Sawdust + resin = new furniture
Avinoam combines the sawdust with resin and then moulds it into simple shapes, resulting in an interesting resemblance to soil.
With the aim to turn a waste product into desirable design, Avinoam uses the sawdust from different types of wood to create the desired effect.
(via Design Indaba)
Freakonomics » Your Garbage Questions, Answered
Last week, we solicited your questions for journalist Edward Humes, who seems to love trash as much as we do. His new book is Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash.
The rest over on Freakonomics, but here’s one interesting bit from Humes:
Landfills are a waste of valuable resources. The single largest component of trash going into landfills today is packaging and containers — instant trash that could be recycled, but isn’t. Making energy out of trash is a far less wasteful alternative — which is why Germany, for example, recycles 66 percent of its trash, makes energy out of the rest, and landfills virtually none. By contrast, America sends 69 percent to landfills, 25 percent to recycling, and the little left over to energy plants. We lag far behind the rest of the developed world on this score.
The average American is making twice as much trash today as in 1960. Has all that landfilling made us more prosperous? Thriftier? More secure? Created more jobs? Being less wasteful, on the other hand, is both a great economic and environmental strategy.
For boxes that still have plenty of life in them, recycling them can actually be wasteful. By subjecting them to the energy-intensive recycling process you take them out of the world before they’ve fulfilled their full utility.
A company called UsedCardboardBoxes.com realizes this, and has formed an entire business around getting boxes to those who need them.
Good idea! And possibly more convenient than visiting every liquor store in town, which is what I’ve done on past moves…
More: Creative Re-Usage, Part 2: A Different Sort of Big Box Business - Core77
It’s wine o’clock (somewhere!) — which means it’s time to share a wine-related repurposing find.
Today: Empty beverage bottles made into drinking glasses and other kitchenware, by Laurence Brabant.
For earlier items in Unconsumption wine o’clock series of posts, check out the archive here.
Why You Should Give Stuff To Your Neighbors
I was quite interested to read — via the link to Atlantic Cities above as well as on Science Daily — about research suggesting that “Freecycle generates feelings of group unity and cohesion [PDF] among the people who participate in it.”
Freecycle is the “hey I have this thing if you want it let me know” service that I wrote about some years ago, calling the underlying practice “unconsumption.” My interest then was: “It’s worth pondering whether getting rid of stuff can ever feel as good as getting it.” I more or less concluded the answer was Yes, and eventually that led to this very site you are reading right now.
Obviously we’ve gotten more expansive about what unconsumption means, but our advocacy of “creative reuse and mindful consumer behavior” still ties back to the very notions that these researchers have examined. Here’s a little more on their study:
Sociologists have long been intrigued by these kinds of benevolent “generalized exchange communities.” … What motivates people to participate in them?
“This old idea that gift-giving communities generate lots of solidarity, is it true and does it hold up outside of the lab?” asks Robb Willer, a sociologist at the University of California. “We found that it does.”
Freecycle generates feelings of group unity and cohesion [PDF] among the people who participate in it. “First, you sort of build this feeling of group identification,” Willer says. “Then you build this feeling of solidarity. Then after that you’re more motivated to give to the system.”
Interestingly, you don’t get the same benefits from participating on Craigslist, which is a more traditional type of “direct exchange system” based on the quid pro quo that you’ll give me something – probably cash – in return for my old love seat. The researchers drew their conclusions by conducting extensive surveys of hundreds of users of both of these networks.
Israeli designer Koby Sibony creates sculptures from plastic and other trash washed up on beaches.
(via Design Milk)
![theatlantic:
2.6 Trillion Pounds of Garbage: Where Does the World’s Trash Go?
This year, the world will generate 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage — the weight of about 7,000 Empire State Buildings. What kind of trash is it? Where does it all go?
The answer is that just under half of it comes from “organic” waste — food — and the advanced nations making up the OECD account for an equal share of the world’s trash, according to a new report this week from the World Bank.
Read more. [Image: World Bank]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m597uo4lOM1qcokc4o1_400.png)
2.6 Trillion Pounds of Garbage: Where Does the World’s Trash Go?
This year, the world will generate 2.6 trillion pounds of garbage — the weight of about 7,000 Empire State Buildings. What kind of trash is it? Where does it all go?
The answer is that just under half of it comes from “organic” waste — food — and the advanced nations making up the OECD account for an equal share of the world’s trash, according to a new report this week from the World Bank.
Read more. [Image: World Bank]
Last year US Army Vehicle Commander Jared Morford of Watertown, South Dakota reached out to Chrome to make a Custom Salvage bag with the duffle he carried to Iraq. Chrome’s Custom Salvage Citizen was born.
Starting this Memorial Day weekend through June 30th, Chrome honors US Military personnel by inviting veterans and their families to bring their military duffles or fatigues to one of Chrome’s four HUB locations in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Portland. Chrome bag makers will use this material to create a Custom Citizen Messenger bag for the cost of a regular Citizen Messenger bag.
0 to 1, a New York City-based design and architecture studio, uses “the remnants of industrial manufacturing” to create furniture and other objects.
C-clamps and cardboard cores that “were once used to hold fabric or packaging materials” get made into “Cylinder” chairs.
See also: Earlier Unconsumption posts on new uses for cardboard tubes here, and paper towel and other tubes here.
New uses for old records (continued): iPhone cases.
From Wrecords by Monkey (whose light switch covers we featured previously here).
Here’s another spin on old records:
Turn vintage vinyl record albums into storage racks.
This rack, from RetiredRecords on Etsy, was made from seven LPs: six albums form cubbyholes to hold wine bottles and/or other items; a seventh album is attached to the bottom for support.
DIY inspiration for some of you?
Here’s another new spin on old records:
GIN Art & Design’s lamps made from vintage 45 rpm records.
(via GIN Art & Design at ICFF)
