With what shall I wrap all these gifts?

Good Morning!

We all know how wasteful wrapping presents CAN be. I always tend to go for the obvious newspaper or paper bags to wrap gifts, but there are more creative ways to make a gift fun to open. (I mean, is that the purpose of wrapping paper? Just so you have a few minutes to be curious about what is inside? Silly, but necessary, I guess.)

What I have been doing this year is making little drawstring bags out of excess fabric and putting the gift inside, which can then be used as a purse for little girls. I have been making a lot of gifts for kids so the little purses will definitely be reused. (I wish I took pictures to post, but I keep forgetting to and I already gave them away!)

The above video is via Whole Foods Market who advocates reusing their store bags as gift bags since they are made of 80% post-consumer recycled PET bottles. They are now being sold in small gift sizes.

Then, on Inhabitat today, I noticed that they posted about a company in the U.K. called Represent that started a project called Future Present:

"Every year in the UK we use more than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper for our Christmas presents, equivalent to 50,000 trees. And sticky tape, being non-biodegradable, prevents us from reusing those mountains of wrapping paper."

They put together 20 great ways to wrap gifts from various designers, without using conventional wrapping paper.

Here are a few:

I really love the scarf idea and the hot/cold bags. Any other ingenious ideas you want to share?

Happy Gift Giving!

Niki

Reupcycling A Pallet

Recycling is a term that's often heard. Newspapers, blogs and other news sources haven't hesitated the past years to use it. But there's one tiny problem with recycling, literally the word means 'bringing it in the product cycle again', and that's exactly what happens. If you have a nice fleece sweater for example. After a while it becomes too small or you don't like the color anymore, you decide to recycle it. Good choice! The people in the recycling branche then decide to make a flower pot from it. Nice.

But the problem here (you might be thinking now: "huh? is there a problem?") is that it goes from fleece to flower pot, and that's somehow a loss of quality. This phenomenon is known as downcycling, recycling but ending up with a product that has got less value than it's predecessor. It's not often heard since it's not that much of a problem. The opposite of the term however, is rather cool: upcycling.

Or: improving the quality of a product. A few days ago I came across an excellent example. The Pallet Chair.

Created by nifty crafts blog Holy Scrap Hot Springs this chair has been made from just one wooden pallet, a few pieces of wood and some screws. There's also an excellent video wherein the creators talk about their invention.

The pallet chair is a brilliant example of upcycling. Increasing the value of something that would have gone to waste otherwise. I sincerely hope to see more projects like this one in the near future.

The Designboom Cassette Wallet is Awesome (Plus, Four Ways to Make Your Own!)

I just stumbled onto designboom's cassette wallet, and it is good. Real good. Each one is handmade by an artist in Italy named Marcella Foschi, which is a very nice name.

From the mighty 'boom:

"retro wallets hand-made from cassette tapes

as every 'cassette wallet' is hand made,
each design is a one-off. once its gone its gone!"

Righteous. The cassette wallet is 43 smackers Amero. (39 plus S&H)

If you have the means, give signora Foschi the gift of a sale.
If you're more the DIY type, here are four ways to make your own.

instructables.
craftster.org.
threadbanger.
lifehacker.

Of course, quality and difficulty levels will vary, but who doesn't like a challenge?

If anyone makes one of these, do be so good as to snap a picky and send it to: superforestnyc(at)gmail(dot)com. Wheeeee!

Fun!

Laurence Brabant's Glassware is Gorgeous Gorgeous Recycled Gorgeousness!

Laurence Brabant, glasssss masssssssta.

The collection is called "Cold Cuts" and I'm sure it's achingly expensive, in that delightfully French sort of way. Bonne idee, mon ami, your glassware is tantalisement!

Laurence Brabant, for showing so clearly that recycling can be sexy, and for using renewable woods like beech and cork to craft those saucy handles, we salute you.

Bravo!

Ici is Laurence's site.

'Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew' Bottle Savvy

You don't have to be a SuperForest reader or a member of Greenpeace to agree that recycling really is good for the planet. So since a few decades everyone separates their bottles from their tin cans and their paper boxes from their glass bottles. A group of Thai monks didn't miss out on this message when they built the Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple a few hundred miles northeast of Bangkok, the capital.

