Okay this is not exactly the ideal form of Unconsumption, but seemed amusingly weird enough to pass along:
Artist James Dive’s “Once” consists of a 4 x 4 meter cube of demolished and compacted amusement park. A closer look reveals midway prizes, lights, tickets, garishly-painted metal scraps, and other mementos of old time carny fun. I’m just waiting for the bits to begin creaking back into shape like at the end of the movie Christine.
On View: James Dive’s “Once” for “Sculpture by the Sea”
Art: compacted cube of demolished amusement park - Boing Boing
How GM Makes $1 Billion A Year By Recycling WasteThe automaker generates an eye-popping $1 billion a year reusing or recycling materials that would otherwise be thrown away — everything from scrap steel and paint sludge to cardboard boxes and worn-out tires. It’s an unexpected but welcome revenue stream that comes from rethinking its approach to waste reduction.
Full Story: Forbes
“One Bin For All” idea could boost recycling rates, generate biofuel, reduce landfilling, and serve as a model for other cities
Michael Bloomberg’s op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle describes the idea:
For years, many cities have treated recycling as an individual civic responsibility like paying taxes or jury duty. The onus is on citizens to do the work of separating trash from recyclables: metal, glass and plastic in one bin, paper in another and landfill items in a third, while city trash collectors cart it away sometimes using a different truck for each kind of waste. Not surprisingly, it’s estimated that cities only effectively recycle about 30 percent of their trash.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker aims to turn this equation on its head. Instead of pushing to get consumers to do a better job separating trash from recyclables, she believes tapping technology can get the job done. Her plan is called Total Reuse: One Bin for All, which envisions the construction of a high-tech sorting facility that would allow 75 percent of Houston’s trash to be recycled using technologies from the mining and refining industries and would potentially generate its own power. Residents put everything in one bin; technology handles the rest.
Houston is one of 20 cities vying for $5 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge. The City of Houston plans to pursue the total reuse initiative regardless of whether it’s awarded Mayors Challenge funding.
[Update, via a City of Houston media release: Houston’s project was awarded a $1 million grant from the Mayors Challenge, and also was voted the “fan favorite.”
Providence, Rhode Island, won the Mayors Challenge top prize of $5 million for its literacy project; read more about all five award-winning cities’ projects in this New York Times article.]
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)
Stools incorporating “rejected leather,” among the projects from Pepe Heykoop (earlier mention here):
Leather Loops is another reaction to waste leather. Fully rejected skins, faded by sunlight or with too many damages are used in this project. Like an l.p. the leather tops can easily be swapped within the family of frames.
(via www.pepeheykoop.nl)
Meet FoodStar and its courageous partner Andronico’s Community Market, a small Northern California grocery chain. Together, they are taking a chance on the idea that maybe we consumers aren’t as picky as most supermarkets seem to think we are.
Maybe we’d be willing to buy a slightly smaller apple that only has 37 percent red coverage instead of the requisite 40 percent needed to qualify as the “fancy” grade that stores usually buy (yes, it’s actually measured).
Maybe we consumers would even consider it a score to get a bag of Pink Lady apples for just 69 cents per pound.
More: No bad apples: Grocery store cuts waste and cost by selling imperfect fruit | Grist
![The Maker Movement Lowers Consumption and Waste:
The Maker Movement was born out of the desire to invent, design, create, hack, reinvent, and build things of one’s own hands. While people have certainly been doing this since, well, humans have existed, making things has taken off in the last several years largely due to new tools, digital and physical, that enable makers to design and build things on a small scale with little prior knowledge and only spare equipment. What has blossomed from this, is a raft of community knowledge such as that found on Instructables, as well as sites dedicated to selling niche craft items, like Etsy.
How is this good for green? [The idea is that] people value and will keep and use custom goods longer than mass-produced goods….
