Wondering how to turn all of those plastic bottle caps running rampant in your household into a green, planet saving endeavor? Well, lucky for you, and for marine life everywhere, Aveda has come up with an alternative solution for all of the un-recyclable rigid plastic caps that invade your medicine cabinets, refrigerators and kitchen drawers. The very same ubiquitous bottle-toppers pose a dangerous threat to oceans, birds and marine life when they are improperly disposed of and wind up in landfills or sent down storm drains. Aveda’s Caps Recycling Program will re-purpose these toxic plastics as a base for new packaging, in an effort to eliminate them from our oceans before it’s too late.
Only 14% of plastic water bottles are recycled, and Americans add 30 million PET water bottles to landfills every day! Aiming to provide an alternative to this alarming trend, Michigan-based Boxed Water Is Better is filling FSC-certified Tetra Pak boxes with Minnesota water and in doing so, giving us a new way to tote H20. But is boxed water truly the best option, or are there more ecologically-sound alternatives at hand?
Fast food packaging takes up a hefty chunk of our landfill space while effectively clear-cutting our forests. The golden arch proprietors dole out over 2 billion burgers a year, each individually wrapped in plastic coated paper and thrown into a paper bag with a few paper napkins–that’s about 75 per second, worldwide. Toss in a dozen other fast food conglomerates and we’re up to our ears in greasy garbage. What’s worse is that most of this paper makes its way into a trashcan after only about 5 minutes of use. Seeking to counter this consumptive cycle, University of the Arts grad student, Andrew Millar, designed biodegradable packaging for McDonald’s from grass paper, which has naturally grease-resistant properties.
A new West Elm store opened up in Manhattan last week, and the opening gala featured an incredible collection of one-of-a-kind cardboard furnishings crafted by acclaimed designer and event producer David Stark. Constructed from recycled West Elm packaging materials and catalogs, the objects were auctioned off in a silent auction with all the proceeds going to the Cooper Hewitt Museum, a museum devoted to historic and contemporary design.
Sprouting Cards Blossom Into Wildflowers!
Wondering what to do with all those old greeting cards and thank you notes? Now you can stick them in the ground and sprout wildflowers with Botanical Paperworks plantable greeting cards.. We’ve written about sprouting stamps and blooming business cards before, so …
Green Marketing Manifesto Wins UK Environmental Book Award
Recently the Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant was announced as the winner of the Environmental Award at the 2008 British Book Design and Production Awards. Designed and delivered by sustainable innovation practice More Associates, the hardback book reflects its content by reducing its embodied carbon and waste impact through its production methods.
Recycled Magic Wallets by Tanja Burgdorfer
Reducing waste by reusing beverage cartons, Swiss-born Tanja Burgdorfer’s “Recycled Magic Wallets” creatively makes use of what would normally be discarded. With a little bit of elastic and a few staples, Tanja turns old beverage cartons into contemporary and useful wallets for the environmentally-conscious consumer. Current selection in her etsy shop shows luscious fruit prints. Each wallet is entirely hand-crafted and is available ready-made or bespoke upon request.
Eco-nifty Wrapping: 20 Eco Gift Wrap Ideas from Future Present
From Future Present, by Jane Rosie
With Christmas just around the corner (a mere 4 days away!), it has probably crossed your mind that wrapping presents is not the eco-friendliest practice. That’s why we’d like to share a couple of ways you can eco-ify your wrapping technique this holiday season. The first is presented by London-based design recruitment agency, Represent, who shares with us twenty different tape-free ways to wrap your gifts, through their project Future Present.
Brilliant Wine Packaging Converts Into a Lamp
When creativity, ecology and innovation collide, packaging becomes the product. This sleek wine box by Ciclus converts into a table lamp with no extra parts required. The packaging is made with wood from local, managed forests and recycled cardboard. Inside is a locally and ecologically produced bottle of Cava, Spanish sparkling wine.
