How Mosa Turns Bottles Into Vancouver Glassware

Prishita Agarwal and Abhiudai Mishra started cutting wine and liquor bottles into drinking glasses in a University of British Columbia dorm room. Four years on, Vancouver’s Mosa is an official licensed glassware and candle supplier for the FIFA World Cup 2026, and every piece is still finished by hand. Corporate buyers keep ordering because each glass carries the story of the exact bottle it came from.

Meet Prishita Agarwal and Abhi Mishra, the makers behind Mosa

Agarwal and Mishra met as students at the UBC Sauder School of Business. The idea started at their own gatherings: after hosting friends, they were left with counters full of empty wine and liquor bottles, too pretty, they thought, to end up in a landfill.

Agarwal began researching where those bottles actually went. She learned British Columbia does not have enough glass recycling capacity of its own, so most glass is shipped to processing plants in the United States, an expensive trip for a heavy material. A meeting with the CEO of Return-It BC confirmed the gap: the province does not generate enough waste glass to make local recycling facilities commercially viable on their own.

Their answer was upcycling instead of recycling: cutting and polishing bottles directly into new glassware. They launched as Rescued Glass, collecting bottles from restaurants, bars and nonprofit partners including Ocean Wise, and rebranded to Mosa in late 2022 as the business became a registered, for-profit company with a growing student team.

Agarwal is CEO and studied finance with a concentration in sustainability and social impact. Mishra, director of sales, runs the Vancouver micro-factory. Their work has drawn attention: BC Business named Agarwal a Rising Star in its Women of the Year awards, and both founders later made BC Business’s 30 Under 30 list and Corporate Knights’ 30 Under 30 list.

What Mosa makes

Every Mosa product starts as a real, recognizable bottle: a wine bottle, a gin bottle, a beer bottle. The team rescues bottles from bars and restaurants, removes labels and residue, then cuts each one with a diamond blade before fire-polishing and sanding the edge smooth. The embossed lettering and shape of the original bottle stay part of the glass, so no two pieces look quite identical.

The result is a line of drinking glasses, tumblers, candle holders, jars and platters, most finished with a small hardwood base. Alongside the glassware, Mosa hand-pours soy wax candles into the same upcycled vessels, with wooden wicks and biodegradable cork lids, shipped from Vancouver and a newer production line in Montreal.

The values built into every glass

Mosa’s sustainability case rests on the gap between recycling and upcycling: melting a bottle into new glass still burns real energy, while cutting and polishing an existing one uses far less. Mosa’s own site puts its running total at more than 40,000 bottles recrafted as of mid-2026 on one page and 30,000 on another, so the safer number to quote today is 30,000 and rising.

The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Economic Commission selected Mosa as one of nine BC companies piloting technology at a Zero Waste Demonstration Site, part of the city’s push toward becoming a zero waste city. Its candles use natural soy wax instead of paraffin, with wooden wicks and biodegradable cork lids, and the glass itself is diverted from a system that ships most BC waste glass to the United States for lack of in-province processing. Mosa describes itself as small and Vancouver-based rather than third-party certified, and says so plainly on its own site.

How Mosa works with corporate teams

Mosa’s custom glassware is not printed or stamped after the fact. Because each piece starts life as a specific bottle, an embossed gin bottle’s facets or a wine bottle’s curved base become part of the finished glass, and Mosa engraves any logo directly onto that surface rather than adding a sticker that can peel. Bulk orders start at a minimum of 20 units, priced from $5 per unit, with corporate gifting teams, hospitality operators, restaurants, retailers and event planners among its regular bulk buyers.

The hospitality side runs on the same logic: Mosa develops a signature scent for a property, pours every candle in-house from the same batch formula, and says that consistency across a large run is why properties keep reordering. One organization once asked for 500 branded candles with ten days notice; Mishra says the team delivered on time and the client returned for the same annual promotion in later years.

The clearest proof of scale sits on Mosa’s own pages: the company is now an official licensed supplier of glassware and candles for the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Vancouver, and its products are stocked in more than 50 Canadian retail locations, including a documented reorder relationship with The Flying Fish, a home decor boutique in Nanaimo, BC.

Three ways to gift Mosa

• Onboarding kits. Engraved Mosa tumblers paired with a Vancouver-poured soy candle, with the logo cut right into the glass.
• Client thank-you. A single signature-scent candle in reclaimed glass, hand poured to order.
• Hotel welcome amenity. A custom house-scent candle developed for your property and reordered by the batch.
• Event favour. Bulk drinking glasses or shot glasses, each cut from a real bottle, sized for a conference or holiday party.

Frequently asked questions

Is Mosa’s glassware made in Canada?

Yes. Every piece is cut, polished and finished by hand at Mosa’s facility in Vancouver, with a second production line now running in Montreal. Bottles are sourced locally from bars, restaurants and recycling partners before they are cut.

Can we add our logo?

Yes. Mosa engraves logos directly onto the glass rather than applying a sticker or decal, and custom candles ship with a printed label naming your brand. Bulk orders start at a minimum of 20 units.

What quantities work for a corporate order?

Mosa’s minimum order is 20 units starting at $5 per unit, and its hospitality program has supplied ongoing amenity orders at hotel scale. Share your rough quantity and timeline and Mosa can quote from there.

Is Mosa’s glassware certified sustainable?

Mosa does not hold a named third-party sustainability certification today. It describes its practices factually on its own site: natural soy wax instead of paraffin, upcycled glass instead of new material, and a spot in the City of Vancouver’s Zero Waste Demonstration Site pilot.

Mosa turned a house party cleanup into a Vancouver manufacturer that ships glassware to more than 50 Canadian retailers and pours candles for hospitality programs one property at a time. For a corporate gifting order, that means a product with a bottle’s worth of story built in before your logo ever touches it.