Green Thing Blog

Given my talent for collecting (read: hoarding) all manner of shiny objects, I sometimes wonder whether I was a magpie in a past life. I've been waiting for a rainy day to use up the bits & bobs that over the years have made it into what I now like to term my 'art cupboard'.  Well, it's gloriously sunny as I look out my window, but Earth Day is a perfect excuse to look at some creative ways to repurpose and recycle household objects and give back to this good green earth. Crafty and environmentally sound? Check.

Here are 7 ways you can celebrate Earth Day with your creativity:

1. Create sand art...

...and reduce the amount of water your toilet uses. Doing sand art makes you feel about 5 again, which in my book is no bad thing. With an old jam jar and dirt from your back yard, you can make a pretty cool focal point. Go one step further and place a sand-filled bottle in your toilet cistern to reduce the volume used with each flush.

2. Recreate grandma's remedies...

...and say bye-bye to chemical cleaners. It's true that grandma knows best sometimes. Chemical products don't do wonders for your health, unsurprisingly, and often find their way into the soil, air and water. Rediscover your grandparent's natural remedies - vinegar on mould, or lemon juice polish - and go back to basics.

3. Recycle your unwanted CD collection...

...and prevent garden critters. A great way to hide a multitude of musical sins and discourage enterprising animals from feeding on recently cast seed or plants is the CD scarecrow.

4. Fashion a lavender pouch

...and keep clothes fresh the natural way. Mothballs aren't great for our little lungs, and have the added disincentive of smelling like food past its sell-by date. Whip up a bag filled with lavender which is both sweet smelling and non-toxic.

5. Make a plantable paper bookmark...

...and encourage friends to grow their own. Get your hands dirty and make these lovely gift tags for friends (or yourself!). Ensure you use seeds that can be planted out locally and plants that are in season - gardening has never been this fun!

6. Make a fruit bowl from a magazine or newspaper

...and reduce your paper waste. You have to love the versatility of old magazines. If you've already bedecked your entire house with bunting, it's time to move on to pastures new. Learn a fun way to make an enticing fruit bowl (or vase, or bin - the possibilities are endless...)!

7. Dress your hot water bottle

...and switch the heating off. Turn up your imagination and turn down the thermostat: take one old sweater and one hour and you can stay all warm and snuggly with the radiators off. Even reducing the temperature by 1°C saves £50 and 300 kg of CO2 per year.

See this link for more green crafts and environmentally friendly DIY, and let us know your own via the comments section!

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In this epic, bank holiday, infused time, we've got the perfect activity for you. Head to London's Science Museum. Along with Atmosphere, the relatively new gallery devoted to climate change, this spring the Science Museum brings us 10 Climate Stories, part of the museum's three year Climate Change programme. Though not necessarily obviously associated with climate change all ten exhibits allude to or highlight issues around the matter.

"The Toaster Project", by RCA graduate designer Thomas Thwaites draws attention to energy intensive mass production along with mass consumption; Thwaites took apart the cheapest toaster he could find, then built his own by mining and processing all the raw materials required himself, leading to some interesting results.

Yao Lu's beautiful photographs "New Landscapes" initially seem to be of traditional Chinese landscape gardens but on closer inspection show mountains of rubbish covered in green netting.

One of the most exciting items on the list is the Sno-Cat, originally used by Sir Vivien Fuchs to cross Antarctica way back in the 50's. The bright yellow vehicle has been in storage since then but has come out this Easter to remind us that, as ice caps melt Antarctica is disappearing.

"Blazing entrails"; a collection of 18th century steam engines, reminds us that, while they hailed the beginning of the industrial revolution and made the Western world what it is today, this also prompted the beginning of huge carbon emissions, leading to climate change.

"One Thousand Motorcars" is a photograph documenting the output of a 9-hour shift at a Ford plant way back in 1913: a surprisingly large number of Model T cars, especially given how long ago the image was made.

The more alert amongst you may have noticed that I've only written about five items, when I said there are ten. This is simply because I wouldn't want to ruin your visit to the museum, though if you really can't wait here's more info about it. We do love a good Science Museum trip, it's a fun, accessible and free way to get to grips with subjects that affect us all; definitely worth a trip this weekend, or any other time for that matter.

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(Image from theboatproject.com)

There's something romantic about a beautifully built, wooden sailboat, isn't there? Well, there's certainly something romantic about this one! As a part of the  London 2010 Cultural Olympiad the delightful Boat Project people are building a sail boat completely out of wooden objects donated by thousands of ordinary people. But it's not an ordinary boat, it's a story boat. Yup, that's right. A story boat.

The idea is that every wooden object used in the build has its own story, as if donors are giving a little part of themselves to be melded together with the stories and donations of thousands of others. The result? A solid, seafaring boat kept afloat by the memories and snippets of many different, now literally intertwined, lives.

(Image from theboatproject.com)

They accept anything from pencils to pianos and have received incredible donations like door frames from Tanzania and the end of a power keg from HMS Invincible. If you want to get involved check out their website to find out how, and if you want to see how your donation could be transformed into part of the boat, you can take a little guided tour of their boat shed.

Once launched in May 2012, the story boat will embark on a month long maiden voyage, stopping at various port towns (yet to be announced) in South East England to be greeted by art festivals and events. You also get to nominate the crew, so if you have a friend in need of sea air, nominate away! They will train crew up and make them sea savvy. And as if all this wasn't brilliant enough, after its travels, the boat will be gifted back to the region for public use.

