Upcycling

ReVision bar stool made with 200 plastic bags. Photo: courtesy Artists of Humanity

From Artists of Humanity comes an innovative design that turns more than 200 plastic shopping, dry-cleaning or newspaper bags into a colorful plastic bar stool, called “ReVision.”

Made by inner-city youth in Boston, Massachusetts, the stools received the Social Responsibility Award by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) at the 2011 Architectural Digest Home Design Show in New York City. Photos:…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo: Dano

I’m sure your gag reflexes are in full effect right now and they should be. This is a weird one. A Japanese researcher has come up with an artificial meat that’s made from human feces. According to Inhabitat, Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has come up with a burger made from soya, steak sauce essence, and protein extracted from human feces. …Read the full story on TreeHugger

I think we’ll just stick with worm poop feeding our gardens!

Image via YouTube video screengrab

The Plastiki has a new competitor — the Polli-Boat. A prototype of this concept boat set sail in Taiwan this week in celebration of World Oceans Day, and it’s eco-credentials are impressive. Made from plastic bottles, old advertising banners, and other “trash” (read: misplaced raw materials), it boasts six solar panels to power an electric motor wh…Read the full story on TreeHugger

Ikea Tries To Assemble A Sustainable Operation, Despite Disposable Products | Fast Company.

Ever wondered if it makes sense to build one solid piece of furniture that will last or try to squeeze 4-5 pieces of furniture from the same raw material? IKEA’s COO of sustainability (that’s an actual job title? cool.) is trying to answer that particular question and is also trying to implement an IKEA furniture buy back program on the way to a company goal of having all of their products recyclable, made of recycled materials, or completely renewable by 2015.

A couple of weeks ago, I found these eco-friendly speakers that are made from upcycled snack bags. They’re small, stylish, universally compatible, don’t require batteries, and feature pretty good sound to boot. It’s no Bose speaker system, but for the price, looks, and portability they’re tough to beat. Although to be completely honest, the real selling point is that when you plug these speakers into your iPod, you’re listening to your tunes through material that once held your Doritos.

But, the really cool thing about these speakers is that it introduced me to TerraCycle, the company that manufactures the speakers (The company has gotten tons of press and is actually quite well known. I must have been living under a rock to have missed them!) They got their start at Princeton when the founder decided to market vermicomposting tea as a natural fertilizer. He created a system to collect organic waste from Princeton cafeterias, compost it with an industrial sized worm bin, and use the results to create worm casting based fertilizers. By 2006, these worm poop turned fertilizers were available throughout the US in Wal-Mart and Home Depot!

Looks like most of their current work/product is no longer related to vermicomposting but rather taking post consumer garbage collected through brigades and upcycling it into consumer goods (like the speakers!). Check out their range of products and certainly spend some time on their website to learn more about this cool company. Maybe even see if you can sign up your kids’ school cafeterias to participate in the brigades!?

There’s a lot to love about this company, but my two favorite aspects – they got their start vermicomposting and they have a killer logo (but not quite as good as ours!).