Memories of indoor games are littered with the lingering odor of adolescent sweat, the squeak of plimsoles and those gymnasium floors lined up for basketball et al. But those gym floors don’t last forever and as it turns out they can be recycled into some surprisingly desirable home products.
The clever people at mademansion.com are stocking this rather fetching ethical product. If you’re looking for an eco friendly low rise coffee table this one makes quite a statement.
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The US outdoor clothing manufacturer has been a big player in ethical fashion since the mid-1990’s. They’ve lead the way with innovative manufacturing processes that allow them to use recycled plastics as the principle material source for their fleeces and puffa jackers. There’s little question that they where their principles lie in terms of ecological product development and unquestionably their customers will be happy with the ethical product offering.
In addition their commitment to the Common Threads initiative has to put them in a class of their own. As the producer they commit to build products that will last and recycle used products and materials when their useful life has passed. On the other side of the coin the consumers makes a similar ethical commitment – to repair broken goods, reuse, sell or share what a used might no longer need and allow those products to be recycled where ever possible. The pairing of ecological commitments on both sides of the consumption equation is impressive. In ethical fashion there is undoubtedly the temptation to pitch the high-end products as ‘pieces’ – not transient fashion but a longer lasting statement of style. But the Common Threads initiative undoubtedly pins the retailer into a commitment to deliver quality that runs on and on like a Duracell bunny and edge way from the temptation to deliver flash in the pan season by season styles.
Photo courtesy of ßlϋeωãvε on flickr. http://flic.kr/p/pmi88
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Another summer and another Harry Potter block buster bursts onto the scene bringing with it a deluge of screaming fans camping out for the faintest site of the stars of the franchise.
When the first Harry Potter was filmed no one would have imagined that Emma Watson would generate such interest from the media.
Roll things forward 10 years and she is a designer and ambassador for People Tree one of the emerging global names in ethical fashion. Their fair trade certified clothing has emerged as one of the main players in the ethical goods arena as they successfully combine cutting edge styling with deeply engrained principles on fairness and low ecological impact. They not only source the cotton on fair trade principles ensuring the growers receive a fair price for their produce but also are cetified by the Soil Association for their Organic line and have strict controls on the environmental impact from the dye stuff’s they use.
In 2009 their founder, Safia, won the The Observer Ethical Awards for Fashion and even the recessionary economic situation has done little to restrict the growth of the business in the last few years. Safia Minney has taken the product line from strength to strength.
Currently they are running their summer sale with some serious discounts so for some now might be a good time to try out some ethical apparel.
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With spring now in the air many a homeowner will be inspecting the garden furniture ready for another year. Although sustainably sourced wooden chairs and benches make a good choice. By the time you factor in the maintenance and protection required to achieve their full lifetime they are hardly the choice of the discerning eco-warrior.
So that’s where MarMax come in with their range of ethically produced garden furniture. These guys tap into the ever increasing flow of recycled plastics and turn these into brightly coloured and fun products for the garden. These include chairs, tables, picnic tables and even picket fencing.
A single bench gives new life to more than 2000 plastic bottles and, of course, reduces the burden on landfill. They have a great range of recycled products and are prepared to turn their hand to anything – they even produced an elephant weighing stand for Whipsnade animal park.
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I think I must go through at least one pair of jeans a year. Sure they get a gradual retirement, probably a years service for decorating and jobs around the house. But there’s a point when every pairs of jeans doesn’t have the right feel when you pull them on – and that’s when you know that their life in your wardrobe is done.
But given the volume of denim going through the system a surprisingly innovative use for old jeans has emerged.
Over in the states Bonded Logic, a leading provider of ethical insulation materials, has come up with a non-toxic alternative to fiberglass insulation. Their UltraTouch Natural Cotton Fiber Insulation offers a solution produced from 90 percent post-consumer denim fibers. UltraTouch doesn’t have any of the nasties like carcinogens and formaldehyde. And, of course, as you dose off each night in your beautifully insulated homed you’ll have the peace of mind you’ve done you’re bit for the environment …. that and you’ll know where all those discarded pairs of jeans go to.
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Etsy has become a great resource for finding useful products cunningly crafted from recycled materials.
