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.

http://www.mademansion.com/gym-floor-coffee-table/

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

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.

http://www.marmaxproducts.co.uk/

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.

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/

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.

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.

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

http://bit.ly/1yY9up

BA Baracus

I was somewhat surprised to see last year that knitting was back with the cool young things of London (the chicks at least). I realise the credit crunch is bringing a little austerity chic back into vogue but it’s hard to know if the act of knitting or the final product is the most annoying. Actually, thats nonsense, they are both equally annoying – like being trapped in a lift with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Gwynth Paltrow.

But what are the boys to do? Well taking a leaf out of the note book of one Sargent BA Baracus it’s got to be welding. I mean in the 1980’s hardly a week went by without a tractor being converted into a tank. Yes – time for us men to getout there and weld stuff to stuff. Alternatively you could check out the gear available from The Weld House.

www.theweldhouse.com

They take all kinds of cool stuff and weld it into something that looks vaguely like it’s forebears. I for one love the 1970’s sedan hoods converted into tables. And what little lady wouldn’t want her hubby to come back from a $3,000 dollar shopping spree with a bed assembled from beautiful raw steel?

Well our Canadian cousins have found the solution to all those fur recycling issues. Furteddybears.com does exactly what it says on the tin. For only $140 dollars US they will give any dusty old fur a new lease of life as a teddy bear.

I mean surely it’s every young childs dream – a teddy bear composed from the hide of one of gods little creatures.

(The Lindsay Lohan connection is tenuous to say the least but I couldn’t bear to be the only blogger not running a Lohan story – is she, isn’t she etc …)