Trashury

I’ve decided to run this blog in German from now on. The reason is quite simple - there’s no German blog (that I know of) that is dealing with the topics of design, reuse and recycling. And plenty of blogs in English.

I’ve also started working full time on another job, that means I will keep this updated in my spare time - so please bear with me if I don’t get to post regularly.

Sincerely,

Your Queen of Trash

Anna Lena

I am busy writing my final exam report for the KaosPilots these days, that means probably no more updates in the next 10 days…

In the meantime here’s a little video to cheer up the day: Oscar the Grouch, or his German equivalent Oskar aus der Mülltonne, with his take on trash.

“Just looking at this trash makes me feel so good, I feel like singing!”

A small slideshow presentation of great upcycling examples with wood is now uploaded to slideshare. It’s written in German but with a lot of nice pictures to look at. It will be shown at my little desk at todays resource conference in Berlin.

So far there’s Fernando and Humberto Campana with their Favela Chair, the Brothers Dressler from Canada, designer Geoff McFetridge and many more. Let me you what you think and if you’d like something to be added.

(And because I still haven’t figured out how to embed videos and slideshows you will have to click the link for now…)

Please note that the designers mentioned in the slideshow are not part of the Trashury project,  but more a summary of who does what in wood upcycling.

A big part of the Trashury project is not only finding the designers, scouting the waste and making the products, but also communicating what the idea is all about and why it’s important.

This Friday Germany’s Green Party is hosting the Ressourcenkongress Ressourcenkongress (summary of the event in German) here in Berlin. It’s a one-day conference on resources, materials and the challenge of efficiency in today’s throw-away culture. (For those who understand German, please read on for more detailed information.)

Trashury will be part of the conference exhibition where companies, initiatives and producers will demonstrate how they contribute to saving the world one step at a time.

Die Schonung von Ressourcen, die effizientere Rohstoffnutzung und die Produktion in geschlossenen Kreisläufen ist wirtschaftlich, friedens- und umweltpolitisch eine Notwendigkeit. Obwohl die Probleme und Herausforderungen einer sicheren Rohstoffversorgung lange bekannt sind, passiert in der Praxis viel zu wenig. Die Sicherung der Rohstoffversorgung für alle Menschen wird nur gelingen, wenn wir den Materialverbrauch durch Effizienzsteigerungen deutlich senken und gleichzeitig die Kreislauffähigkeit von Produkten drastisch erhöhen. Darüber hinaus wird es maßgeblich darauf ankommen, fossile Rohstoffe durch nachwachsende Rohstoffe zu ersetzten. Über die notwendigen politischen Rahmensetzungen und Instrumente wollen wir auf unserer Konferenz mit VertreterInnen aus Wissenschaft, Umweltverbänden, Wirtschaft und Politik diskutieren.

Außerdem wollen wir im Rahmen einer kleinen Ausstellung Initiativen, Verbände und Hersteller vorstellen, die sich mit der Kreislauffähigkeit von Produkten beschäftigen.

Programm (in German)

One of the biggest challenges of upcycling is to find suitable material. Sometimes you walk by a pile of discarded things, lightning strikes, you have an idea, take the waste home with you and turn it into the most beautiful item.

Unfortunately that only happens once in a while, and not on a regular basis. But there’s also the other way around. You have an idea, know exactly what you want to repurpose and what your product will look like - but you’re lacking the material.

What to do? Planet Reuse has an interesting answer to this.

“Planet Reuse is the world’s first website that connects buyers and seller of reused and reclaimed construction materials and equipment from around the world and allows them to purchase products online.

Sellers create a listing of their product for FREE and provide as much information as they can, including pictures, a verbal description, quantity and cost

Buyers can browse by a number of categories to find what they are looking for.”

I browsed through their shop (you can search by country, state, material and product category) and most of the listings are in the US for now, but it looks like they aim to build a global database. Good for us in old Europe!

What I really like about this service is that they immediately connect sellers with buyers which rids them of the burden to store material until a buyer can be found. Now all that’s needed is enough and equal supply and demand to make this idea work.

via Planet Green

This young sir I met at a store on Alte Schönhauser Straße in Berlin Mitte. His fabulous bag consists of two vinyl discs (one for each side, that is), a seat belt and some shiny old plastic fabric to hold it all together.

It was a birthday gift from one of his friends back home, he said. Nice DIY-style upcycling!

I’d like to introduce Amy and Chris, two designers I’ll be working with during the next couple of weeks and months.

Amy is a soon to be graduate from Denmark’s Design School in Copenhagen where she works with furniture design. We came to know of each other through her sister who also attended the KaosPilots, that slightly different business school which I will have the pleasure to also graduate from in June.

Amy’s planning to make a small series of furniture for her final project and we’ll collaborate on the material aspect. Her former and current work can be seen on her website.

‘Vipp’ is a dining chair in pine wood where you can sit still or tilt back without braking your chair or your back. It was exhibited at the Stockholm Furniture Fair 2008 in the Greenhouse area.

Read the rest of this entry »

I spent the last couple of days at re:publica 08, a blogger conference in Berlin, and enjoyed the web 2.0 nerd community for 72 hours. Twitter was the talk of town and as an estimated 90% off all attending people are signed up to that service, there was a noticeable undercurrent of comments that accompanied the keynotes, presentations and workshops. Videos of the sessions in the main hall are available here (mostly in German).

Now I’m back to trashury business, working on partnerships and locating companies. And of course I’m also still scanning the blogosphere for examples of reuse, re- & upcycling and repurposing (of which I promise to post more now).

I came upon this thing called Walking Bike by Max Knight and even it’s only purpose (no pun intended) is to reinvent the wheel, it’s at least a nice example of reuse.

The set-up is quite simple. An old bike, a couple of old sneakers, good handiwork and you’ve got yourself a neat walking bike. A definite plus is that the materials are easily available. Bike frames (at least in Germany’s cities) can be found on almost every corner and I bet that there’s also some sneakers lying around your house that you could use.

Regarding the design aspects there might be some issues with the usability
… see for yourself how it looks in action. (There seems to be some issues with plug-ins. So if you can’t see the video embedded here then try this).

Nevertheless, a great idea!

via Ecofriend 

A snapshot from the streets of Berlin. Just now when I was strolling down the street near Kastanienallee there was a group of kids making a lot of noise on their drums, and it turns out to be that those drums are old plastic bottles and containers. Nice work!  Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a lot of words floating around in the Trashury universe.  While often describing the same thing, there are no commonly agreed upon terms when speaking of waste and design. Recycling, upcycling, reuse, redesign, remix, repurpose… the list goes on. To gain an overview I’ll give you an introduction into each of those words and present some companies working with these principles.    Read the rest of this entry »