The monks started with the plan to recycle 'a few' glass bottles. At square one the bottles were just used to create some fancy items, visitors liked the result so they donated more bottles. The monks didn't really knew what to do with the bottle-overload so they used it for the construction of the buildings. "So what does it look like then?" I hear you asking.


Like that. Bottles can even be founded in the pillars, and if you look closely you can also spot some bottles in the wall at the back (the one with the window in it). The monks are so fond of the bottle savvy they even use the lids to create mosaics.



Over a period of time the temple got the nickname Wat Lan Kuad what means Temple Of A Million Bottles. This is in fact more than true, to date there are approximately 1,5 million bottles processed in the temple complex. And the number doesn't stop growing, the monks are happy to receive empty glass bottles. The more bottles, the more buildings they can build, right?

-jdh

Rethinking Trash!

Good Evening!

Just saw this crazy chandelier on SwissMiss:

You may not want to hang this chandelier in your living room (or maybe you do?), but the concept is great. 

"Dutch Designer Anneke Jakobs collected discarded cartons in the street during her days as a student at the Utrecht School of Product Design. Ten cartons make up the luxe chandelier. Desktop paper fasteners hold it all together."

It is from a site called Point Click Home, where they have an article with a bunch of well designed products, all made out of items that normally end up in the trash. 

Take a look, they have some great looking stuff:

This is made out of 334 newspapers the artist collected off the street.

This is made from 100% domestic recycled plastic waste.

This chandelier is made from hundreds of discarded plastic stirrers.

These lamps are made from bottom of clear bottles.

These lamps are made from used plastic packaging. 

For more information on each of the artists that created these items, you can go to their site.

Of course, we prefer when trash is reused, but we love when it receives CPR, has a much longer life and looks even better than before! 

Thanks again to SwissMiss for the info!

Have a great evening,

Niki 

Couple Recycles Their Way To Honeymoon Bliss!

The BBC has a great story up right now about John and Ann Till, who recently recycled enough material to get themselves two business class seats on a flight back from a holiday in America.

Here's how:

It seems that Tesco supermarkets is trying out a new plan whereby automated machines will take in recycling while awarding "reward points." The points can in turn be traded for air miles. Put enough recyclables into the machine and you could fly anywhere.

It's the "enough recyclables" part that had Mr. and Mr.s Till scouring roadsides and vacant lots for three months in order to get enough recycling to achieve their goal.

From the article:

"For every four recycled items, they earned a reward point which was then converted into BA air miles.

They amassed 36,000 miles, which they used to fly back in business class from their US honeymoon.

The Tills came up with the idea while buying petrol at Tesco in Havant, where an automated recycling unit that gives loyalty-card points had been installed for a trial period.

They had enough money for a Queen Mary 2 cruise to New York but could not afford the flights home, so the couple started scouring the streets of their home town for rubbish, clocking up the miles for their dream honeymoon.

Mr Till, 31, a railways communications manager, said: "We wanted to make our honeymoon special and were trying to think of ways to raise money for it.

"I saw on the machine that you got a Tesco Clubcard point for every four items you put in. For every 250 points you got 600 British Airways miles.

"We worked out that it would be possible to turn rubbish into our flights - as long as we had enough."

Okay, let's do some math!

36,000 miles. Every 250 points gets you 600 miles. Every four items gets you one point.

36,000 divided by 600 = 60. So, sixty "lots" of 600.
250 times 60 = 15,000 to get the number of "point lots needed"
15,000 times 4 = 60,000 cans!

Sixty thousand cans. Wow.
Thinking about this massive win/win is fun. Who doesn't win here? Tesco wins by simultaneously cleaning towns and raising positive awareness, the towns win by being cleaned, the Tills win by cleaning their town and getting to go on exciting adventures, SuperForest wins by getting to post about it, and you at home win by transmission of great ideas, via Tesco.

(Imagine how clean your town would be if our supermarkets installed recycling machines like these? Not only cans, but plastic bags, paper, electronics. Just about everything can be recycled, it's the equation that needs to change. How great would it be if you were desperate and needed food and shelter, if you could collect some recyclables and trade them in for a hot meal and a place to stay? It would be so righteous.)

Congratulations to everybody! Wins all around! Tesco and British Airways, you are tops in our book. John and Ann, you are heroes.

