reclaimed
Recycle Your Greywater Into Your Landscaping
Harvesting rainwater is a great way to reuse the free water from the sky, however, unless you have a lot of rain barrels and a lot of rain, the dry season will cut your supply short- or will it? Grey water is another great source to recycle from since it is just being wasted by going down the drain.
Greywater is non-sewage waste water from your sinks, bathtub and laundry drains that is safe for your yard. The benefit to recycling or reusing this water is that it recharges aquifers and waters your plants while nature cleans the water. It is even better if the only thing going down the drain are natural cleaners, detergents and soaps. An individual may produce 15,600 gallons of greywater a year, all of which is wasted by going down the drain when it can be safely used on landscaping. Buckets have been used to collect this water from bathtubs, but can be cumbersome and labor intensive and there are easier ways.
Flotender has a great automated system that acts as a collection, storage and irrigation system all in one. Available for your rain collection devices as well, this system gathers your rainwater or greywater and pumps it out to your landscaping through a drip irrigation system. They have other systems available so you can customize the irrigation system to your needs, but they all use the same principle- collect the recycled water and distribute it to your plants. Hook it up to your rain barrels, tap it into your greywater drains and never have to water your yard again!
Stylish Sustainable Furniture in Tel Aviv – Ubico Design Studio
With so much trash and waste in the world, it’s great to see individuals like Ori Ben-Zvi turning into something beautiful and useful.
With stylish and thought provoking designs, Ubico Design Studio has been converting reclaimed materials into works of functional art since February of 2008.
Materials are collected from dumpsters, renovations works and the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel with the intention of urban gathering and reclaiming.
Offering sustainable furniture and accessories from recycled materials with environmentally conscious finishes, Our focus is on generating high quality design with good craftsmanship made solely of recycled and reclaimed materials.
Remodel, Reuse, Renew and Restore with the RE-Store – Green Home Furnishings
If you are lucky enough to live near the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, or a bit further north in Bellingham, Washington, then you are privileged to have a REStore near you. A home remodel and demolition reclaiming store, they save all of the wonderful things in older homes from landfills. If you are looking for home decor upcycling or reuse ideas or just need that one matching Victorian style crystal door knob or an authentic iron claw-foot bathtub, look no further. They also collect architectural features like mantling, ceiling tiles, fences and handrail posts.
The demolition of a modest 2,000 square foot house generates up to 127 tons of trash. The RE Store can reuse up to 50% of that material and recycle another 48%, leaving a mere 2% to end up in a landfill or incinerator.
I recently stumbled upon all kinds of wonderful items from a condo renovation project of an old high school. They had old basket style cubby bins, lockers and marble topped science tables. A veritable treasure trove of vintage items to be › Continue reading
Repurposing & Upcycling – The Ultimate in Green Recycling is Reuse
Repurposing (also known as upcycling or reuse) is really the best way of taking an existing object (usually no longer suited for its original purpose) and reusing it for another purpose. This can be as simple as creating an art mosaic out of broken dishes, to turning old doors into tables. It can be as creative as you are and just takes some imagination and good ol’ Macgyver skills. Doing this in a pleasing design friendly way can sometimes be a challenge, but here are a few of my favorites that have worked brilliantly both in the visual and the functional uses. First up, some great green home ideas of repurposed furniture, decor and lighting:
Vintage Belt Floor Mat
One of the coolest floor covering/mats i have ever seen. Its made of old leather belts and has a textures and colors that astound me. You can find them at Branch Home, along with a whole lot of other cool designed sustainable items and housewares.
Designer: Inghua Ting
Made from: Vintage leather belts
Price: $688.00
Buy it at: Branch Home
Truck Spring Stools
A wonderful example of an industrial use object repurposed for home use. It has great interesting design with all the charachter of a vintage weathered found object. It wouldn’t work in all homes, but it would look really cool in a few.
Designer: Ken Fulk
Made from: Discarded truck springs
Find it at: Artefact Design & Salvage in Sonoma, California.
[via apartmenttherapy]
Tower Light
Metaform Studio offers great green design by upcycling wooden palates and other materials into lamps and lighting solutions. The light pictured is created by hand from a variety of found wooden palates along with a good design sense. While it might be worthwhile to try this yourself, if you would like to pass up the learning curve and go directly to a elegant professionally re-crafted product, this is your answer.