Apple Debuts the Greenest Macbooks Ever
The folks at Apple recently debuted their latest line of sleek notebooks, and we were excited to hear that they’re the greenest Macs ever! They’ve removed many of the harmful toxins found in computers including mercury, arsenic and PVC and made the remaining parts nearly all recyclable. The software has also been redesigned to run on 30% less power than previous models, earning them Energy Star certification. And finally, Apple cut out nearly half of the bulky packaging to streamline their distribution and create less trash to bring home.
Mailman Cuts Out Junk Mail, You Can Too!
A former North Carolina mailman was recently fined $3,000 and ordered to do 500 hours of community service for cutting out the junk mail. For over seven years, no one on Steven Padgett’s route received a single pizza flyer, ‘Current Resident’ catalog or sweepstakes entry - now that’s something to be thankful for. Unfortunately, this mailman couldn’t put an end to the production of junk mail, leaving much of it in his backyard or garage, but you can. 100 million trees are chopped, processed, glossed and stuffed into US mailboxes every year. Fight back with one of the many opt out services below!
Amazon Debuts Frustration-Free Packaging
Just in time for the overly packaged holiday season, we are thrilled to see that Amazon is debuting a new eco-friendly idea called ‘Frustration Free Packaging’. If you’ve ever tried to open a plastic package twice the size of the product inside and ended up with box cutters in one hand and carpal tunnel syndrome in the other you may know ‘wrap rage.’ Then once you finally got the plastic off, you still had 18 wires to unwind and a mountain of mostly unrecyclable trash. The folks at Amazon are working hard to remedy this problem with the introduction of Frustration-Free packaging. Amazon is working with manufacturers to eliminate dreadful clamshell packages for simpler brown boxes. Not only will it make wrapping and unwrapping much easier, but these boxes can broken down like any other and recycled.
London Design Festival 2008: Print and Paper Workshop
Did you know that recycling a single ton of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000 kilowatts of energy!? Statistics like these were key points at a sustainable print and paper workshop at the London Design Festival’s sustainability hub, Greengaged. The workshop, hosted by UK-based nonprofit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest, set out to explore how different print processes affect the paper’s recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process.
London Design Festival: The Greengaged Sustainability Hub
This Monday morning the London Design Festival’s inaugural sustainability event Greengaged kicked off with a big-bang breakfast debut. The event’s pièce de résistance was Goldsmith University graduate Oliver Bishop-Young’s sustainability skip installation, complete with turf, steps, a hornbeam tree, signage from sustainable communication design agency thomas.matthews and [re]design’s WEmake bench. Located outside the Design Council offices in London’s Convent Garden, the skip introduced a breath of fresh air into the urban landscape while encouraging discussion about the importance of sustainable design.
Michael Bierut Designs for the Green Patriotism Campaign
Last month, more than sixty buses hit the streets of Cleveland encouraging “Green Patriotism” with banners and posters created by Pentagram designer Michael Bierut. Promoting both the ecologically sound use of public transportation and the development of green jobs in the manufacturing sector, the posters can now be seen on buses across the city. Beirut states that “The banners are part of a new environmentalism — one that sees action to address climate change as an imperative to protect both the American and world economies.”
VIDEO: The Secret Life of Paper
Earlier this year Inhabitat’s Emily Pilloton highlighted the insightful video ‘The Secret Life of Cell Phones’ produced by environmental nonprofit INFORM, Inc. Now we are pleased to announce the launch of their latest video, The Secret Life of Paper. It explores the environmental impact of the paper production industry, focusing upon forest destruction, global warming, and the complexities of paper recycling.
GREEN EARTH International Graphic Design Competition
Following the success of the 2007 ‘Love Your Earth’ Competition, Designboom.com, The Design Association Japan (DA) and TOBU department store have joined forces to launch ‘Green Earth’, a brand new international design competition. Calling all design professionals, students and enthusiasts, Green Earth is looking for graphic artwork that raises awareness of the environmental issues affecting the planet and provokes positive change.
