Paper Bottles

We all try to do our bit by recycling our plastic bottles but it seems it amounts to around 14% of the total 60 million plastic bottles thrown away each day (in the USA anyway). What we do recycle helps but the rest ends up in our land fill. A lot of that 60 million are water bottles.

So, how about paper bottles? Design company ‘Brandimage’ have come up with a concept bottle made entirely of renewable and recycled paper which is strong enough to contain liquid. Not surprisingly this just received an International Design Excellence Award.

Put into production, and accepted by us as a design icon, this might just be the tool to remove all those plastic water bottles from the supermarket shelves - and the land fill!

[Via Dvice ]

Eco Printing Online

In an Internet driven, electronic, age, the humble business card still appears to have a place. Now, if you combined our enthusiasm for things online and the opportunity to hand someone a card with your details, you would be on to a winner- which is just what Moo do.

London based printing company Moo are about to launched their new eco business cards which are 100% recyclable and biodegradable, use 100% recycled paper and are chlorine-free. Lots of other printers offer the same, so what makes Moo different?

Every single card can be printed with a different image and you can order as few as 50!!! You simply upload as many different images as you like, directly from your computer, (or photo storage sites), and they print each one onto an individual card.

This seems ideal for businesses with a variety of products - one card for each item - or for domestic use so that you can have cards made of you holiday snaps.

Cost is around £10.99 ($21.99) for 50 and you also get a free carrying case to keep your card collection in. Moo ship word-wide and speak German, Spanish, French and Italian.

If you register for their newsletter they will not only e-mail you the moment they start taking orders for their new eco cards but also give you 20% off your first order!

Their website is simple to use, beautifully designed, has a sense of humour and is well worth a look : www.moo.com

Recycled News Bench

This expandable bench has been designed by Brussels based architect-designer Charles Kaisin using recycled paper.

He takes sheets of newspaper, glues, layers and compresses them to produce a material as strong as wood. These are then used to fabricate visually stunning furniture. In this case the ‘bench’ can expand from 30 cm to 7m, be used to sit on or as a table surface.

More details : www.charleskaisin.com

[Via EcoFriend ]

Follow the Eco Family

We all like to see how other people are doing – reality TV has been a massive audience ratings success. Personal blogs are all over the Internet and now, we can follow the adventures of a normal couple in New Zealand who are documenting (blogging) their attempts to be greener.

Matthew and Waveney live in Christchurch with their dog and two chickens. They want to last an entire year without producing any domestic rubbish and started their 'adventure' on February 1st

You can follow their experience on their website: http://www.rubbishfreeyear.co.nz/ where there is information about the challenge they have set themselves, how they hope to achieve it and what they are up to each day.

There is also a very helpful ‘Rubbish Free Guide’ packed full of useful information. Might just inspire you to reduce some of your own household rubbish.

Helpful Recycling Bins – Barcode Enabled

Sometimes recycling can be complicated. Which bit of that wrapper goes in which recycling bin? Is it paper or foil? Can the plastic bottle be recycled at all?

I know - I’ve had this problem in German where there are multiple bins in public spaces and it isn’t always easy to know which one to throw rubbish into.

There is a possible solution in this set of recycling bins which use barcodes, printed on the rubbish, to work out if they can be recycled and which bin to place them in.

You wave your piece of rubbish over the bin; it scans the barcode and then unlocks the bin’s lid if the item is recyclable. This is a concept design by Woo Seok Park but a very nice idea if it ever went into production. As a way of encouraging the less green among us, this might just be the item. [A]

[Via: Ecofriend]

Recycled CD holders

If you work with computers you have CDs around.
Perhaps you use them to store your music, archive your photos or back up your hard drive. You have probably realised that buying in bulk is an economical alternative to all that packaging. The thing is, you end up with all those strange plastic containers.

Artist Julie Frith has a solution - convert them into toilet paper dispensers!! A brilliant idea, simple to make and great fun. Give it a go, you only need a sharp knife and the desire to pull the cardboard tube out of your toilet paper roll!

Julie also has an interesting blogsite: http://www.curbly.com/frithmobiles/posts.rss

Junk that Junk Mail

Mail order business is big business. UK consumers generated over £25 billion worth of postal sales each year but not everyone wants the postal offers.

Recycling your unwanted paper mailings is great but you can stop them arriving in the first place by registering with the Mailing Preference Service. The offer an online registration which is completely free. The idea is that reputable mailing companies will check with their list BEFORE they send out their mail.

It won’t stop every piece of junk mail, as not all companies check with this service, but a lot do and it does work. http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/

Alternatively, open the unwanted mail, stuff everything, including the old envelope and enclosures, in the pre-paid envelope that is undoubtedly enclosed. Clearly cross out your address and request be be taken off the mailinglist! Very satisfying and effective. I am speaking from personal experience. [A]

Carry your Juice Box

It seems we drink a lot of juice. Healthy and good for you but we then throw all the packaging away – tonnes of the stuff.

A women’s cooperative in the Philippines is doing something about it and making a range of bags, purses and accessories from recycled juice packs - non-biodegradable foil and plastic packaging that would otherwise go into landfill sites and incinerators.

The Cooperative began as an environmental project with the aim of 'cleaning and greening' the local neighbourhood. It has since become increasingly successful and now employs over 200 women and distributes its innovative products world-wide.

They have a huge range and orders are processed in London for UK delivery.

More details at www.doybags.com

Growing Book

Like other books there is information printed on the pages inside but that is where the similarity ends. This one has seeds embedded within the cover. Once activated (we guess by watering it) it grows. Over the weeks you get to watch it turn into it’s own indoor jungle. Jungle Book 2

Biodegradable Furniture

US based, British designer Julian Lwin produces objects using Eco or recycled elements. His Bio Tube Bench is constructed using cardboard tubes with embedded seeds. This can be grasses, herbs or wildflowers. You water it, the bench sprouts and, eventually, biodegrades so you can have a place to sit in the garden and allow it to become part of the garden once it has degraded. Visit Lwin Design for more details.