With the holiday season just around the corner, it's never too early to start thinking and planning for the holiday season. Now, what do you do for all of the incidental gifts (teachers, dog walkers, etc) that inevitably pop up? Or, do you need an annual ornament for your tree, but don't want to just buy some cheap, meaningless junk? Why not buy a luxury glass ornament by
Annieglass handmade from recycled glass and inlaid with 24K gold? Doesn't get more eco-sentimental than that. ...
Images: Organelle DesignThey call them Hangeliers. In East Vancouver, designers Alex Witko and Courtney Hunt spend their days between the hardware store, the studio, and the city's alleys and dumpsters. Their little firm,
Organelle Design, has generated everything from furniture to a
customizably insulated window prototype, but their most eye-catching creations are hanging lamps made from coat hangers-. Don't worry, they've got both kinds: wooden and plastic. Built around the rims of bicycle wheels and cast-off chainrings, their lighting designs are held together mostly with zipties, some with chicken wire. "Our work starts with a simple premise," the young Canadians write," waste is the most abundant local resource our cities have to offer."...
Angelo, Temporary Services
Who knew that inspiration for remaking our things -- and perhaps by extension,
even our country -- could come from prisoners?
Then again, prison life comes with minimal resources, to say the least. To make the most of them, impromptu incarcerated inventors have long improvised with what little they have. (I'd like to see what Chinese prisoners
could do.) Fashioning your own tattoo gun with a battery or sculptures from candy wrappers (see above) sure beats making license plates (or
recycling computer parts for Dell). With a big nod to
Weburbanist and
Dornob, which first covered this a couple weeks back, here's a look at some inventions that give new meaning to the term self
made man....
Human Glacier musical performance by Paul D. Miller. Photo by Sergio Carratalá
A solar powered DJ booth (see photo below), tree seedlings from Hiroshima, a
Human Glacier performance and Yoko Ono - all of this is happening under the High Line in New York this month.
The Drop and exhibition 2012+ is about art, the city and the environment. Its title is inspired by the Mayan calendar, indicating an upcoming shift from one phase of life to something new about to take shape. Here is how the curators, Alexandra Chang and Mie Iwatsuki, explain their concept:...
Image via: Eco-Products
While we still think that bringing your own reusable mug or water bottle is best, for those
organic, fair trade, hip coffee shops out there in need of something a little more green, we introduce the
Eco-Products recycled coffee cup, now with
more recycled content. Now, if all 16 billion paper hot coffee cups used more recycled content, that would save 1.75 million trees, save the energy needed to power 10,319 American homes for one year, and even save the equivalent of a year's worth of emissions from 25,260 cars....
The "Father Flip Flop" whale-shark sculpture. Photo via Project AWARE.
Art made out of recycled materials is always a Treehugger favorite, but it takes on special significance when the work depicts wildlife species--using objects that threaten those very animals, and the environment on which they depend....
Source: EPA
Don't Underestimate Good Ol' Recycling!
When it comes to reducing CO2, we almost always talk about
power plants and
vehicles. But a new study by the
EPA (pdf) shows that, if you consider the whole life-cycle, a huge chunk of greenhouse gas emissions (42%) are caused by the way people in the US "procure, produce, deliver and dispose of goods and services". It concludes that waste reduction and recycling are very powerful tools to reduce CO2 emissions: According to the report's projections, if we were to reduce packaging in general by 50%, reduce non-packaging paper products by 50%, extend the life of computers by 25%, increase recycling of construction and demolition debris to 50%, and increase solid municipal waste composting and recycling to 50%, we could cut US CO2 emissions by about
354 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2E).
Each year....
Image via: Zappos.com
Zappos.com, that gigantic shoe website where you can get tasteful and tasteless (and even
vegan) shoes at cheap prices, now sells Recycled Glassware? Yep, and with a name like Highbury Collection of Recycled Glassware Serving Pieces, they're catering to the
elite greenies with pieces like this. Surprise: the name may be highbrow, but the prices aren't. ...
Governors Island, New York, sign 'LAND! Pioneers of Change' by Experimental Jetset
A Repairing Manifesto, six-feet-long needles knitting sheep wool into a huge rug, the possibilities of urban farming in New York and an original Slow Food café (image below) are projects of
Pioneers of Change, a group of Dutch designers exhibiting their latest work in new York. No one less than Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of the Dutch conceptual design company,
Droog, curated the show, exhibited in and around 11 officer's houses. Take a walk around and discover a different kind of luxury; that of space, fresh air, respect, caring, silence, slowness and time. Here's what we liked:...
Image: still from London Drugs, YouTube
Packaging made from expanded polystyrene (EPS), brand named Styrofoam by Dow, saves tons of emissions during transport, due to its lightweight, impact absorbing capabilities. Styrofoam is so lightweight, that it has been called "engineered air." But the question of
how to recycle expanded polystyrene has plagued municipalities and responsible businesses making packaging decisions.
