Image via Way Basics.
A few days ago we covered
Way Basics, a company that has invented simple, basic furniture that is practical and versatile. The Way Basics line of modular furniture is made from the company’s signature
zBoards, a super-durable board made from post-consumer recycled paper that weighs much less than particle board. Each zBoard comes equipped with 3M double-sided tape, eliminating the need for tools or hardware and making assembly as easy as peel, stick, done. ...
MAKEA stands for fixing it, customising, personalising, tuning things, adapting or basically making it beautiful yourself. It is an alternative to the throwaway culture (hence the reference to
IKEA!). MAKEA, active since 2006, is a multidisciplinary group from Spain, fed up with our current way of consumption, the brands and their products that loose personality when they are not associated with the brand name any more. But MAKEA is a brand that sells nothing, they are doers and warn us about the infectiousness of the MAKEA virus (see
MAKEA video on YouTube)....
Image via: Way Basics
Furniture made from paper? Paper can't stand up on its own, much less hold people, books, pets or the clothing you don't feel like hanging up, for that matter. Not to worry, this recycled paper furniture by
Way Basics can do the job, and can even be
recycled when it reaches the end of its life. ...
In some circles it is known as repurposing, or even reusing. Taking a material or product and giving it new form to fulfil a different function. But apparently police in North Carolina also consider it larceny. And technically they are correct. For they allege that Joseph Carnevale misappropriated safety traffic barrels by cutting them up an turning them into the so-called Traffic Barrel Monster. Given that he describes the act of subversive art on his website,
No Promise of Safety, the police might be on to something.
But it’s hard to deny the sheer creative ingenuity of his work. Particularly when he also made up an alligator using the same concept. (Photo after the fold.)...
Photo: Flickr, CC
Digital Switch: Please Recycle Your Old Television
Last November, John wrote about the potential dangers of a
surge of toxic e-waste caused by the switch to digital TV (this affects people who get their signal over the air and don't have a digital converter box). Back then, the digital switch date was supposed to be February, but it was extended by lawmakers because people were not ready. Well, ready or not, today is the date. What will this mean for electronic-waste and the environment?...
In a local recycling station, Mette Bak Andersen from Copenhagen Forever is surprised about the lack of interest to recycle plastics in Copenhagen and shows Mayor Klaus Bondam a piece of recycled plastic made in Barcelona.
After
Barcelona Forever in 2008, a design installation of a house built from materials found in the streets of the city, designer
Mette Bak Andersen and her team are now moving north and planning Copenhagen Forever. Barcelona Forever’s aim was to draw attention to those materials that have become waste but which could easily be given a second life though a creative approach. Now the team wants to see what materials and products in the Danish capital can be rescued from ending up as landfill....
Recently we TreeHuggers were talking about the big problem of swag at conferences and tradeshows. We brainstormed ways swag could be cut down or made sustainable while still getting businesses' messages across. It looks like one publisher is already on the ball. Some of the best swag found at
Maker Faire was at the Quarry Books booth. They turned the scraps of their published books into new journals to give away....
Image: Andrew Huff, Flickr
Skull #11 ('80s Metal), 2006, by Brian Dettmer
Obsolescence. A leit-motif of our modern age is captured with grace and humor in the artwork of
Brian Dettmer. Starting with once common but now superfluous items such as cassette tapes or Encyclopedia sets, Brian Dettmer creates new beauty. The mere concept of reformulating a dead media as a skeleton suffices, but Dettmer hones the message; as the viewer's eyes scan the warped words on each cassette, the titles drive the point home:...
So many coffee lovers have switched to single portion delivery devices produced by a variety of brands, including Tassimo, Flavia and Green Mountain. The coffee tastes is always fresh, perfectly brewed and one doesn’t waste extra coffee left from brewing a full pot. However, the
packaging isn't made to be recyclable, so if it is to be diverted from landfills, it needs to go through a time consuming process of disassembly. This begs a serious environmental question. ...
It’s that time of the year…the weather is getting warmer which means more events and more lists, which also means more notebooks and binders to organize. If you need to stock up, look no further than
O'BON, an eco-friendly pencil and stationery company that has been
gaining visibility due to the eye-catching design of their products.