The world needs lots of great ideas like this. Keep 'em coming!

Yayyyy!

The CAPtivate Lamp

It's a fact that only 5.5% of plastic bottles used in Great Britain are recycled. This is a pity since the plastics can be reused. Reused can be in a consumer way, like taking the bottle in, melting it and making a new bottle out of it. But reused can also be to use it in for instance an art project.

And this last thing was done in an excellent way by British design corporation LulaDot. This is the CAPtivate Lamp.

The entity has been made out of, indeed, bottle caps. But there's more.

The lamp is available online through LulaDot's website. For a mere 115 GBP it's yours (roughly that's $207). But when you get the lamp all the tops aren't screwed on the lamp. LulaDot gives you about 40 tops to screw on but the rest you'll have to collect yourself. And here comes the great part, the color of the tops creates the color that the light will have.

For example, if you screw on a load of orange Fanta tops the light will become orange. If you choose for Coca-Cola-red the light will become red, and so on.

The great part is that the end user determines how the product looks and can customize it in unlimited ways.

-jdh

Ask SuperForest: Iman's Question!

Yay! Our second question for Ask SuperForest, this one from SuperForester Iman:

"Howdy Superforesters!
I just realized you guys had an advice column. Its really perfect that the universe threw your email my way because oddly enough, I need advice.

I'm really involved in an Environmental club at my school and we recycle every Friday, but for some reason, I guess high school kids aren't that into recycling on their Friday afternoons. So I really have two questions, first, do you have any suggestions for methods of luring kids into recycling? (haha) And second, do you have any suggestions for an environmental club in general? Anything goes! I just want to make the club as radical as is humanly possible! Thanks a lot friends.
Keep it funky,

-Iman"

A truly great question.

Needing a bit of clarification, we wrote this to Iman:

"Iman,

We have a huge number of responses to your question!

But first, we need to ask a few things:
How does the club work? Who runs it? How many members does it have?
Do you make any money from recycling?
Is any sort of credit given for taking part in the club? Is that a possibility?
What is the club currently called?

Let us know.

-Team SuperForest"

Iman replied:

"That's so wonderful!

1. We meet up every Friday afternoon to recycle but we do meet often during lunch; It is run by us students and our leader is open to any ideas we come up with; We have about ten at the moment
2. We make about 100 dollars a week from recycling
3. Well...as for "credit" we get listed in the yearbook and we get t-shirts, I'm not entirely sure if that answers the question...
4. We are simply called the "Environmental Club", a little boring so if you have any ideas that'd be great! I really want to start a branch of the club that refers to "What we're saving!" Because we tend to focus so much on trying to save our forests that we never get out there and enjoy them. So if you're all in a sort of naming mood, we also need a name for the branch that would direct hikes and those sort of outdoor activities.

Thanks very much Jackson and all you lovely SuperForesters, I know that this will make the club even better than it already is, nonetheless generate interest in it. This happens to be "club week" at my school so the timing could not have been better. The Universe never ceases to amaze me.

Keep it funky,
Iman."

Okay, let's get answerin'!

Iman,

Firstly we'd like to congratulate you on your energy and involvement in the "Environmental Club." It is a great and noble thing to give your time to building a better present.

All of Team SuperForest recieved a copy of your question and our answers vary from person to person. (Iman will receive the full email chain of our compiled answers.)

Our many answers had a few points of convergence and here they are:

"How to "lure" kids into recycling?"


Step One: Sell it.

Firstly, sometimes people have negative reactions to words like "environmental," "recycling," and the like. Fine, call it something else.

"Environmental Club" could just as easily be named "Future Resource Captains" or "Materials for Profit," or "Trash for Cash" or something that appeals more to people's sense of worth. Be creative. If Environmental Club whiffs too strongly of "green" or "hippie," then call it something else.

This is a great opportunity to be flexible and rethink your branding!

I mean, you're taking something that people have designated as worthless (trash) and you're sifting through it and "revaluing" it. Their trash becomes your profit. A name that plays on this sense of rediscovery is great. You're practically treasure hunters!

Calling your club "Treasure Hunters Inc." would do a lot more to fire people's imaginations than Environmental Club. You get what we're saying? Make it appealing.