London Drugs, a major retailer in Canada, offers a solution. Customers can return styrene foams to their local stores for recycling. If you can disregard the condescending introduction by "your London Drugs Green Deal Blogger," and the annoying toast-shaped vignette technique, the video below provides some real insights into the challenge of styrofoam recycling....
Watch CBS Videos Online
"
The Wasteland" Video credit:
CBS News, 60 Minutes
With the constant availability of new gadgets and gizmos for consumers to use, it is not surprising that the cycle of "out with the old, in with the new" has made electronic materials that fastest growing commodity in the waste stream. To accommodate this process, electronics recycling programs have been created across the country, allowing for simpler and safer disposal of these items, such as cell phones, computers and PDAs. Such items usually contain substances - lead, mercury, cadmium and brominated flame-retardants - that are necessary for the electronics to operate, but require special handling when consumers dispose of them. ...
Flickr: David Dennis
Keep Your Cell Phone Longer, Save the Planet (and Other Things You Should Know About The Device Of Our Lives)
In the space of a decade, cell phones have gone from novelties to arguably the most central objects in our lives. They connect us to our loved ones, enable busineses, help us
behave more intelligently, and
give citizens a viral voice -- especially important in countries where phones are the only real means people have to spread information.
And yet, despite how close we are to our cell phones -- paying
a small fortune for them, nesting them in our palms, talking to them all the time -- we know amazingly little about them and the heavy impact they're having on our world. ...
More proof that wood lasts a long time, and renovates rather nicely:
Tropolism brings us this little alpine hut was built 200 years ago, was unused for fifty years, and renovated in 1997 by
Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler. The architects write:
...
Plastic bottles. Image credit:
Chelmsford UK
Somehow I had missed the trend of State government forcing recycling rates up on specific materials by banning landfill disposal. The Daily Southerner reports that a local "tip" in North Carolina,
Edgecombe County Landfill, soon will no longer accept items that citizens and businesses are accustomed to tossing: wooden pallets; plastic bottles; used oil, yard trash, antifreeze, aluminum cans, whole scrap tires, lead acid batteries and oyster shells.
Oyster shells. Who knew that was even an issue?
By 2011 the tip will also be banning disposal of electronic devices....
Photo credit: Etcetera Goods
Two heads are definitely cozier than one, especially if the noggins in question belong to Kelly Smith of
Etcetera Goods and Jennifer Hill of
JHill Design. The Boston-based designers combined their talents to produce
UnderCollar, a snug-as-a-bug collection of woolen pillows made from reclaimed felt originally intended for the under-collar lining of suit jackets. Crafted locally in Massachusetts, the pillows feature laser-cut designs based on Hill's breathtaking
"Places I've Never Been" artwork, inspired by imaginary vacations....
LOT-EK, YoungWoo Chosen For Lively Pier Renewal Plan
Not far from the High Line, another decaying piece of New York infrastructure is bound for a green revival: Pier 57, the decaying concrete hulk on New York's Hudson's River will be transformed into a rooftop park and open-air market sitting above a warren of art studios -- all of it made, appropriately for the port site, out of shipping containers.
...
Image credit: Jenni Grover
What's the Carbon Footprint of the Antique Industry?
I've been told I think too much. (Though I've also been told the opposite is true!) From musing over whether
carrots are vegan to wondering about the true cost of my
rural green living, it could be fair to say that I take this sustainability stuff a bit too seriously sometimes. My latest predicament is this - my wife and I love to buy antique furniture - especially as we prepare ourselves for our first child. It's green, right? I mean what could be more sustainable than buying furniture built to last, and reused over-and-over again? The trouble is, I'm not so sure......
Here is something that is 100% recycled, but doesn’t look it.
ECOALF is the new fabric developed by the Spanish company
fun&basics, made from recycled PET bottles. It is a high quality textile: flexible, tension resistant, long lasting, waterproof and lightweight. The first bags made from ECOALF are a toilet bag, a small bag, a cabin trolley and a large, wheeled luggage bag. The fun thing about them is the visualisation of the recycled bottles. Each bag tells you exactly how many 75cl PET plastic bottles were needed to make it. ...
Iwan Baan
Wang Shu's Mountain-Like Ningbo History Museum Made of Recycled Bricks
At first glance, the brand new Ningbo Historic Museum looks like it has been there for centuries, left behind by natural forces.
But in a nod to local building practices and to the archeological finds it contains, the museum's facade is constructed of recycled brick from the area, a ravaged patch of former farmland turned development district on the outskirts of the booming southern city of Ningbo. ...
Dan Gould at
PSFK points us to the work of Bughouse Art+Design, where Jeff and Rebecca "love making things and finding different materials to expand the vocabulary of the way we all live and see." ...
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on 11. 5.09