Designer: Khader Humied
Made from: Found wooden palates
Price: $1,400.00
Buy it at: Metaform Studio
Vintage Automobile Hood Tables
Metal coffee tables repurposed from vintage car and truck hoods are unique, beautiful and have some history. Not something you find everyday, and probably pretty difficult to do yourself, these are not for the amatuer upcycler.
Designer: Joel Hester
Made from: Vintage automobile hoods
Price: $850.00
Buy it at: joelhester.com
Daisy Vase
Repurposing the bic pen is very easy, and considering how many disposible pens there must be out there, its a good candidate. The preceding link shows several uses such as a handle for a set of utensils all the way to dynamic sculpture lighting. I am very impressed by the range of uses people have come up with for this simple and abundent object. The bic pen vase is one of my favorite because it radically changes the use and original form of the pen with very little energy or effort.
Designer: Jim Termeer and Jess Giffin
Made from: disposable Bic pens
Price: $22.00
Buy it at: designboom
Eco-friendly and Sustainable Fashionable Bags – City Kitty Design
Looking for that chic new bag, but want something a bit, well, greener? City Kitty has you covered, in style. From handbags, totes and messenger bags, all six styles are made from reclaimed materials, making each one unique with a clean modern design. Express your individual personality and go green with a Recycled Belt Bag
I happened upon one of these bags from an acquaintance who was very excited about the find, and had received multiple compliments on it. They are very well constructed, and i would have believed it to have come from a high end designer, imagine my surprise to find out it was made from repurposed vintage blankets, curtains, coats and belts! I had to find out more, so I went directly to the source, Sabrena Wright, the designer and creator of City Kitty Design.
How did it all begin?
About 8 years ago I started designing and making handbags for fun. About three years ago I started using old wool blankets and tooled leather belts to make handbags, a shop owner asked if I would be interested in making bags for her shop – this was the start of City Kitty.
Eco-friendly was paramount when I decided to start the company. I wanted to prove that reclaimed and recycled materials do not have to be made from plastic and do not have to look ‘trashy’.
The great thing about using reclaimed materials is that they have been used – there is history woven in the fibers. Every handbag looks new and modern yet each has its own bit of history.
What do you see for City Kitty’s future?
The main future goals for the business besides increasing distribution, is to continue improving the handbag designs so that the bags are 100% eco-friendly – eliminating the use of metal fasteners and grommets and looking for new eco-friendly/sustainable materials. Next year I will be transitioning the brand from ‘City Kitty’ to ‘Sabrena Wright’ to best reflect the evolving quality and design. I have a few new designs that are not on the website yet, I just finished them this week. These are new designs for 2009 – a lot more hand sewn leather details and the designs are more refined.
Where do you get your design ideas and inspirations?
I find inspiration everywhere and usually when I least expect it – from walking the dogs to looking at Indian artifacts in a museum – I don’t leave the house without my sketchbook. I am influenced by Le Corbusier – very much a form follows function kind of girl. In the world of handbags, I admire the third read – the design details – of Hermes and Henry Cuir.
What makes your bags eco-friendly?
The wool, cotton, linen and leather used to make my handbags are a mix of pre and post consumer waste and sustainable fibers (wool, linen, hemp). Larger scraps of leather are given to another artist to use for leather jewelry. I use refurbished vintage sewing machines to sew all of the fabric portions of the handbags, most of the leather is hand sewn using waxed linen thread. All of the paper marketing materials and product tags are printed on 100% recycled paper.
To find out where to buy these wonderful green totes and bags, check out her website at City Kitty Design.
Recycling Religiously – Temple of Glass
Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters
Built with more than a million glass bottles, the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple in Thailand’s Sisaket province is quite the model for sustainable. Located about 600 km (370 miles) northeast of Bangkok, the
REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom
Thai Buddhist temple has found an environmentally friendly way to utilize discarded bottles and has used them to build everything in its premises, from a crematorium to shelters and toilets. I can imagine the amount of natural light and colors are simply breathtaking. Unfortunately i don’t live in Thailand and I couldn’t find much more information about it in English anywhere, but somehow it still seemed relevant to this blog.