Portable Cardboard Table from Liborius Reykjavík
This lightweight, portable cardboard table aims to assist on-the-go creative types like designers and students, who are often limited to work on low desks or floors. Made by Sruli Recht from flatpack cardboard pieces, this lightweight, sturdy design offers creatives an ergonomic plane on which to cut, fold, draft or design. Adding even more appeal to this smart and useful design, the table is biodegradable and can easily be folded up to pack into a portable carrier.
VOTE NOW & Judge Student Eco Design Competition!
We love our design competitions here at Inhabitat, and today we are partnering with The New School Sustainable Design Review (SDR) in NYC, to help judge a student design competition for the much loved NY skincare company Kiehls. This year’s New School SDR design competition is being organized in partnership with Kiehl’s- the old-world apothecary founded in New York’s East Village neighborhood. In this post (below) you will see all of the competing sustainable designs of the 2008 student finalists, and want to hear YOUR feedback on which projects you find to be the most compelling and worthy of the competition’s grand prize award of $2,500!
We really want to hear your thoughts, so please comment, and VOTE HERE >
COVER POUF: No-Waste Furniture by Alain Bertreau
Designer Alain Bertreau creates simple furniture that cuts out excess materials and effort, leaves an overall serene and minimalistic impression, and packs light. We’ve covered Bertreau’s Instant Chair and his Modular Fence Chair but we only just glanced at his latest project, the Cover pouf, and it deserves a second look. Cover challenges our notion of package design by turning a cardboard box into the base of a waste-free pouf that is fun, functional and easily recyclable.
JODY BARTON’S Environmental Graphic Design
We’re guilty of overlooking good green graphic design sometimes on Inhabitat, but here’s a great example of visual communication as an effective tool for environmental and social change. London-based illustrator Jody Barton is just one example of the power of graphics as an education tool, producing a plethora of bold illustrations focused on environmental crises. Using hand-drawn typography, Barton’s illustrations evoke preconceived notions, stereotypes, and challenge beliefs around these issues, and make us stop to think about our environmental impact.
World Wildlife Fund Super Smart Eco Ad Campaign
Check out this brilliant World Wildlife Fund ad campaign in the form of bathroom towel dispensers! Demonstrating that Saatchi and Saatchi is the undisputed king of transforming advertising into an art form, this genius PSA integrates a crucial environmental message into the built environment. Shown above is the latest example of clever marketing concept ingeniously integrated into the most banal space: a public restroom. These paper towel dispensers have a cut out the shape of South America through which a stack of green paper towels illustrates the green rain forest canopy of the continent. As the paper towel dispenser is slowly drained of its green paper towels, we see the greenness slowly drained out of South America, symbolizing the nasty environmental impact of disposable paper towels.
Reusable Silk Gift Wrapping by Biota Collection
The art of furoshiki gift wrapping is a time-honored, ancient tradition, and Montreal-based Posch designs has put a new twist on this eco-friendly packaging concept with its latest reusable, silk fabric Biota Collection wraps. Rid yourself of the guilt of holiday gift wrapping excess and throw-away packaging by swaddling your gifts for loved ones in these gorgeous silk squares that can be used as a stylish alternative to paper wrapping. It’s gift giving with a conscience and a flair for luxury that lasts.
My Sust House: Interactive Game for Eco-minded Kids
My Sust House is a Glaswegian approach to sustainable education, exposing kids and teenagers to issues of sustainability in design and planning through an accessible outlet: the Internet. This interactive game is narrated by two fetching Scottish cartoon characters and comes complete with an introduction on sustainability and two games dedicated to exploring “what sustainability means and how it relates to our homes.” As Sean Connery knows, even the most mundane things can be made appealing through the addition of a Scottish accent, and this charming interactive education website lives up to that rule. Even the most diehard non-greenies will be charmed by this cute interactive website.