O'Bon's colorful pencils are made by tightly wrapping recycled newspaper around graphite, and they're much more durable than traditional pencils made from wood. O'BON's notebooks and folders are made from recycled materials and
bagasse (aka: sugarcane) paper, which has less impact on the environment than traditional paper. ...
The Plastiki Sailing Vessel, Entirely Made of Recycled Plastic, Will Sail Across the Pacific
Eco-hero David de Rothschild has been hard at work on the
Plastiki Project for a while, and TreeHugger founder Graham Hill had a chance to drop by Pier 31 in San Francisco to see what's going on behind the scenes. What he discovered is that this project isn't just about a sailboat, but about totally changing how our society sees plastic, from waste to resource. All of this because they had to solve engineering challenges (not as easy as it sounds to make a sea-worthy ship out of plastic bottles). Check out the video below, it's great....
Photos via Robot Nine
We've
mentioned tire sculptures before, albeit really briefly. It's time to revel in them for awhile as we let our brains wind down for the weekend.
Robot Nine shows off some really amazing ways artists have reused old tires, molding them into beautiful, and a little bit scary, giant sculptures.
Check out more after the jump. ...
Graphic from USGBC
The
USGBC, and their insanely popular rating system
LEED, have been on the frontlines of the green building movement for quite a while. Everyone has taken a shot at them at least once. There’s all the talk about how the credits are weighted incorrectly, or that a
LEED rated building doesn’t always mean it’s a green building. For all the shortcomings of the older system, the
USGBC, better or worse, has been a major contributor to putting
GREEN into the lexicon of every developer, real estate owner and building professional in the United States (and other countries). Their new approach to rating the
greenness of a building is overcoming some of those pesky complaints. Actually, with the release of newest version of
LEED, all those naysayers may get left in the dust!...
Looking to make your desk area a bit greener? Enter
TheSecondLeaf.com, a one-stop hub for eco-friendly office supplies and technology. Offerings include products ranging from energy efficient laptops and servers to paper and pencils consisting of pre/post-recycled consumer waste. The primary goal of TheSecondLeaf.com is to make it easier and more affordable than ever for eco-minded organizations and individuals to purchase green. Additional resources on the user-friendly website include consumer product reviews, product comparisons, and articles providing hints and tips on going green....
Images from 2012 architecten on
flickr
Brigitte at
Inhabitat beat me to the "everything but the kitchen sink" joke about this temporary structure built in Amsterdam two years ago, entirely out of kitchen sinks.
...
Even though it seems everyone has an iPod or MP3 player and is downloading music, traditional CD's are still a huge business. The jewel cases are made from a variety of plastics that break easily and are not easy recyclable; sooner or later most of them will end up in landfills. I’m excited to tell you about the world’s most eco-friendly CD case
TerraCycle just created made from recycled, shredded chip bags! ...
TreeHugger recently covered
Joel Makower's article in Mother Jones where he wrote:
Green consumerism, it seems, was one of those well-intended passing fancies, testament to Americans' never-ending quest for simple, quick, and efficient solutions to complex problems.
We caught up with him in Toronto at the Green Living Show and followed up with an short interview....
Images from ECObyCosentino
Cosentino, one of the world’s largest natural stone importers, announces the launch of
ECO™, a new line of
countertops. The material is composed of 75% recycled-content including mirrors
salvaged from
houses, building and factories;
glass from windows and bottles; granulated
glass from consumer recycling practices; porcelain from china, tiles, sinks, toilets and decorative elements; and industrial furnace residuals from factories in the form of crystallized ashes.
...
Construmat, one of the biggest construction trade fairs in Europe, held this week in Barcelona, Spain, has chosen sustainable construction as one of the main remedies to successfully tackle the crisis in the sector this year, as well as other challenges of the future....
Writing in Mother Jones, Joel Makower waves the white flag.
Green consumerism, it seems, was one of those well-intended passing fancies, testament to Americans' never-ending quest for simple, quick, and efficient solutions to complex problems.
It's only a matter of time before...the public recognizes that for every pound of trash that ends up in municipal landfills, at least 40 more pounds are created upstream by industrial processes—and that a lot of this waste is far more dangerous to environmental and human health than our newspapers and grass clippings. At that point, the locus of concern could shift away from beverage containers, grocery bags, and the other mundane leftovers of daily life to what happens behind the scenes—the production, crating, storing, and shipping of the goods we buy and use.
...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 07. 9.09
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