"Any suggestions for an environmental club in general?"


Step Two: Advertise it.

You know what is free right now? Starting your own blog.

Treasure Hunters Inc. The Blog!

Go on blogger, or wordpress, or any other blog-hosting site and get your blog started ASAP.

This will serve a huge variety of functions. It will allow you to get info about your club into the world in a searchable manner. It will let you keep tabs on your members, and allow your members to communicate amongst themselves. It will start a snowball of networking and information generation that you can use to your benefit.

This blog can last and last and last. Imagine handing down the reigns of the Treasure Hunters blog to a younger generation of students, who in turn can use it to generate influence and change. Very powerful stuff. Then it wasn't just a club, but rather, the beginning of a LEGACY.

Start a blog, let people know what you're doing and how they can play along.

This will also be a great asset if you decide to team up with local businesses and get into some serious environmentalism, as they can check you out online, see who you are, email you, etc.

Which leads us to...


Step Three: Redefine Environment.

As an environmental club, it is imperitive that you retake the meaning of the word "environment." As we say in the SuperForest Humanifesto, the environment is everything that disappears when you close your eyes.

It would send a powerful message to your fellow students if one focus of your club was on your school itself. Particularly it's grounds and buildings!

Look around you. That squeaky step? Talk to the janitor or maintenance staff about getting it fixed. Blog about "Mission Squeaky Step." Take pictures. Interview the maintenance crew. Post it all. Most importantly, get that step fixed.

Take the responsibility of the look of your school onto yourselves and see what happens.

All of a sudden you go from a fringe group who digs through trash to the amazing Treasure Hunters who fixed the step, painted the walls, planted those new apple trees in the quad, worked with other students to make cool new recycling bins, got the principal to make detention about sweeping the front walk, etc.

And your new blog will allow you to reach out to local hardware stores or nurseries and perhaps convince them to donate goods or services. Stores always have surplus, and giving that surplus to a needy cause (i.e. you.) is a win for everybody.

Set yourselves a list of things that you don't like about the environment of your school and one by one work to make them better. And blog, blog, blog! Let the undecideds check you out online and follow your exploits, thrill at your progress.


Step Four: Celebrate.

One of the best quotes I've ever heard about revolution is this: "If there isn't going to be dancing, then count me out of your revolution."

So, we must have some dancing!

You say that Friday is the day you meet up to recycle. That's kind of a game killer. Who wants to stay after school on Friday?

What we suggest is this: If it's possible, can the recycling component of your activities be handled on a "little bit each day" basis? As in, can you recycle a bit each weekday and save your
Fridays to meet up, discuss the weeks adventures, and hopefully celebrate your successes?

You're making money from your efforts. Make sure that you're using it to encourage your team. Get some movies! Pop some corn! You've worked hard all week, and you should allow yourselves to blow off steam. Watching the Planet Earth documentary series while you take turns blogging is a grand and fine way to pass an afternoon.

We here at SuperForest would very much like to see your blog up and running by the end of Oct. if not sooner. (Then we can link to it! And you to us! The snowball continues rolling!)

Furthermore, we pledge to help in any way we can. Whether it's blogging tech support, or further questions you may have, or just a compassionate ear to listen to your woes, SuperForest will be there to help support you and ensure that you succeed.

You have the tools and the talent.

Good on you, Iman.

Love to you and your club.

Sincerely,

Team SuperForest



p.s. Got questions? Trust in the genius of the collective!
Send your questions to asksuperforest(at)gmail(dot)com.

Blue Monochrom - Dumpster Tub

I will probably agree with you when you say that dump-containers look dirty and that they can't be used for sanitation purposes.
But Michel de Broin proves the opposite. He transformed a dumpster into a... tub. Indeed.

I must admit it looks quiet cool. With all the pipes which are used by the pool's pump it looks like an industrial masterpiece. Not to speak of the pool stair that hangs out of it.
Blue Monochrom, that's the name of de Broin's pool/dumpster, can almost contain 1700 liters of water and the inner wall is covered by a water resistant material (probably the same that's used in regular pools).
That's what I call recycling!

via:makeblog:michel de broin

-jdh

The IV-1 Plastic Bike

I've seen bikes made from cardboard, bikes with cool LED's and bikes with very cool transmissions. But as far as my memory goes I've never seen a bike made from plastic. Recycled plastic to be more specific.
This is the IV-1 prototype by Matt Clark.