[via china daily]
Simply Wood Rings – Eco-Concious Jewelry
Simply Wood Rings are some of the most unique and beautifully designed jewelry I have ever come across. With the help of a two apprentices and one office worker, Gustav Reyes employs a relatively cutting-edge method of wood-working to create durable, one-of-a-kind rings. Using bent lamination, a technique used in furniture construction, Gustav cuts thin strips of wood that are then soaked and wrapped rather than carved against the grain. This creates a very durable ring that maintains the structural integrity of the wood and its grain. The ring is then molded, carved, and embellished and finally covered with a lacquered finish. Created from a single piece of wood, these rings are not constructed by a lathe, nor do they have metal inserted to create stability. They can only be made by hand. The wood in the ring is manipulated only to the extent that it is capable of being manipulated; its integrity is never compromised.
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Each piece is crafted from repurposed materials. Salvaged lumber from other artists, wooden objects of personal significance from customers (such as baseball bats or musical instruments) are transformed into unique engagement rings, wedding bands or special gifts.
“I strive to create art with love and an understanding that this love is not a possession but a gift that must be shared. I try to give back to that love by making art not depleting the universe but reshaping one of its greatest gifts-trees. Through the use of wood all the energy, spirit and history of the tree is worked to bring out that beauty.
Art is a pure expression of a life lived without constraints.”
- Gustav Reyes
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Gustav handcrafts every ring to bring out the warmth and honesty of the wood, striving to maintain its original spirit. When you order one of their rings, you know you are getting something that comes only from environmentally and socially conscious sources, something that has been uniquely crafted by hand to bring out the true beauty of each piece of wood.
MetaForm Studio
I had the pleasure of interviewing Khader Humied, the founder of MetaForm Studio, a lighting design studio using reclaimed and sustainable materials for their magnificent pieces. Having been featured in home style magazines Dwell, Domino, New York Spaces and Natural Home Magazine, MetaForm is no stranger to praise.
How did your company get its start, and what made you decide to make it eco-friendly?
In 1998, I was working in Manhattan and noticing how corporations were throwing away furniture left and right during renovations and remodeling. I started off by picking up 2 office chairs. I removed the legs and attached them to a piece of plywood, and voila, a rolling coffee table with chrome legs (on wheels). From there I moved on to flower crates stacked up on the street in the flower district. The first one I found I put a bulb inside and instant lamp! After several years, I began using the wood from recycled crates as well as other wood from pallets and other items, and transformed the wood into slats, which I assemble into my current line of lights. The base line for my company has always been to find a function and use for materials that have been discarded. I am an ardent believer that using natural and sustainable materials is the only way to go forward and be kind to the planet.
What are your goals for the future of this business?
I would like to reach a wider audience, employ more people, and expand the line to include other designs. During the 10 years I have been doing this work, I came up with numerous ideas/products, some of which took shape as actual furniture. For instance, I created a Pallet Desk, made entirely from planed wood pallets (oak). This is really a testimony to what you can do with recycled materials. I also designed a Re-Tire rocking chair made from recycled car tires. Since I am an inventive person, I would love to get more of my ideas out there.
Are there any designers or artists that have influenced your style, where do you find your inspiration?
I am a long-time Frank Lloyd Wright fan, having gotten a degree in architecture. I also admire traditional crafts and local vernacular architecture and appreciate anyone who makes anything with pride and heart. The universe and the unconscious inspire me on a daily basis. Great ideas are out there waiting to be discovered. All you have to do is be open to receive them.
What makes your business eco-friendly?
We currently use only sustainable or recycled materials, mostly wood. All of our stains are nontoxic and we use energy-efficient lightbulbs. Our process of manafacturing is very clean and does not generate scraps or fumes. For example, our shop is in an industrial complex. All I have to do is walk around and collect wood pallets. Our other source of wood is sustainably harvested forests and the plywood we use is nontoxic.
You can find MetaForm Studio lighting installations if you happen to be in the New York area at IN Boutique and ReLish Restaurants, or just take a look at their striking website and order one online.
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