I'm dreaming of a green Christmas

Today's post was contributed by Emily of Candy Calamity.
please visit her here: http://www.candycalamity.blogspot.com/

Part of my family’s holiday tradition is that at some point on Christmas morning, when we’re about halfway done opening presents, my dad will go get a big trash bag and we play a game trying to toss in all the torn up wrapping paper scraps strewn about. By the end of the day, between the paper, ribbon, bows, and all the packaging, it’s not uncommon to fill three big bags. The presents look lovely under the tree, but I have to wonder if it’s worth all the waste. This year, I’m making an effort to change things; I vow to avoid all commercial wrapping products.

One easy earth friendly wrapping method is to reuse bags and wrapping paper from gifts you have received previously, but assuming you didn’t plan ahead and start saving last year, or if all your friends and family are already in on the eco movement and didn’t use any here are some new ideas to try:

1. Brown paper packages
If it’s in The Sound of Music it must be true – brown paper packages tied up with string are a favorite of many people. In my example I used a paper shopping bag dragged out from the back of the closet and cut open, but any sturdy paper you can find will do.



A – The classic, if your good you don’t even need to use tape for this one (I needed a little)
B – Dress it up with a plastic bag pompom from this tutorial from Creature Comforts: http://creaturecomforts.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/11/diy-eco-happy-pom-pom-gift-topper.html
C – Attaching old fashion paper snowflakes can make your package look extra fancy.
D – Get out the paint/markers/crayons/anything and make your own wrapping paper. Try a simple repeating pattern, or make a holiday scene. Pro tip: decorate first and let everything dry before wrapping, otherwise you run the risk of your art bleeding through to the gift inside.

2. Make the wrapping part of the gift



E – The book lover in your life is not going to be fooled by the paperbacked shape lump under the tree anyway, might as well go on and use a nice ribbon bookmark to attach the tag
F – A small brooch or hair clip is a very useful substitution for a traditional bow.
G – A larger gift can be swaddled in a scarf. Here are some tips from someone whose example gift turned out much nicer than mine: http://weheartthis.com/2009/04/20/how-to-scarf-gift-wrapping/

3. Running short on time?



A good last minute idea is to get a pretty reusable bag from a store the recipient shops at frequently, you know they’ll be able to put it to good use.

Thanks, Emily, for some great green gift wrapping ideas!
Visit Emily's sweet blog and her yummy shop

TrashTalk vol.3

We're wrapping up the Trash Talk series for 2009 with an interview I did with Karen Lee of EcoKaren. She has a great shop which features eco-friendly gifts and accessories made from -you guessed it- recycled and repurposed materials!
Here's her take on the Trashion way of life...

TrashTalk vol.1

Starting off my TrashTalk series is an interview with perfumer and budding trashion artist Diana Rajchel of Magickal Realism.

Primarily a designer of perfumed potions, Diana is currently working to expand her line of 'trashion' offerings to include decoupaged bottles and diffusers, as well as one-of-a-kind gift/shipping boxes- all recycled and repurposed, of course!

Here's what I was curious about...

*Did you grow up with a green family, or is recycling and reusing something you taught yourself to do?

Not exactly. I grew up with a pseudo-green family. We would go spend time in nature, and my mother would repurpose some things out of frugality. We did grow our own food some years, and other years we didn't. Since there was no recycling and no mass transit where I grew up (Crown Point, Indiana) it was all a bit haphazard. We were certainly concerned about air pollution but we just had no options except to keep driving and keep polluting.

*Where do you find the materials that you plan on turning into trashion art?

Just from the things I bring in my home every day. Product boxes (like cereal, mac and cheese) get repurposed and reinforced for shipping. Bottles, like worcestershire or wine, get decoupaged. My flagship trashion is incense paper I make by converting my junk mail into something pretty-smelling. Even among my perfumery goods I'm trying to make it so every single bottle and box sees at least one reuse before it leaves my studio.

*How did you or do you come up with your ideas?

I think that's one of the  great unanswerable questions in the arts. My process is "hmm, I have this object. What can I do with it?" I let that cook for awhile. Sometimes I literally dream the solution.

*Why is it important for you to continue on this artistic path with trashion art?