Matt Clark is one of the few very bright designers who think before they do. When designing the IV-1 Clark kept the (costs of the) production process, material costs and the environment in the back of his mind. The bike is intended for mass production and can be assembled without screws. Yes, the plastic is constructed in such a way that the entity can be clicked together.

The plastic parts may look a bit weak. It's plastic though. But in fact the parts are built up of triangles, which gives a tremendous amount of sturdiness to the vehicle.

The IV-1 seems a great way to commute to work the healthy way and in the same time go easy on the environment. The best part is that the designer kept mass production in the back of his mind, so this could be just around the corner.

via:bike commuters

-jdh

The Secret Life Of Paper

The Secret Life Of Paper is a short video by Inform. A platform dedicated to the education of the effect of us, human beings, on the environment. It's the second in a serial named The Secret Life Of... The goal is to show what happens to a certain ordinary product before and after we use it. In this case the ordinary product is obviously paper.

With speakers from all branches concerning paper Inform managed to show a detailed picture of the effect the paper industry has on the environment, how we could recycle better and how the government could act more responsibly. And all that within six minutes.

Here, have a look.

For some more background information on the short and the first part of the series (about cellphones) check out secret-life.org

-jdh

The wonderful art of Sofi Zezmer

A pen, a badminton shuttle, a key. All very common objects. They have no special meaning or so and they just do what they are made for. The key opens a door, the pen jots down a signature etc. At one point the key breaks and the pen gets empty and we throw them away. Too bad, because they can berecycled. You'll probably think "how can you recycle an empty pen?"

The Polish Sofi Zezmer can. Working in Germany she creates art that is composed out of common materials. Here are some of her sculptures.

Using the most ordinary objects such as bicycle horns, mirrors and badminton shuttles Zezmer creates the most colorful pieces of art. And the best part is that most of the stuff she processes into her sculptures has been used before and therefore is recycled!

-jdh

Treehugger's on a Roll!

(photo via flickr user eva8)

Morning All,

Just did the usual lap around the blogosphere. Treehugger is on fire today with a set of incredible posts.

Firstly, they've found that shipping waste 10,000 miles for recycling still better than landfilling.

Why? Well, those huge container ships that bring goods over from China sometimes head back empty, using the same amount of fuel. Fill those ships with recyclables and you reduce carbon emissions by two thirds. Two thirds!
We've always prefered recycling to landfilling. It's nice to know that the numbers are on our side.
(photo via flickr user jimfrazier)

Secondly, a high school student figured out to start genetically identifying sushi and fish sold in restaurants, only to find widespread mis-labeling going on. Tilapia being sold as tuna, endangered Atlantic halibut sold as non-endangered Pacific halibut, etc.
(photo via flickr user ronen08)

Thirdly, they've got a collection of hypermiling videos that will blow your mind and seriously make you think about the way you drive your car. (The new way is to think Grandma Andretti, not so much Mario.)

And fourth, a delicious collection of the 15 solar panel breakthroughs that you absolutely must know about. Thin film Photovoltaics, solar balloons, "hairy" solar panels, they've got it all, and it's all thrilling.

Treehugger is on a serious content-streak.

Nicely done and a huge "Thank you" to Graham Hill and all the good, hardworking folks at Treehugger for their excellent intel.

Isn't he adorable? One treehugger we'd like to hug. This cat speak four languages.

All Points West Festival

Hello All!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to go and see Radiohead and an assortment of other bands play at All Points West, a three day music festival in Liberty State Park.

Here are some pickies I snapped during the festivities:



A Bright, beautiful, Summer day. Perfect for concert goin'! Bright, beautiful people everywhere you looked to boot.



Saw a girl with a Terracycle drink-cooler bag, which made me really happy. Terracycle is great. We're working on a very special series of posts about them, but more on that later...



Here was something I'd never seen before: The Recycling Store!

Bring in recyclable stuff, trade it for swag you need. So cool. The exchange they had up was one plastic water bottle for a stick of lip balm. Sunscreen lip balm even! Bargain.

