From the book release: “For some, recycling is a big business; for others a moralised way of engaging with the world. But, for many, this is a dangerous way of earning a living. With scrap now being the largest export category from the US to China, the sheer scale of this global trade has not yet been clearly identified or analysed. Combining fine-grained ethnographic analysis with overviews of international material flows, Economies of Recycling radically changes the way we understand global and local economies as well as the new social relations and identities created by recycling processes.
Molasses Books in Bushwick, Brooklyn is a new bookstore that offers a change from the traditional retail model, letting customers trade their books for a coffee tab or even more books. The store owner, Matthew Winn, is also applying for a tavern license, which will enable them to swap for beer and wine in the future as well.
(via Brooklyn Bookstore Lets You Trade Paperbacks For Coffee - PSFK)
Fuck your old window frame on top of book stacks coffee table.
Ah, I recall seeing this “old window frame on top of book stacks coffee table” photo on Apartment Therapy. Apartment Therapy also featured this close-up photo of one of the table’s “legs”:
Something like this could work well in some households, e.g., those without kids or large dogs!
P.S. If the sight of over-styled settings amuses you, and you haven’t seen the Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table Tumblr, then check it out.
Related: This post — on how to tell if you’re living an “over-propped” life (referring to a New York Times article) — shared recently on the Unconsumption Facebook page.
DIY project du jour:
Turn an unwanted book into storage for jewelry or other small items.
For how-to / tutorial, which involves a book, X-Acto knife, and some Mod Podge, see this post on the Sincerely, Kinsey blog. (Personally, I’d omit the step of gluing flowers on top!)
(Spotted on Craftzine.com.)
See also: Earlier post here on turning old game boards into small boxes.
Note: Unconsumption caveat on using books as raw material. Also: Find some previous posts on new uses for old books here.
Honolulu public library books that have been taken out of circulation get folded into art by Wendy Kawabata.
Pictured: Part of Wendy’s Withdrawn from Circulation installation in New Zealand.
(Spotted on Poppytalk)
Note: Unconsumption caveat on using books as raw material. Also: Find some previous posts on new uses for old books here.
I’d totally wear this.
(via Katies Rose Cottage)
Note: Unconsumption caveat on using books as raw material. Also: Find some previous posts on new uses for old books here.
New Book: Histories of the Dustheap (October 2012)
Histories of the Dustheap uses garbage, waste, and refuse to investigate the relationships between various systems–the local and the global, the economic and the ecological, the historical and the contemporary–and shows how this most democratic reality produces identities, social relations, and policies.
The contributors first consider garbage in subjective terms, examining “toxic autobiography” by residents of Love Canal, the intersection of public health and women’s rights, and enviroblogging. They explore the importance of place, with studies of post-Katrina soil contamination in New Orleans, e-waste disposal in Bloomington, Indiana, and garbage on Mount Everest.
And finally, they look at cultural contradictions as objects hover between waste and desirability, examining Milwaukee’s efforts to sell its sludge as fertilizer, the plastics industry’s attempt to wrap plastic bottles and bags in the mantle of freedom of choice, and the idea of obsolescence in the animated film The Brave Little Toaster.
ReLIT NY, a free reading program that collects your old, unwanted books and recycles them back to the public. Brook Drop Sites include Whole Foods at Union Square, and Columbus & 97th Street and The Invisible Dog, on 51 Bergen Street in Brooklyn! YAY! ReLIT NY is completely volunteer run and therefore gets two swissmiss thumbs up!
(via swissmiss | ReLIT NY)
Despite all our efforts to encourage people to be mindful consumers, buying only what we really need, and buying second-hand at that, and mending/repairing things we already own, Americans still purchase, on average, a new garment every week! And it’s not good quality stuff. Surprisingly little of it gets resold; much of it ends up in landfills or in the hands of textile recyclers.
A new book, “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion,” written by Brooklyn-based journalist Elizabeth Cline, addresses these issues, exploring the rise of fast fashion/disposable clothing and how our consumption of inexpensive clothes impacts society and the environment.
Marketplace reporter Stacey Vanek Smith recently spoke with Cline. An excerpt of that conversation:
Vanek Smith: If someone is maybe interested in changing the way that they shop, what’s a good way to start?
Elizabeth Cline: Well, there are so many different things. Just a handful would be supporting local designers, designers when they are starting up — honestly, they don’t have the capital to produce overseas, so a lot of them are producing in our communities — so support them, help them thrive. I would say also people should use their tailors and their seamstresses in their community, get your shoes repaired, take care of what you own. And lastly, I would say take that $1,100 a year, that American’s spend on average on clothes, and buy less but just invest your money in things that are a little bit better made.
More: The high price of cheap clothing | Marketplace.org
Elizabeth’s blog is on Tumblr here.
We’re fans of free book exchanges, like the Little Free Libraries; the now-defunct-phone-booths-turned-mini-libraries (here, here, here, here, and here); shelves in London Tube and train stations and in airports that enable travelers to swap books; former newspaper racks; and a 1979 Ford transformed into a bookmobile from which free books are distributed in Buenos Aires, among others, that spring up in public spaces.
(We’re also fond of more traditional libraries that are housed in non-traditional settings like repurposed old buses and historic barns and churches.)
And now in Paris, there’s this communal book exchange sitting atop a tree cage:
Strasbourg-based street artist Florian Rivière is back with a new, neat urban intervention! Last weekend, Rivière installed a little library on a sidewalk near Gare du Nord … .
I don’t know if that’s a pallet or a crate (or both), but I like it!
See a couple of Riviere’s other urban interventions, a.k.a., “hacktions,” here.
(via Urban Hacktivist Launches Street Library — The Pop-Up City)
Final post (for today!) on reusing books:
The retailer Anthropologie (previously here), known for its wildly creative window displays, put dozens of altered books to use in this store display.
If you’d like to try your hand at making folded-page objects*, check out patterns — hearts! skulls! Christmas trees! — featured on the Rhymes With Magic blog here.
Also, this Sutherland Library video provides simple folding instructions.
(Photos: Top, via Apartment Therapy; center, Rhymes With Magic blog; bottom, Apartment Therapy. Book-folding links spotted previously on Candoodles blog.)
*Note: Unconsumption caveat on using books as raw material.
What should I do with these? I can’t decide how I’d like to repurpose them. Maybe make them into a lamp? They’re from my stash of books that once belonged to now-deceased family members. Can you pick out the two very well-worn (and -loved) vintage Nancy Drew books?! And the old Boy Scout Handbooks? (Taken with instagram)
I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special note about using books as raw material for “reuse projects”:
When my Unconsumption colleagues and I (Molly) post ideas that involve the repurposing of books, these are examples of the books I envision using for such projects. Not new books, or books that someone may actually want to read. But books that are well past their reading prime. Regular readers of the Unconsumption blog know this. In fact, we Unconsumptioneers often add caveats — like this one, and this one and this one from Rob — about using unreadable or otherwise unwanted books as raw material.
So, back to the question of what will I do with the books pictured. (In case you’re wondering: The books are from my personal “collection”: the 1940s Scout books and “Treasure Island” were my father’s; the older Nancy Drew book — a 1930 edition of “The Hidden Staircase,” standing upright, with most of its blue spine disintegrated — my mother’s.)
Have you done something with old books — something you think will inspire me to finally do something with these (other than move them from shelf to shelf)? If so, let me know.
Related: I posted this photo via the @Unconsumption Instagram account. If you’re on Instagram and add the tag “#unconsumption“ to photos, I’ll check them out!