INHABITOTS: D.I.Y Kids Book
Bringing graphic design back to its roots and creativity, Princeton Architectural Press launched D.I.Y. Kids in October 2007, a book by twin sister design-duo Ellen and Julia Lupton, founders of Design Your Life. Beautifully illustrated with “real artwork by real children”, D.I.Y. Kids engages young people to create from existing things, from binding their own books, sewing their own clothes, making stickers, logos, clothespin dolls, box buildings, graffiti furniture, ribbon accessories, and many more projects. What a fab way to get those creative juices flowing while recycling!!
INHABITOTS: Endangered Species A-Z Graphic Poster
If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your nursery and expand your knowledge of the animal kingdom, this Alphabet of the Endangered Species in the British Isles is indeed a “timely take on A-Z”. With punchy, clean graphics and playful, perfectly composed quadrants, this poster is sure to be a hit in any baby room.
LOGO DESIGN COMPETITION: UN Documentary Film Festival!
Social Design Network Design21 announced their latest design competition this week; the challenge - to design the official logo for “Stories from the Field: The United Nations Documentary Film Festival”.
The Prize
$5000
DEADLINE
The deadline for this fabulous competition is November 26th - so get going!
DESIGNBOOM COMPETITION: LOVE YOUR EARTH
For all you graphically-minded designers out there, here’s your chance to shine: DesignBoom recently announced its latest design competition, Love Your Earth, which asks graphic designers to create a graphic artwork to raise awareness on global issues affecting the planet. The deadline is September 8, 2007, three winners will be awarded cash prizes, and a shortlist of honorable mentions will be featured at 100% Design Tokyo this fall. Check out DesignBoom for all the details and put those graphic design caps on!
THE ART OF GREENWASHING
We just spotted this hilarious cartoon on greenwashing by Tom Fishburne. I think it speaks for itself on the humorous lengths that some brands will go to get on the eco bandwagon.
NEW SEEDED DUTCH STAMPS bloom into living plants!
Leave it to the clever Dutch to brighten up your daily trip to the mailbox… with their blooming postage stamps, you can affix some living flora to that thank you note or birthday card! Dutch postal service TNT recently announced the production and sale of the seeded stamps, which were designed by Martin van Vreden, and hold the seeds of a variety of flowers, including petunias.
KNOEND’S LITE2GO, No Packaging Required
We’re always enamored with flat pack packaging for efficient transport and minimal waste, but here’s a light design that brings a bright idea to packaging by eliminating it all together. Lite2Go’s packaging doubles as the actual lamp shade so there is almost no waste, excluding the label and the instructions for assembly which are printed on recycled paper using environmentally friendly inks.
GROWING BUSINESS CARD
How do you make your business card stand out? Make it grow! We’re seeing a lot of clever business cards perfect for your green thumb, and its about time! Jamie Wieck breathes new life into business cards with his Growing Business Card. This little number transforms from a regular business card to miniature house plant, sprouting alfalfa or cress when watered. Who wouldn’t want this on their desk?
LANDSCAPED BUSINESS CARD by Tur & Partners
With all the business cards we’re being inundated with this week (the downside of trade-shows), its nice to find business cards that stand out from the crowd and add a little greenery to your day. Here’s a clever and useful little business card design that perfectly expresses the mission of the company it represents: landscape architecture firm Tur & Partner. Add a little light and water …
SWISS-ENGINEERED SIGG WATER BOTTLES
Last week we announced Sigg’s “What’s your Eco-Style” bottle design competition- a post that was met with comments and questions from intrigued readers wanting to know more about the company, their production techniques, particularly the choice to use aluminum as a drinking vessel.
T-SHIRT CONTEST: Last Chance to VOTE!
The race is on! In case you haven’t been paying attention to Inhabitat the last few days, we’ve opened our Green T-Shirt Design Competition up for voting, and we are getting a slew of opinions from you guys left and right. Three of our finalists have emerged in the lead: “I Give A Hoot,” “Global Greenery,” and “Tree/Root/Lungs/Heart” and it looks like its going to be a tight race! We’re counting on all you readers to weigh in during these final hours to help us pick the best design for Inhabitat.
