They had t-shirts, tote bags, posters. And, best of all, look how much stuff they kept out of landfills:



Hundreds of pounds of materials on their way back into the system. One by one we close the loops, and everyone wins. Sustainability is so sexy...

Did I say it was a cloudless day? Well, almost:



There was one little cloud, towards evening, that drifted down and said "Hello, little humans!"





And then Radiohead went on and all was right with the world. To be able to see one of my favorite bands in the world perform, and to be standing surrounded by my peers, hearing everybody sing along, was truly an amazing experience.

Thank you to all of those cool cats who forgave me for worming my sinister self up close to the stage. Everyone was so nice. No fighting, no jossling, just music.



Here's a great shot of Thom Yorke from the NY Times.

All in all I was thoroughly impressed by the level of thought and consideration that went into making All Points West as sustainable an event as possible.

The Recycling Store, the ferry rides over to the venue, the food being offered, even the beer selection. All of it made me smile and think: "Everything is going to be just fine."

It's nice when a concert can make you feel like that.

Love to All,

Jackson

Old Crayons Reborn!

How to make new crayons out of old crayons:

Step one: Get a bunch of old crayons and de-wrapper 'em.



Step two: Place crayons in baking tray and bake at 350º for 10 minutes, or until all are melted together into one large crayon-mass.



Step three: While said crayon-mass is still warm, use a cookie cutter of your choice to cut it into fun shapes.



Step four: give fun shapes out to all your friends!

Thanks to boingboing for the tip via Daily Danny.

Do we, at the SF offices, recycle?

Good Morning!

I don't know about you, but here at the SuperForest offices, we are obsessed with trash.

Now, this may shock some of you out there, but we have one large garbage can and we throw all of our lovely paper, metal, glass and plastic into it! Can you believe it? We can't.

We have constantly been questioning this because it goes against everything we've been taught, and are trying to convey, with separating our trash. We have asked the building management several times about this and they haven't been clear about why we do not separate our trash, in this large commercial building in the middle of Manhattan. Some maintenance people said that the building just doesn't recycle (What??). An elevator operator said that we pay extra to have the garbage company sort our trash for us. Well, which is it? Are we actually breaking the law and not recycling any of our trash?

From NYC.GOV:
"All New York City businesses are required to recycle.

Businesses and buildings that contract directly with a private carter or recycler are mandated to recycle under NYC’s Local Law 87 and Commercial Recycling Regulations, enacted in 1992."

I decided to do some digging...

Commercial buildings in NYC hire private companies to pick up their trash. Unlike the the sidewalk trashcans, residential buildings, government agencies and public schools which get their trash picked up by the Department of Sanitation. In our building, they use the company, Waste Management.

They are the largest waste collecting company in North America. They own 22,000 collection trucks. They own the largest network of landfills in the industry. They have tons of transfer stations to efficiently manage our waste. They operate several renewable energy plants and yes, they own a bunch of recycling centers. Our good friend, Mario, the elevator operator was right. We use a service called Single-Stream Recycling:

"WM Recycle America is focused on making it easier for people to recycle - whether home or at work. In 2001, Waste Management became the first major solid waste company to focus on residential single-stream recycling, which allows customers to mix recyclable paper, plastic and glass in ONE BIN. Residential single-stream programs have greatly increased the recycling rates, recovering as much as three times the amount of recyclable materials. In fact, we opened our first single-stream plant in the late 1990’s.

Single-stream recycling is made possible through the use of various mechanized screens and optical sorting technologies. With single-stream recycling well under way in residential applications, Waste Management is advancing the same easy recycling programs for other commercial applications"

So we pay a little extra, but it is 3x more effective than separating our recyclables? Is this the future? No more bins?

Waste Managements seems to be an all around, great company. Check out their awesome site, Think Green. They have a great video here, showing their recycling facilities.

I also love this video showing a pear rotting and the gasses being converted to energy.

Great Site. Neat Videos. Very cool.

This has led me to question how the city is managing all it's waste. Why don't we have recycling bins on every corner? Do they also sort our trash? If you've read my previous post on the Subway trash, you know that is also managed privately through the MTA. So, what is with Department of Sanitation? What are they doing with all our trash?
I'm still digging....details to come shortly.

Until then, keep sorting!
(Unless someone else is doing it for you!)
n