Right now they have these great coffee tables made from reclaimed wood saved from 100 year old barns in Kentucky. It’s just the kind of loving restoration the Colonel would approve of.
It’s a beautiful piece of recycled furniture and it’s older than you nan … so what’s not too like.
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One of London’s most interesting ethical projects this summer has been The Jellyfish Theatre. A pop up theatre made entirely from recycled and reclaimed materials. The project was developed by Kobberling and Kaltwasser, award winning Berlin based architects, and was assembled by an army of volunteers from recycled pallets and discarded doors and chairs.
You could describe this as ‘cool’ – maybe even get carried away with the Theatre of it, let’s go crazy, a triumph. But this wasn’t enough for Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times.
For her it resembled a ‘resting spaceship from a particularly right-on planet’ and she continues to comment on it’s ‘jaunty patchwork of wooden panels, extended fore and aft by pallets and planks that give it the rough shape of a boat and festooned with decorated water bottles’.
Ok – so I think we get that she liked it. But come on ‘jaunty’ … ‘festooned’ – what is the 1890′s? Not sure about the whole spaceship thing either. I’ve seen more than my fair share of sci-fi movies and the consensus is spaceships are are either metalic of made of some material beyond the comprehension of mankind. I mean, it’s go to be some hard up Alien who’s sets off to explore the outer reaches of Southwark in a spaceship made of old wooden pallets.
But it is a very cool expression of what can be achieved. I for one will be hoping to check out how it works as a production venue. http://www.oikosproject.com/
Posted in recycled materials, Uncategorized | Tagged eco building, green building, reclaimed wood, recycled materials, recycled wood, sustainable building | Leave a Comment »
Recycled Materials Hotel
As any beachcomber will tell you identifying the flotsam from the jetsam is the least of your worries. The world’s oceans are becoming choked with assorted debris that has roughly the same half life as plutonium.
Naturally the way to highlight the woe’s of the world’s ocean’s was to build a pop-up hotel from 12 tonnes of rubbish, including plastic bottles, cans and even car exhaust pipes collected from Europe’s beaches. This astonishing building is the creation of Hans-Jürgen Schult .
But the real achievement is that Hans-Jürgen went on to get the Danish supermodel Helena Christensen lined up as their first guest.
I mean the dude looks like Kim Jong-il’s aryan half-brother. If this guy can get Helena Christensen to come back to his place then I’m going to reappraise that career as a beachcomber.
Posted in Ethical product, recycled materials, Uncategorized | Tagged eco building, ethical mater, ethical products, living green, reclaimed materials | 1 Comment »
It’s not like passing through airports became a more elegantprocess over the last decade. Jacket off, metal detector sweep, pat down, shoes off, jacket off, laptop into the ‘sniffer’ etc…. . It’s a little bit like having your pockets checked for chewing gum at school – but without the thrill of having a genuine chance of winning the game of deception.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love an ethically sourced product as much as the next eco-junkie. Nearly any kind of recycled produce is good and from my side the more weird and wonderful the better. Although I suspect this one might be a step too far.
But hats off to the guys at neomansland.fr for offering this travel case made from a recycled jerry can. Available in a range of funky colours so that you wife and children can also enjoy freaking out airport security the world over. They even credit the idea to German designers. Although in the context of all the trouble this product going to get you in that’s a little like thanking the designers of the Panzer for ‘testing’ the Maginot Line.
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Sometimes I just type a seemingly random word into Google, not because it is a search engine but because it is a marketing machine – a roulette wheel for businesses seeking punters. I’m not searching for anything in particular, just curious about who would want to pay for that query.
Provoked by that mornings java I ended up with Colombian. Well it turns out that Colombias premier online service is colombianbride.com – tagline, ‘Colombian Brides make the best latin brides’ (wow – how did they make it sound so wholesome?). Although somehow I doubt that there is a JD Power survey to back this one up.
But all this aside those resourceful colombians are taking an interesting tack to all the wasted glass generated when car windscreens are replaced. Their recycled windshield wine glasses even retain the tint included to reduce driver glare. Not that I’m oftened dazzled by the viognier sloshing around in the thing – but a nice touch none the less. Now available at uncommongoods.com
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