We really love this creative and rather romantic All-Consuming idea. Hat's off Boat Project!

(Spotted on BBC)

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Staying Grounded just got a whole lot easier. Now, you can experience all of the delights of aeroplane food without actually being airborne.

Following a diss of pub food by chef Marcus Wareing, who declared that the meals served in our public houses are worse than airplane food, an idea was fed into the mind of artist Richard DeDomenici. He decided to open up Plane Food Cafe at the Edinburgh Festival, the first restaurant to serve genuine plane cuisine, sourced from airport factories. To complete the experience, the meal was served by air hosts and hostesses in a cafe that featured airplane style seats, blankets and 'on-board' entertainment.

Do you find aeroplane food just not appealing however high you are? Well how about this. Flying deadens your taste buds and sense of smell. The pressurised air in the cabin reduces the pleasure of your tasting and smelling experience, meaning that you could be eating the world's most delicious meal but all you're tasting is cardboard and some kind of unknown meat...or possibly a potato.. you can never be sure. Whatever it is, it will certainly taste a lot better when your feet are on solid ground.

So if you have never flown but are eager to try to delights of meals-on-wings then Stay Grounded and try your foil wrapped food from ground level.

Ps- If you're still after the fix of being in a plane, why not stay a night at this plane turned hotel.

(Spotted on Artsadmin)

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Last festival season we called in designer extraordinaire Vanessa Harden to tackle the issues of waste at festivals. The brief was to reinvent tents. Rather then tents be a disposable, one time use sort of shelter at festivals, how could we encourage people to seek out alternatives. And so Future Tents was born: the world's first biodegradable tent.

After testing the prototype at T in the Park in Scotland last July, Vanessa and our team quickly realised that in fact biodegradable may not be the best option. So, Vanessa got thinking. And material sourcing. She spoke to product designers and innovators around the world. After a nearly a years' worth of meetings and conversations, the next stage of Future Tents turned into a project about making use of waste already at festivals. Insert Scavenger, a festival tent made from found materials and rubbish.

Some of the UK's biggest festivals have come and gone leaving behind piles of rubbish. Reports from Glastonbury say that they expect around nine tonnes of glass, 54 tonnes of cans and plastic bottles, 41 tonnes of cardboard and 66 tonnes of metal to be left post-festival. Needless to say, there has to be a better way to manage and reduce the wasteful nature of summer's best past time. And this is what Vanessa set out to do - create awareness about festival waste, recycling and how a bit of ingenuity can go a long way.

She set her sights high, and was awarded an artist pod at Bonnaroo, one of America's biggest music festivals. And this is what went down ...

Wednesday

We are here at Bonnaroo music festival, Tennessee.

We have been here for three days scavenging already. It is “pre-fest” time with the festival opening its doors to the campers tonight. If only for the weekend the music festival will be the 3rd most populous city in the state of Tennessee.

One word to describe Americas biggest music festival? Hot. Most important thing to do in heat? Drink. Favourite liquid refreshment of Bonnaroo? Beer and lots of it. And were are taking the empty cans and make structures.

We have scavenged masses of beers cans, with help from our lovely volunteers. They are bringing their beer cans, pizza boxes, tent pegs by the truck load (and American trucks are big).

Thursday

We have finished building the columns and have begun sowing the bed sheets together.  Finally, by late afternoon the sheet was thrown over the canned pillars and secured safely.

In addition to creating a structure that would enavle us to host other festival goers, we used the remaining cans to build a fence around the structure in order to give our space a sense of privacy.

This worked out quite well, giving the entire space a familiar homelike feeling, enticing people to “stop in” for a drink or pose in front of our structure for a picture.  Our tent was becoming exactly what we had hoped for, a place where people could come and hang out day and night. Tonight we’ve decided to join in the opening festivities, have a wonder around the festival and see some bands!

Friday

First thing this morning, we went to conduct a seedpill workshop in the eco-village located in Centeroo. The workshop attracted more than 50 people all wanting to learn the art of seedpill making while exchanging stories about the guerrilla gardening movement.

After the workshop, we walked back to our site to enjoy a lazy Friday afternoon reclined under the white canopies of our tent entertaining other festival-goers who desperately needed to get our of the heat.

Our tent attracted a wide variety of people from across the United-States, all wanting to sit down in the shade and engage in conversation.

Saturday

Today we’ve spent the day seeing what else we can build with the remaining cans.

Armed with our utility knives and duct tape we’re thinking of unique ways of adapting beer cans to suit our needs.

Sunday

It’s the last day of Bonnaroo! By this evening we had to have the tent down and all 2 576 cans “de-ductaped” and ready to continue their journey to the recycling centre.  Although we had anticipated spending all day dismantling the structure, with the help of a couple of volunteers, we managed to take it apart in less than 2 hours.  One of our volunteers liked the structure so much that he decided to take the palm trees home and display them in his house!

During the course of the week, we’ve had a large water-cooler bottle located at the front of the tent inviting people to “leave a message in a bottle.” 

And here's what they had to say:

And one of the best comments: "I don't think I have ever been thanked for giving someone my trash before". Just brilliant.

Monday

While travelling back home today, I’ve had the chance to read over 50 letters and comments that have been left in the “Message in a Bottle” container.  Thank you to all of you who took the time to let us know your thoughts on the project.  Now to take these comments and suggestions and design a newer and better version for next year!  Stay tuned…

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To read about Vanessa's full experience, visit the Future Tents Tumblr.

For plenty of more beautifully taken photos of Scavenger, check out Ross Cairns on Flickr.

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