Make more, buy less

Happy New Year!

From here

It's difficult to find New Year's blog posts without mention of resolutions-- Surprise! This post is no different.

Instead of giving you the typical "list of environmental resolutions," though, I have just one personal resolution (that happens to tie in with upcycling) to share with you: Make more, buy less.


This means making more art, and having fun making unique things that I wouldn't be able to buy. This means upcycling more, reusing more and of course, using less. This also means buying less, which means cutting down consumption and simplifying life. This means making things with friends and exchanging ideas and challenging each other to be more creative. Put quite simply, this resolution is about fulfillment.

Try it. Take a toilet paper roll and see what you can make with it! Or an old t-shirt! Whatever it is, take what you already have and sit down, by yourself or with a friend, and just start thinking about what to make. Then make it! You can even have an upcycling party!

The Story of Stuff

If you haven't seen this already, take 20 minutes out of your day and watch it now. Seriously.

The Story of Stuff is both enlightening and easy to understand. It covers every part of a product's life cycle, from extraction to disposal, and all the injustices that go on in-between. And while it can be frightening to watch, the video is also empowering in the sense that it educates people so they can fight wasteful habits.

Last Christmas, I sent an email to my family members asking them to donate money to the The Story of Stuff Project in lieu of buying me a gift. I still received presents, (I don't mean to sound ungrateful- they were great), but I became ecstatic upon hearing that my cousin Caroline had generously donated $50 to the cause.

The video really says it all, so I won't try to add any more unnecessary commentary. After watching the video, head on over to The Story of Stuff website. They also have The Story of Cap & Trade and The Story of Bottled Water, in addition to ideas for taking action.

Blacksmith Institute recently released their 2011 World's Worst Toxic Pollution Problems Report.

The report centers around a "top ten toxic pollution problems" list, which serves as a great reminder that upcycling is not always possible (don't upcycle toxic materials!) and that careful safety regulation of products and activities should occur before they are actually made or carried out. After all, contaminated materials don't just become "clean" after some well-meaning crafter attempts to turn them into some cute new set of upcycled earrings.

The report's top ten toxic list was made based off of two factors: "the estimated number of people affected by the pollutant and the number of sites identified globally where the pollutant exists in concentrations above health standards," and reads as follows:

1. Artisanal Gold Mining- Mercury Pollution
2. Industrial Estates- Lead Pollution
3. Agricultural Production- Pesticide Pollution
4. Lead Smelting- Lead Pollution
5. Tannery Operations- Chromium Pollution
6. Mining and Ore Processing- Mercury Pollution
7. Mining and Ore Processing- Lead Pollution
8. Lead-Acid Battery Recycling- Lead Pollution
9. Naturally Occurring Arsenic in Ground Water- Arsenic Pollution
10. Pesticide Manufacture and Storage- Pesticide Pollution

The number one offender, artisanal gold mining, produces mercury pollution that affects the health of an estimated 3,506,600 people. These issues pose a serious threat, arguably more serious than the lost upcycling opportunity that a trashed cereal box poses.

Upcycle away, but remember where the real problems lie.

cozy home upcycling inspiration

Here's a quick inspiration post. The theme is home decor and organization.

wooden pallet jewelry organizer

book mobile


from here and here

royal brooches

Ever since I received my first pink kid-sized Tweety Bird deck of playing cards, I have been losing cards. Peculiarly, I always average about one card lost per deck, which is extremely irritating since I never feel like that is enough to abandon the entire deck. But really, I hate playing with an incomplete deck and I hate throwing out an entire deck when only one card is missing.

I cannot be the only one with this problem. So to all of you kindred souls out there, I offer a solution: playing card brooches.

This tutorial is specific to the face cards, but the same techniques/methods can be applied to the other cards as well. (Really, you can use the same methods for any image you'd like to make into a brooch.)
 
You will need an X-acto knife, scissors, Mod-Podge, a paint brush, a pencil, a hot glue gun and a pin back.

Step 1: Decide what part of the card you want to be made into your brooch and cut it out.

Step 2:  Trace this cut-out shape (this will now be referred to as your card cut-out) onto a piece of thick paper board and onto a piece of patterned paper.

Step 3: After cutting out both your board cut-out and your patterned paper cut-out, glue all three of your cut-outs together. Make sure to keep the image side of the card cut-out facing up and the board cut-out sandwiched in between the card cut-out and the patterned paper cut-out. Press and let dry.

Step 5: Apply a layer of Mod-Podge all over the top/image side and let dry. Do the same for the under side/patterned paper side. Let dry and repeat 2 times for both sides.

Step 7: Using a hot-glue gun, attach a pin back to the patterned paper side of the brooch.

Step 8: Let dry & enjoy.

Congratulations, you just made an upcycled brooch!

on what "upcycling" means + lamp inspiration

When I saw that several of you had left comments asking what "upcycling" means, I realized that I should have explained. After all, this is what I will primarily be posting about here on The Garbage Game!

Upcycling is re-purposing or altering material into a product of higher value. It is important to note that this is different from the recycling that we seem to be most familiar with, which is the recycling of products like plastic bottles. When a plastic bottle is recycled, it is made into a lower grade, and thus, less valuable, plastic. (This process is called downcycling; it is not upcycling.) This is why upcycling is generally more eco-friendly than downcycling is. More in-depth definitions of these terms can be found here.

Now that we have a better idea of what upcycling is, here is some lamp upcycling inspiration:

map lamp

mason jar lights

plastic bottle chandeliers

Photos from here, here, & here

My next post will be a full-on tutorial. I'm keeping the actual project a surprise, but don't worry-- we are starting small. Next post's tutorial will be about something much easier and much less time-consuming to make than these beautiful light fixtures.

the garbage game: an introduction

I have attempted to start an upcycling/sustainability blog for quite some time now. Each one has been set up, carefully named and then brutally abandoned-- all in a month or two.

Now, I am starting yet another blog, but this time I should (hopefully) have more of an incentive to keep at it. I am required to blog weekly for my Journalism II class, and this is where I will be doing that. Besides the occasional post on an assigned topic, I will mostly be writing about upcycling.

Eventually, I would also like to explore the relationships between upcycling, living sustainably and environmental activism.

As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that while doing things like upcycling and composting are definitely valuable for the environment, they are only starting points. Just upcycling and composting does not make one an environmental hero.

Annie Leonard explains this well in her book The Story of Stuff:

"There are things we can do to lessen environmental health impacts... So, yes, we should engage in these actions, as long as we don't let them either lull us into a false sense of accomplishment or let the effort of maintaining this constant, uptight, rigorous green screen on our lifestyle exhaust us. In other words, as long as taking these actions doesn't stand in the way of your engaging in the broader political arena for real change, knock yourself out."

I am guilty of having allowed upcycling and recycling and picking up garbage to give me the false sense of accomplishment that Leonard is referring to.

Ultimately, my goal for blogging is to learn more about real environmental change while also exploring new ideas for my beloved hobby of upcycling.