A block of white "foam" sitting in a pool of water slowly and steadily sucked up the magenta-colored liquid. The foam, made almost entirely from recycled glass, can absorb water from around plants and store it until needed by the plant's root system.

Earthstone, a Santa Fe-based company, hopes the new product will be an environmentally friendly boon to the agricultural/horticultural industry. Not only do the "growstones" hold the promise of diverting millions of glass bottles from the landfill, but the technology could create new, green jobs, increase harvests and reduce the amount of water used for landscaping and growing vegetables.

The company has been seeding the market, testing its new product with major growers, who are reportedly enthusiastic. Although the planned rollout won't be until next spring, Andy Hernandez, director of operations at Earthstone, estimates the company is sitting on at least 50 truckloads of back orders. Growers, he said, "would buy as much as we could make."

Earthstone, a company founded by Andrew Ungerleider and Gay Dillingham to make products out of recycled glass, spun off a new company — Growstone LLC — this year to focus on the sustainable horticulture and agriculture markets. It has a majority interest in the new company.

Back in 1993, Ungerleider and Dillingham were looking for a way to end strip mining for pumice in Northern New Mexico. The company began selling environmentally friendly abrasive cleaning and sanding products. Blocks for scrubbing grills, tubs, pools and toilets, and for sanding wood and steel are now sold by major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Loews, as well as in independent hardware stores.

The next generation of products, still in research and development, include nonflammable, nontoxic, antimicrobial building materials. Earthstone is also working with New Mexico Tech to test an insulation material for law enforcement vehicles that will mitigate the blast waves from bullets.

At a plant on Parkway Drive off Rufina Street in Santa Fe, Earthstone manufactures the foam blocks using technology developed by the company. Crushed glass ground into a fine powder the consistency of flour is mixed with a foaming agent and poured into ceramic molds, which are then heated to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a railroad-car-sized kiln for up to 10 hours. The formula rises, creating a rigid foam that looks like a large loaf of freshly baked bread. Air released during the heating process creates bubbles in the material. The cooled cakes are ground into tiny bits for hydroponic uses or crushed into stones less than an inch in diameter for soil amendments. They can also be cut into abrasive blocks for cleaning purposes.

Earthstone, which is partly owned by the state, is now on the brink of a major expansion. It is building a $5 million facility at the Albuquerque landfill, where discarded glass will be crushed and milled.

Currently, the company buys the milled glass from a supplier in the Southeast. But construction on the new building at the Albuquerque landfill — where glass will be ground into the "flour" — is nearly complete. A second building, due to come on line in 2010, will house a kiln. Methane produced from the decomposition of organic material at the landfill will be converted into electricity to power the oven.

The city of Albuquerque is paying for the first building in return for an agreement by Growstone to buy up all the ground glass. (Financing of the second building is still being discussed.)

The new facility will divert up to 15,000 tons of glass from the Albuquerque landfill each year. And within two years, according to Ungerleider, the company will be using all the waste glass discarded annually between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Currently, the area produces 10 million to 12 million pounds of glass annually. Much of it is stockpiled because there has been no market for recycled glass. But when the new facility comes on line, Albuquerque hopes to restart curbside glass recycling.

Ungerleider, a local entrepreneur who once owned the Golden Temple restaurant at the corner of Water Street and Don Gaspar Avenue, said it costs $90 a ton to dispose of crushed glass, but, "We are taking it off their hands and paying $5 a ton."

Down the road, Ungerleider hopes to build regional production facilities that will reduce the cost of shipping the glass — and also tailor growstones to suit regional climates.

Over 15 years, the company has had its ups and downs. But today things are looking up. "When we started, we almost had to apologize for being green," Dillingham said.

Now, Ungerleider said, green is the rage, and "we're at the right place at the right time."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.