…
So, what’s your take? Will the Maker Movement lead us to greener pastures or is it just a way to pass the time?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/28f8de3cdbc5ef821cfa7a44e3dbe446/tumblr_mg5odopBv11qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
The Maker Movement Lowers Consumption and Waste:
The Maker Movement was born out of the desire to invent, design, create, hack, reinvent, and build things of one’s own hands. While people have certainly been doing this since, well, humans have existed, making things has taken off in the last several years largely due to new tools, digital and physical, that enable makers to design and build things on a small scale with little prior knowledge and only spare equipment. What has blossomed from this, is a raft of community knowledge such as that found on Instructables, as well as sites dedicated to selling niche craft items, like Etsy.
How is this good for green? [The idea is that] people value and will keep and use custom goods longer than mass-produced goods….
…
So, what’s your take? Will the Maker Movement lead us to greener pastures or is it just a way to pass the time?
Welcome to A Piece Of Cleveland. We love our city. We love its history, its character and its potential. We created APOC to preserve this rich history by telling a story and turning unwanted materials into furniture and other products that will increase their value.
About the project, here: A Piece of Cleveland Ensures That the Past Isn’t Lost in the Upcycle | Business on GOOD
Excerpt:
Chris Kious … spent five years working for a Cleveland community development organization, working on an inventory of around 100 abandoned houses in just one neighborhood. Thanks to depopulation, foreclosures, and antiquated floor plans—think one bathroom, no garage—thousands of century-old homes have been left to crumble throughout the city. These properties correlate with lower property values for neighbors, higher crime rates, squatters, drugs—and so, according to the City of Cleveland Building and Housing Department, the city has proactively demolished 6,323 homes since 2006. It’s a needed service, but history is often lost as these old homes are razed. Just as importantly, a stream of raw material is trucked off with each demolition.
Elsewhere in Cleveland was designer P.J. Doran, an artist and craftsman who had been making “things” from garbage picks, leftovers and salvaged building materials since he was a kid. As he developed into a tradesman in the home construction industry, he was staggered and frustrated by the immense waste involved in new construction, and so he began designing and building custom furniture from reclaimed materials. His work was a spark of inspiration, and in 2007, Kious and Doran recognized an opportunity. A Piece of Cleveland got its start, and from carefully deconstructed homes on the city’s demolition list, new feature walls, counter tops, tables and chairs are reborn.
![I was inspired by the terrazzo floors.
Although these floors are made from waste produced in the marble mines, they are really decent and have a good quality which you can see and feel.
I wanted to find out if we could use our own waste produced when demolishing something.
I did several tests with different materials and made a selection of which materials are possible [including] crushed bricks and roof tiles …
Read the results here: Dave Hakkens](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mby7hfzHJk1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
I was inspired by the terrazzo floors.
Although these floors are made from waste produced in the marble mines, they are really decent and have a good quality which you can see and feel.
I wanted to find out if we could use our own waste produced when demolishing something.
I did several tests with different materials and made a selection of which materials are possible [including] crushed bricks and roof tiles …
Read the results here: Dave Hakkens
Pecas has created “Fase #3” using a new material called Demodé. It exploits and rescues wasted textile from factories in Santiago, Chile, before being used by the consumer.
via Fase #3 : Bernardita Marambio B.
You can get a sense of the underlying material process here.
Meet "Big Trash" - Boing Boing
Why haven’t more cities hopped on the curbside composting bandwagon, or at least banned yard waste from landfills?
There’s probably a lot of factors that go into those decisions, but one, apparently, is the influence of large, private companies that handle waste collection and see the diversion of re-usable waste as a detriment to their income.
This paper examines the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system from the farm to the fork to the landfill.
By identifying food losses at every level of the food supply chain, this report provides the latest recommendations and examples of emerging solutions, such as making “baby carrots” out of carrots too bent (or “curvy”) to meet retail standards.
By increasing the efficiency of our food system, we can make better use of our natural resources, provide financial saving opportunities along the entire supply chain, and enhance our ability to meet food demand.
More at: Reducing Food Waste and Losses in the U.S. Food Supply | NRDC
Via KERA’s Think.
