Treshr makes it easy to give things away, or, the other way around, find free stuff. Everyone has stuff they don’t need anymore. Maybe your child outgrew their old clothes, or you moved to a new place and have old furniture to get rid of. Whatever it is you’re looking for, someone somewhere is trying to throw it away. Treshr is basically a search engine for
Freecycle, a nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. [
via]
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Oct 20, 2011 -
28 comments
"We have assembled objects in the form of a
human figure, objects of all types that we found here each day and selected for their form and color, to obtain a familial nucleus that is the unity through which the individual forms itself and develops its ability to live and realize itself in the world."
Artworks by Dario Tironi.
via iGNANT
posted by unliteral
on Jun 8, 2011 -
4 comments
The
2009 film Garbage Dreams, which is
currently airing on PBS, documents the
Zabbaleen a tribe that lives off of collecting and recycling trash from Cairo. They manage to recycle 80% of trash (vs
32% in the U.S.), the highest level in the world, well above most first world recycling levels, using primitive techniques shown in the film. As depicted in the film, and
on NPR, since 2003 Cairo has been hiring foreign companies, who recycle much less, taking away their livelihood.
They are trying to raise enough money (you can donate, buy a t-shirt or help) to grow their Recycling school, to teach more of their children their practices. Good
interview with the film director here.
posted by Berkun
on May 4, 2010 -
13 comments
Electric Junkyard Gamelan is the brainchild of bandleader and composer
Terry Dame, and fuses Dame's passions of composing, inventing and building. Originally inspired by traditional
Gamelan music from Bali, the group recycles and repurposes
everyday objects into musical instruments. While some of their songs do indeed resemble the hypnotic percussive melodies of a Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra (
The Nutbutter Challenge), other tunes strike out into new, distinctly urban American directions (
Ode to Fred Beans). Following the band's motto, "
Reuse, Recycle and ROCK," instruments are fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters, clay pots, saw blades and truck springs. The "
Big Barp" rubber-band harp makes a particularly unusual sound.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Oct 12, 2009 -
5 comments
The use of cardboard for things other than packaging is not new to the blue, from
detailed artwork to
furnature (and even
re-making the Tron light cycle scene), and now
computer cases.
Brenden Macaluso's design is not the first, with a
Japanese design from 2005 (the original site is down, but
Archive.org has a backup, with
more versions archived), and other
kludged fixes for an existing case missing parts.
Recompute wasn't the only cardboard case in the 2009
Greener Gadgets design competition. The other was
Cardboardcase, by Francesco Biasci and Martina Becattini, which is a more of a traditional computer case form. On the DIY side,
Instructables provides plans for a DIY cardboard laptop case.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 17, 2009 -
13 comments
Inspired by the creative re-use of dumpsters in Athens, Georgia by Curtis Crowe of the band
Pylon, the
Macro|Sea collective have taken the idea further, and have their first
dumpster pool space prototype up and
active in Brooklyn (
via). The group's big idea is to
revitalize strip malls across America. On the smaller scale, British artist Oliver Bishop-Young has "
turned skips into gold," by
refurbishing small skips into little ponds, parks, skate ramps, and micro meeting areas (
more details). On the more personal level, Michel de Broin created "Blue Monochrom," a
dumpster hot tub.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 13, 2009 -
9 comments
Sex Galaxy (
trailer 1,
trailer 2, NSFW) is a new film that
claims to be the first "green film," as it is made of 100% recycled material. In an
Wired article, director/producer Mike Davis discloses his film sources. "Boarded-up libraries, abandoned schools, decaying drive-in movie theaters…. These are the realms in which I unearth my wares," he said. "And actually, many of these films are available on the internet. You can find amazing collections through the
Library of Congress." The Wired article notes that the recycled material isn't itself wholly original, and
Bad Lit expands the history of film plunder further.
Sex Galaxy is sourced from
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which relied on footage from
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, which in turn is sampled from the Russian film
Planeta Bur. The history of film reuse is long and storied, and continues after the jump.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 27, 2009 -
17 comments
A Visual Guide To Recycling Plastics.
Most recycling programs only accept plastics #1 and #2, so being able to quickly identify them can be a time saver when sorting your recycling. In the future, we should be able to recycle plastics #3 through #7 — but for now these outcasts must be banished to the landfill (that’s too bad, because a lot of stuff is made from plastic #5).
posted by amyms
on Feb 15, 2008 -
24 comments
Book Scavenging. Hundreds of homeless people eke out a living scavenging books from dumpsters and sidewalk trash in Manhattan.
Sidewalk is a book about the subculture of sidewalk book scavengers and vendors.
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 20, 2008 -
52 comments
Where do your recycleables go? Minneapolis' Star Tribune has created a very interesting, informative, interactive feature, describing where your recycling goes after it is picked up from your curb. An educational way to spend your afternoon!
posted by santiagogo
on Apr 25, 2006 -
14 comments
Cardboard Geodesic Dome. A how-to on building a geodesic dome out of cardboard, a bit of wood, some duct tape and paint. Plus some rebar if you don't want the finished dome to fly like a kite. If you like the concept but not the size
calculate your own then apply the concept.
posted by Mitheral
on Feb 13, 2006 -
14 comments
Peace Art Project Cambodia --turning the detrius of war into
art, in hopes of a more peaceful future. More info
here, and
here.
"You can't help but think about what this machine has done to affect so many lives."
And that is really the point. These sculptures are political art at its most powerful - relics of a violent past transformed into expressions of hope for a more peaceful future.
posted by amberglow
on Dec 25, 2004 -
6 comments
Freecycling. Reducing the amount of trash we generate by connecting people who have things that they no longer want with people who want those same things. The only rule:
Every item posted must be free.
posted by grabbingsand
on Nov 18, 2003 -
31 comments
