Green Options

As many of you know, I’ve been on hiatus planning Strange Folk, which took place this past weekend in O’Fallon, IL.  We had amazing weather and an estimated turn-out of 10,000 people. On a shoestring budget, I set out not only to lessen this event’s impact on the planet, but also to wisen the public to the ways of upcycling.

The first part of this equation poses many obstacles. For instance, enough cash to order all the marketing materials I need printed on recycled cardstock with soy based ink from a company across the country (because no one does that locally) and offsetting the carbon emissions it takes to ship them to me. But that’s just the beginning. I’m truly starting to understand the woes of the organizers of this year’s Democratic National Convention, even if they had $70 million to work with. Pfft… pocket change in terms of going uber-green.

The fourth Carnival of Green Crafts is now posted at Smidge, and Kat has done a bang-up job of collecting some green crafty links for all of us to enjoy.  Thanks Kat!

If you haven’t yet submitted something to the carnival, please send in a post for our next edition! We’d love to get your thoughts about green crafting, upcycling, thrifting and crafting, and more.

Want to host a carnival?  Let us know!  Details about submitting and hosting are on the Carnival of Green Crafts home page.

New to the Carnival of Green Crafts or blog carnivals in general?  Missed previous carnivals?  Here’s the 411:

[images via Alchemy Goods]

Alchemy Goods was a little idea that grew into a wonderful company. The owner was on the hunt for the perfect, waterproof messenger bag for his bike commute and was at a loss. There were always spare bike tires laying around his apartment, though, and he realized he could probably fashion a bag out of those! Friends started asking where they could get one, as did the owners of a local bike shop. Now, the Seattle-based company makes all sorts of bags and accessories from discarded materials!

Each bag is handmade in their Seattle workshop where they clean and inspect every bike inner tube, seatbelt, and sign for quality. Then, they cut everything up and stitch it together! Check out some of their awesome products after the jump!

[image via Vards Uzvards]

Americans receive the equivalent of over 100 million trees in the form of junk mail every single year. Most of these catalogues and offers that show up in our mailboxes don’t even warrant a second glance. They go straight into the trash or the recycle bin and on to the waste stream. Junk mail wastes our time and our resources.

The U.K.’s Royal Mail offers a door-to-door opt out system. Folks can just fill out a simple form requesting that mail carriers not leave bulk mailings in their boxes. In the U.S., we aren’t that lucky. There are a few things you can do, though, to slow down the needless flow of waste into your mailbox.

[image via BellyBuzz]

Holiday time is coming, and the hunt for green gift-wrapping options is on! I know it’s a little early to be thinking about the holidays, but I couldn’t resist talking about the gorgeous gift adornments from BellyBuzz. These upcycled bows are made from discarded magazines and are perfect for dressing up a gift box. The bows are self-adhesive and are even sturdy enough to use more than once! She’s also happy to do custom orders with whatever color or magazine preference you’ve got.

I have always adored traditional Mayan textiles, especially huipils.  Chi Chi Amor takes huipil and corte fabric from Guatemala and repurposes it into beautiful children’s clothing. Handmade by small family groups, Chi Chi Amor’s unique clothing are perfect for eco-conscious, globally-minded families.

Chi Chi Amor was founded by two anthropologist mothers Danielle O’Connor and Shari Feldman.  “Chi Chi” refers to the town of Chichicastenango, Guatemala, where textiles are produced.  “Amor” of course means love in Spanish, and it expresses for Danielle and Sheri, “the realization of our idea, our friendship, the expression of our feelings for Guatemala and its people, and the deep love that we feel for our children and families…that’s Amor!”

I particularly love the worry doll pants. These sweet pants are made from the traditional Mayan corte skirt fabric.  Beautiful embroidered flowers adorn the pant legs, and a special surprise of worry dolls reside in the pockets.  If you are not familiar with worry dolls, they are small Guatemalan folk dolls that are used to ease children’s anxieties.  Children who have trouble going to sleep can tell the doll their worries, place them under their pillow, then rest peacefully as the doll does the worrying for them.  With all of the anxiety of childhood, having worry dolls in one’s pockets would be handy to deal with the rational and irrational fears of life.

Previously featured by Low Impact Living in an article here about the fine art of upcycling, Schimmel Art is worth a another look:

The artist’s vision is to utilize the disciplines of painting and mosaic to create a connected collection of representational or abstract images in segments of brilliant color. The goal of the work is to utilize resources that would otherwise go to waste. It’s described as an organic communion of thought and inspiration. The faces portrayed are imagined to be images from advertising ephemera and motivated by the constant external stimuli of art and beauty, fashion and design.

The artist says

Upcycling, a phrase coined by Cradle to Cradle authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart, is the act of creating useful products from waste materials.  You’ve probably seen several upcycled products on the market today–reusable bags are often made from old plastic bags, t-shirts, or other upcycled materials.  TerraCycle is now upcycling many products, including juice pouches and cookie wrappers.  Among design junkies, craftsters, and green folks, upcycling is the latest challenge to combat climate change.  My only gripe is I keep seeing the same upcycling ideas–the aforementioned reusable bags, the old t-shirt revamp–and they’ve been done.  Fortunately, places like Ready Made Magazine and Instructables continue to facilitate new upcycled products.  Here are six creative, practical upcycling projects that, with a little time and skill, you can do at home.

These stairs are so cool!  At Toronto’s Roarockit Skateboard School, they used skateboard decks to build a stairway.  It appears the decks were custom made for the stairs, but this would be a creative way to upcycle old decks.

Via: Treehugger

This is a guest post by Becky Haas, who is an amateur crafter/environmentalist who also tries to make a living as a professional musician. You can also find her at the craft blog Sew and So.

I have a confession to make…I’m addicted to music. I guess it comes naturally, since that’s what I spend a lot of my time doing. So I always love it when I stumble across a craft project that uses music-related materials, like Kelly Rand’s recent article on things to do with old cassette tapes.

By this point, I don’t have too many old tapes lying around, but what I do have is a lot of CDs–most of which I still listen to. But we all have those CDs that are too scratched up to play properly, or came free in the mail with unwanted software, or have those songs that seriously tempt you to throw the disc out the window if you hear them just one more time, if it wouldn’t be considered littering. So here’s a couple of ideas for things to do with them.

My first thought was jewelry, and it turns out that it’s pretty easy to transform an old CD into that. Here’s what you need for a very basic set of earrings and a necklace:

It’s encouraging to see the increasingly wide assortment and availability of products made from recycled materials, but there’s a problem on the other end: A lot of things aren’t accepted for recycling by curbside collection services, at least not in the US.

As this recent article in Fast Company details, it’s not currently profitable for recyclers to take much beyond the most common, high volume items, like aluminum, paper, and a select few types of plastic. You can forget about candy and snack wrappers. Too many comingled materials, too difficult to create a consistent, usable result on the other end.

But, thanks to Terracycle and companies like mega food producer Kraft Foods teaming up, that’s changing, on a potentially huge scale.