Category Archives: Recycle
From what we’ve read and seen on TV before, Igloos keep Eskimos warm. Well, we stumbled across an Igloo that might do just the opposite, taken that its made from refrigerators! Well, if you’d power all these up and leave their doors open, living in an Igloo like this would be worse than sleeping on ice. Anyways, the Igloo was made from around 322 old fridges. Besides these, other devices like kids’ toys, fans, kettles, microwaves, washing machines, toasters, a TV set and other items are included too. The Igloo has been christened “Wastefulness Is the Biggest Source of Energy”, a name too long probably. A list of materials that went into human consumption while constructing this has also been displayed which includes 3 bars of chocolate, 35 pairs of gloves, 487 sandwiches, 120 beers and 5,636 feet of wire too. Weighing 10.5 ton and standing 18.3 feet tall, this one sure is a marvel of recycling!
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With a name like The Hopeless Diamond Sofa, we sure thought a lot different about this piece of furniture before digging in for more information. This one hardly is any hopeless though. Probably a name like The Awesome Diamond Sofa Made from Recycled Stuff would go better. Anyways, the sofa by Christopher Stuart uses some pretty weird materials like a copper plumbing pipe, shipping blankets, zip ties, and carpet padding and a lot more. The design of this one was inspired by the F-117 stealth aircraft, probably why the name Hopeless Diamond came through (ask the Air-force why they chose that for a name).
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We’ve gone all bonkers over Electrolux’s initiative of using up all those plastic islands floating around in our oceans, recycling the debris and making vacuum cleaners out of them. We last came across the Vac from the Sea initiative a few months ago. The company has now unveiled five vacuum cleaners made from 70% recycled plastic. Each of the designs on these vacuum cleaners that make them look more like pieces of modern art that have a rightful place in an art gallery instead of sucking on dust, represents the ocean the rubbish they were made with hailed from. Now you probably won’t find any of these on the shelves of your local Electrolux dealer. The company has decided to auction of just one of these while the rest probably end up in the museum.
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All those leftovers that you leave behind with the bill in a restaurant do not necessarily have to land up in the dump. It can be recycled to grow some pretty cool plants instead, and that’s exactly what Joost Bakker has set out to show the guys who run restaurants in Sydney. This Melbourne artist loves recycling just as much as we do and packed a van full of oregano, thyme and parsley plants grown in soil that once was kitchen waste. These are put up on display at the Royal Hall of Industries in Moore Park where you can peek at them in wonder. Once pushed out of restaurant kitchens, the waste undergoes in-vessel composting baking it at high temperatures that destroy the harmful and unnecessary waste, particularly seeds that could effect the crop grown from it.
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Recycled shipping containers have found their uses, turning into mobile homes and shops before. Its time now for them to be used as an entire shopping mall too! LOT-EK, an architecture firm has come up with this mall, made out of recycled shipping containers that might soon find a home on a corner at 42nd St. and 5th Avenue in New York City. Nine levels high, the mall will be constructed by simply stacking the shipping containers one above the other unevenly for an undulating surface. Currently, New York City is dotted with spots of unused and unoccupied land. Using shipping containers to build structures in areas like these could help, taken that they’re cheaper to build, easier to work with and can be dismantled easily too!
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Plastic is the most useful packaging material man invented, but sadly it’s not bio-degradable. And all that plastic waste cannot be rather is not recycles, only bottles can be reused. So how do we save the planet from a potential choke up? We head Japan for a solution where inventor Akinori Ito has created a device to melt plastic to generate oil! Called as the Blest Machine, the safe to use at home machine melts two pounds of plastic through an electric heater to give you a quart of oil. Since the plastic doesn’t burn, there no CO2 fumes. The oil can be used to power stoves and generators, and can be further refined as gasoline. Priced at a steep $9,500, time to head to the land of the rising sun to go green!
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Using recycled materials to build stuff isn’t the brainwave of the recent decades. That’s what we figured out after having excavated this 90-year old house made from recycled papers, that’s still standing strong. It hasn’t budged, shifted, caved in or turned to pulp for almost nine decades now. Built by inventor and engineer Ellis Stenman of Rockport, Massachusetts, the house known as the Paper House is now a tourist attraction and was built as a hobby at first in 1922. Stenman then began fashioning out everything for this home from paper, including a piano, furniture like chairs and table lamps too, all using a glue made from flour, water and apple peels.
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Have you ever wondered what Starbucks would do with all the packaging material that gets left behind after all the goods have bee sold? I’m sure you haven’t, but The Formary, a New Zealand-based design company not just wondered but also managed to conceptualized a classy looking pair of chairs upholstered with of wool and recycled Starbucks coffee sacks, which was eventually manufactured by Frappucino purveyor and Camira and Wools of New Zealand. Tagged as WoJo (Wool + Jute), the chairs took 18months in the making.
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Just a while ago, we came across a pavilion made out of reused beer crates. This time around, the crates previously contained no alcohol, just milk. Using recycled and reused milk crates, this pavilion was put up by designers Ann Ha and Behrang Behin. The designers, winners of the City of Dreams Pavilion competition of this year’s Figment Festival, came up with this 10-foot tall, tent-like structure using white Admar Plastics milk crates. Besides being used to form the pavilions body structure, these crates also act as suspended beds for plants inside.
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Speedo has decided to recycle all those cutting-edge technology using swimming suits left behind having being banned from the Olympics. In the year 2008, these suits, the Speedo LZR Racer meant for swimming helped wearers crumble previous records and zip through the water, as competitors looked in shock. The suits were finally banned by the competitive swimming governing body FINA (Federation Internationale de Natation). And so, Speedo, with help from British designs team From Somewhere will now have these swimsuits recycled to create a few original fashions using the leftover fabric. A statement dress to be auctioned for charity will also be cut out of the swimsuits.
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