![Students and staff at Newcastle University have created a pop-up cafe built entirely out of upcycled waste, including plastic drink bottles and cardboard boxes. The team spent three months designing and constructing the cross disciplinary project, which was contributed to by engineers, architects and social scientists.
The U-Cafe was designed to challenge our perception of waste and explore new ways of creating sustainable buildings. It features chairs made from plastic bottles, walls constructed using cardboard boxes, and staff aprons made out of recycled plastic bags.
Via: Pop-Up Cafe Built Entirely Out Of Garbage [Video] - PSFK](http://25.media.tumblr.com/7512d093b06a3f02dbff4a7f499267df/tumblr_mm4hz7taJg1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
Students and staff at Newcastle University have created a pop-up cafe built entirely out of upcycled waste, including plastic drink bottles and cardboard boxes. The team spent three months designing and constructing the cross disciplinary project, which was contributed to by engineers, architects and social scientists.
The U-Cafe was designed to challenge our perception of waste and explore new ways of creating sustainable buildings. It features chairs made from plastic bottles, walls constructed using cardboard boxes, and staff aprons made out of recycled plastic bags.
Via: Pop-Up Cafe Built Entirely Out Of Garbage [Video] - PSFK
Everyday plastic items, artfully arranged.
Installation by Mary Ellen Croteau; we featured her plastic bottle cap portrait earlier on Unconsumption here.
See also: Artist Jean Shin’s displays of empty pill bottles.
19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.
Via BoingBoing
Also on the ocean-garbage front: We’ve covered various responses to the Pacific Garbage Patch, here, and here.
Plastic, strung. Installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 2009. (Photo via Betty Birney’s Blog.)
Don’t you think something like this would make a unique room divider?
DIY Inspiration. Bottle Animals. Recycled water and detergent bottles made into animal lights - but are really cool sculptures on their own.
Pictured: Lights from ABYU lighting.
See also: Earlier Unconsumption posts highlighting two artists’ takes on uses for empty detergent bottles: Bill Culbert’s lights here, and Martine Camillieri’s toy trucks here.
Ecover, the green cleaning brand, said on Thursday it will use plastic waste retrieved from the sea to create an entirely new type of sustainable and recyclable plastic bottle.
The Belgian company is working with plastic manufacturer Logoplaste to combine plastic trawled from the sea with a plastic made from sugar cane (‘Plant-astic’) and recycled plastic, in what it is calling a world-first for packaging. Products made from the packaging will go on sale next year.
But the company was unable to give details of how much plastic would be retrieved or what percentage of “sea plastic” would be used in the packaging.
Ecover chief executive, Philip Malmberg, said: “We won’t have a definitive figure on the amount we will retrieve we are just hoping to get as much as is possible and give fishermen an incentive to join the initiative and help clean the seas. We want to get the sea waste in as much of our packaging as possible – it will always depend on the amount and quality of the plastic they have managed to fish.”
Read the rest here.
FWIW, Ecover owns Method, which also is producing packaging from ocean debris (mentioned previously on Unconsumption here).
Above, the trailer for Midway, a film by Chris Jordan that “explores the plight of Laysan albatross plagued by the ingestion of our plastic trash.”
More info here.
(via MIDWAY - a film by Chris Jordan)
Note: This post is really from Unconsumption contributor Deirdre Nelson, but something went haywire with the video on that version so I’m reposting — Rob W.
Bolivian Ingrid Vaca Diez is on a mission to improve the housing situation for the poor in her country by using plastic bottles—the only material she can find in abundance—to build surprisingly sturdy houses.
The self-taught designer of these “garbage homes” fills recycled plastic bottles with dirt and uses them as bricks to construct her innovative houses.
To date, she has built ten such homes for poverty-stricken families.
More (including video segment): Innovative ‘Garbage’ Houses Made Of Recycled Plastic Bottles - DesignTAXI.com
Vancouver-based artist Brian Jungen created this domed ‘turtle shell’ out of industrial waste and recycling bins. In past works Brian has used plastic chairs, hockey equipment, and plastic food trays.
(via Juxtapoz Magazine - “Carapace,” Recycling Bin Art by Brian Junger | Current)
American artist Bart Vargas’s ”Bottleballs,” salvaged plastic bottles glued onto cardboard globes.
Did you know?
In 2010, the United States generated almost 14 million tons of plastics as containers and packaging, almost 11 million tons as durable goods, such as appliances, and almost 7 million tons as nondurable goods, for example plates and cups.
Only 8 percent of the total plastic waste generated in 2010 was recovered for recycling.
[Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. More info in this EPA fact sheet here.]
