Reducing our consumption is an imperative. Recycling is now a fact of life, but for some reason we still seem a bit squeamish about reusing. Perhaps we don’t want to look “cheap” or maybe there’s a stigma in using items others have considered trash. I believe some of the most inventive solutions and fun items on the market today are repurposed.
Here are 10 of the coolest recreated goods from across the web:
1) Sometimes you still need to send a letter instead of an email. When you do send snail mail don’t settle for recycled paper take your environmental sustainability one step further with reused map stationary. Artist Chris Ryan has to buy 15 tons of outdated maps at a time to keep up with the demand for his one of a kind stationary sets.
2) The Weld House in Dallas, TX makes modern furniture out of reclaimed sheet metal from 20+-year-old American cars. They can build custom tables, armoires, and beds and ship them around the world (though shipping long distances, isn’t exactly green). They can make furniture out of new blue/gray steel, but their passion is salvaged metal.
3) Two great building ideas for recycling old windows. Build a beautiful backyard hideaway, office, or kids play room or grow more of your own vegetables in a custom built greenhouse.
4) Artist Iri5 (For real. That’s her name.) has created stunning portraits rock icons out of old cassette tapes. Iri5 makes all of her artwork out of found objects. On her website she explains, “I love the nostalgia of the archaic and I hope that not everything which has outlived its use goes to waste.” So do we Iri5. Keep up the brilliant work.
5) Be the envy of every kid in your neighborhood and convert a caboose into a home. Yes, a train car. This reclaimed train movement is much like building with shipping containers except more romantic. I smell home office possibilities as well. Can you imagine inviting people over to discuss business and telling them to meet you in the dining car? Amazing!
6) I love this! Used cooking oil has another use besides powering a diesel car. The Japanese company Filt is using the cooking oil from the restaurant below their offices to make scented candles. The wax is filtered, scented and put into reused glass containers. Because the company only uses found glass each candle is unique. Right now you can only buy the candles in Japan, but maybe if we kick and scream enough a company will sell them here or someone like Terracycle will start making their own version.
7) Reclaimed seat belts have been fashioned into clothing belts and straps on bags, but now you can sleep on them. Ting Studios in the UK has designed a comfortable hammock made of reclaimed seatbelts and they even have a reused seatbelt pillow to go with it.
8) Musicians snap and replace guitar strings constantly. Wearyourmusic.org collects these strings from popular musicians and creates jewelry. The profit from the sale of these products goes to the musician’s charity of choice. To make a good idea better they ship the jewelry to you in recycled CD cases.
9) This is a do it yourself reuse. Clay cat litter is a huge environmental headache so why not make your own out of old newspapers. I admit to trying this recipe on TheGreenists.com, and not successfully producing the desired clumps, so please let me know if you have a better recipe. For those not inclined to DIY pick up a bag of Yesterdays News at your local pet shop. Made with recycled newspaper it’s just as effective as clay.
10) I couldn’t do a reuse list without mentioning the guys and gals from Terracycle. I was pretty bored with their whole juice pouch bag thing since you can only have so many bags and I’ve seen them on every green show ever produced, so I was hoping for new practical and fun creations when I visited their website.
I got lucky because they have two new items, which are fun an extremely useful: the Bear Naked Shower Curtain and Clif Bar Wrapper Holiday Bows. No longer will we have to purchase long, wasteful, sheets of plastic to keep the water inside our shower and the Holiday Bows will look perfect on packages this holiday season.
More cool stuff on Celsias:
Nuclear Waste - The Unsolved Problem
this is a great article!
Written in September