The world's resources are drying up rather rapidly, and as a perfume designer I have to contend with extinction and related disasters on a daily basis, too. While papering boxes with old stuff won't solve the world's problems, it will slow them down, and trashion causes us to look at and rethink the everyday objects around us and gets us to pause, reconsider, and recreate instead of going out and just buying something brand new that puts further strain on the world.

*How do you feel the community has taken to your art?

When it comes to the trashion fragrances themselves, I think some people don't quite get them - a lot of "perfume snobs" are so conditioned to the scent and behavior of synthetics that they don't see that I'm not just doing all my perfumes up with the chemicals I use in trashion. I think the other things I create - the vials and bottles and especially the incense paper - are easier to understand because you can physically see what the objects used to be before they were repurposed.

*What draws you to a particular found object?

Its presence in my studio, mostly. How much space it takes up, whether it's washable, and in the case of bottles glass color can really catch my attention. I love blue and red glass.

*Do you know right off how you will use your found materials, or does the inspiration come later?

Sometimes I know right away. In the case of perfume vials, they can hold liquid. So that's all they're going to do before and after I work with them. In other cases, an object may sit for awhile while I puzzle at it - especially stacks of old magazines. I've started exploring shredding them and making paper, but the reward of that type of work is very small and frustrating so I may leave that to other dedicated paper makers.

*How long have you been making trashion art and when and why did you start?

I got started a few weeks after I joined Etsy. I was around when someone brought up starting a trashion team, and I was looking for new arts to explore to make my perfumery different from the others already dotting the landscape. It's become somewhat more of a passion for me since, as I've found new and creative ways to repurpose the items that pass through my hands. I've certainly started doing more with trashion in my home decor, hopefully I'll get a few things up to show on my own blog soon!

*What new projects are you working on? Is there an idea you have that you'd like to develop on in the future?

I am preparing a line of decoupaged diffusers using items that are from my daily flotsam (sewing notions, magazine pages, etc.) I'm also arranging for "trashion packs" that have a variety of samplers to go out. I may also soon have my answer to requests for scratch'n'sniff (I'm being mysterious on purpose) but it's a fairly time consuming project so that day is a ways off yet!

Thanks Diana, it's been nice talkin' trash with you!

To find out more about Diana and Magickal Realism visit:
magickalrealism.com
dianarajchel.com

Upcycling for Greener Living

See the full article in The Storque

Story by TeenAngster Published on September 7, 2007 in Craftivism
Photo by spookygonk

In the year 2007, being concerned about the environment is not a new or revolutionary idea. The general public has accepted that we’re standing at the crux of an ecological crossroads, and that in order for people to maintain their current way of life, major changes will have to take place in how we raise food, utilize energy, consume products and think about our waste. Just considering the changes necessary for the future can lead many to be intimidated, confused and apathetic about where to start when facing problems as varied as global warming, deforestation, pollution and waste.

Upcycling brings hope as a fresh concept and solution for the many environmental dilemmas the earth currently faces. The idea of taking would-be garbage and reimagining, reusing and reinventing its significance is really quite a novel idea: the materials are free and in frightening abundance, there are (hypothetically) no unhealthy aftereffects for the earth, and consumers gain the satisfaction of reusing something potentially wasteful in a new and exciting context, again and again.

In order to further understand this theory, we must look at its history. The term “upcycling” was coined by William McDonough and Michael Braugart in their groundbreaking book on ecologically-intelligent design, Cradle to Cradle, published in 2002. In the simplest terms, upcycling is the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value. It’s a question of designing new products that are intended to be reused again and again and yet again with a minimal amount of harmful byproducts, effectively working as a “cradle-to-cradle” model of production. Here's an example from Cradle to Cradle of the upcycling designer's new intentions: imagine a world where people casually discard used bottles designed to eventually biodegrade into food for the plant seeds embedded in their bases.

This idea comes in stark opposition to the “cradle-to-grave” view of manufacturing originally conceived during the Industrial Revolution, which is still primarily in practice to this day. As McDonough and Braugart put it, the cradle-to-grave model is one where “resources are extracted, shaped into products, sold and eventually disposed of in a ‘grave’ of some kind, usually a landfill or incinerator...What most people see in their garbage cans is just the tip of the material iceberg; the product itself contains on average only 5 percent of the raw materials involved in the process of making and delivering it.”

