a grill-cleaning block that out-scrubbed wire brushes, a pool stone for tile and grout, hand and power sanding blocks that outlasted sandpaper, and household blocks for kitchen and bath. The products spread to national home-improvement, grocery and pool-supply retailers across the United States, and production plants ran around the clock, seven days a week, to keep shelves stocked. At its height the operation consumed more than 1,300 tons of recycled glass per year and opened a dedicated research and development center in southern New Mexico, drawing public praise from the state's governor for bringing green manufacturing jobs to the region.

Where the Idea Stands Today

The original company was acquired in 2020 by a national family-owned consumer-products group, and foamed-glass cleaning blocks remain on store shelves today under the successor's stewardship - proof that the 1993 wager paid off. This site is not affiliated with that business; we simply preserve the story and the consumer guides that grew up around it. Read the founding environmental philosophy in detail, browse the guide to every block type, or see the archived milestones from the company's growth years.