You may ask what the difference is between upcycling and recycling, as they seem quite similar. According to Cradle to Cradle, recycling is actually an example of "downcycling," whereby unrecoverable and unusable by-products are created in the recycling process. By recycling items toward uses that were never intended during their original production process (example: soda bottles into carpeting), they are effectively “wrestled” into a form that requires as much energy (or moreso) to produce than manufacturing a new carpet. In the end, the rug is ultimately still on its way to a landfill, creating “eventual waste.”

Ultimately, if upcycling proponents had their way, it wouldn’t be enough to merely reprocess trash into new products: there would simply be no trash to repurpose. Any product could be continually reused and upcycled into something useful. It’s a noble goal, and one that inspired Etsy in our recent Upcycling contest, where we challenged Etsy users to create an upcycled object to sell on Etsy.

Etsy is not alone in attempting to promote “green awareness.” Embracing a green lifestyle and expressing environmental concern has recently been embraced by the mainstream. A variety of ecologically-friendly and markedly stylish products have hit the market as trendy alternatives to the typical. A recent New York Times article by Alex Williams on the nature of green consumerism and its consequences, entitled "Buying into the Green Movement," stated that the “vision of an eco-sensitive life as a series of choices about what to buy appeals to millions of consumers and arguably defines the current environmental movement as equal parts concern for the earth and for making a stylish statement. Some 35 million Americans regularly buy products that claim to be earth-friendly, according to one report, everything from organic beeswax lipstick from the west Zambian rain forest to Toyota Priuses.”

Matthew Sparkes, a writer for prominent sustainability website TreeHugger.com, commented that the green movement's rising popularity is due to the fact that “people are far more aware of environmental issues now. There [are] also a lot of very cool green products, which is tremendously important. Buying green doesn't mean sacrificing style or quality. Companies like Freitag are making products from recycled materials that are actually desirable. It's things like that which have helped take environmentalism to where it is now, in the mainstream, teetering on the tipping point.”

While buying “earth friendly” products is a commendable choice, the question remains: are these products really helping any existing environmental problems, or are they merely a trendy option that will soon die out? And what of "greenwashing," wherein companies simply present an environmentally positive image to appeal to green consumers, while making no effort to back up their environmental claims? The Times article points out that green consumerism, while a considerate alternative to conventional buying habits, is still just that — consumerism. Buying more stuff, even if it’s eco-friendly, still produces waste, be it in the production process or the after-effects. “Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes calls ‘light greens.’”Williams continues to say that “critics question the notion that we can avert global warming by buying so-called earth-friendly products, from clothing and cars to homes and vacations, when the cumulative effect of our consumption remains enormous and hazardous.”

The sad truth is that we live in a culture of consumption, where buying products to facilitate our lifestyle is a fact of life. However, true greens are asking us to change that mindset. The moral of the story is to think before you buy, and to buy in moderation. Conservation is as important, if not more so, than recycling, reusing or upcycling. With all of the options available to the savvy consumer, the simple act of choosing a brand of toilet paper to buy can really become something to think about.

Maureen O'Connor, publisher of green-savvy lifestyle site AlternativeConsumer.com, has the following tips for eco-conscious consumers: “I think it’s important for people not to get overwhelmed by the need to become more eco-conscious. Most of us lead hectic, fast-paced lives. We should do our best to make changes as quickly as possible, but realize that we can’t change our entire life, overnight. Sometimes we just need to step back, slow down and take a deep breath. Appreciate what’s around us, and clear our minds.”

“Start by making simple changes, and being more conscious of our surroundings. Replace the light-bulbs with LED’s in your home and office; use re-chargeable batteries, conserve tap water, and my personal pet peeve — bring your own re-usable shopping bag when you go to the store. Support local farms and businesses (to save energy/transportation costs) and buy organic whenever possible. Lose the Hummer.”

“Most importantly, think about the total life cycle of a product before you buy something: consider how it was created, and what you can do with it or where it will end up when you’re through with it. Recycling, upcycling, conserving and bio-degradability are all key issues today.”

So where does this leave us? Ultimately, it’s all a question of choices. When presented with an opportunity to conserve resources, take it When purchasing products, think about their life span, regardless of how green they may claim to be. It will be a long process to change the way the world thinks about the environment, but with a little forethought and awareness, things can change for the better.

FURTHER RESOURCES
William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle, has a blog!
To purchase Cradle to CradleTreeHugger

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