Random project I worked on this weekend: a pop-up book light.

A book binding converted into a light with an accordion-felt star that pops up when you open it. This is just my first prototype; I really need to get my hands on a sewing machine. I’m also still working on the electronics that go inside. All of the inside pages that I gutted out will be recycled.

I love the opening action that is so inherent to books. Sort of like opening a gift. Opening a new experience. Opening a new adventure! So, I wanted to create a fun spin on “opening” with this pop-up surprise.

I can imagine this light sitting on a book shelf, and being retrieved for a variety of uses. I’m going to hook it up with a rechargeable battery pack and some bright white LEDs. Since its portable, it could be useful camping — a new take on campfire stories perhaps. Or a really fun, interactive children’s toy. There could be cut outs in the felt to make all sorts of silly characters.

Stay tuned for another prototype soon.

It’s crazy how much plastic shrinks. Look at how cute these shrunken plastic bags are!

I always struggle with the huge gap between disposable products and valuable ones. It doesn’t make much sense that some disposable products (like plastic bags) are made out of a material that do not allow itself to really be properly disposed of (proper disposal being in a closed loop of course ).

It is so fascinating that a man-made material like plastic is associated with cheapness…  when its chemical make up suggests the exact opposite — robustness. Plastic has so many favorable properties (ex – waterproof, doesn’t degrade) to make a robust, valuable product. Why are so many disposable products made out of plastic?

Is it because of plastic’s low manufacturing cost? Or it’s aesthetic properties? Probably a combination of both.

I’m experimenting with molding plastic bags into a new form (like over a glass cup in the photo above). When melted, the plastic bag takes on this really interesting translucent, fibrous texture. As cliche as it is, I think it could look pretty cool as a light.

I think I just found a project to work on this weekend…

I recently went on a trip to Europe. I am a light-packer, so all I brought was a backpack and a purse. I hate dragging around suitcases and checking luggage. It is never the right time, weather, or place to carry around heavy shit! So, why do it?

Anyways, on my return flight back to the US, I decided to check my bag. I went through normal procedures, approached the Continental check-in counter, handed over my passport, and then placed my backpack on the conveyor belt. Everything was going smoothly until the Continental employee lifted up my backpack and placed it in a plastic bag big enough to fit a human being (top photo).

I immediately said, “Wait! Why are you doing that?”. I didn’t have any loose contents. I didn’t have any liquids that would spill out. My backpack is already a package for my belongings, why did I need another one?

The employee told me that it was Continental’s policy to bag anything with a lot of straps because it may get stuck or caught on something while traveling down conveyor belts and chutes. Okay, I understand their concern, but c’mon! Look at this plastic bag, it is ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that when I had to run to customs so I could make my connecting flight, I couldn’t open the bag or access any of the straps. I had to carry that thing over my shoulder like Santa Claus running through the terminal.

When I arrived back in Atlanta, all I could do was rip the bag off and throw it away. What would have been a better method of securing my backpacks straps? Something I will definitely brainstorm.

I had a similar experience when I was in Italy in 2009 and wanted to check a bag that was deemed insecure. So, the check-in attendant directed me to have my bag shrink-wrapped in plastic if I wanted to check it. The result is the bottom photo. At least the Italians had the decency to add a handle!

One popular discussion is – What’s more green: An e-book or a paper book? On one hand, an e-book spares the use of paper and cutting down of trees. However, an electronic book must obviously be viewed on an electronic device, which utilizes electricity. Most sources of electricity today (not all) come from coal power plants. In addition to using the natural resources of trees, we should also consider that processing paper and physically manufacturing the book also consumes energy (probably electricity and coal).

So we have e-book (coal) vs. paper book (trees + coal). This is only comparing natural resource usage. What about these products’ individual effects over time? Every time an e-book is viewed, it is using coal. Every time a paper book is viewed, it is not killing more trees. I think its really important to look at the entire product life cycle before assessing its “sustainability”.

A paper book goes through a period of time where it consumes natural resources and energy, but then it lives the rest of its life as a harmless artifact/tool. An e-book does not require a lot of energy to produce, since it is digital, but requires energy to continually exist.

I am still not sure where I stand. What do you think? E-books or paper books?

“Our goal is to involve not only waste and industrial companies to the project but mainly gather society in the purpuse with local and national campains and educational program for puclic learning. We know that upcycling is not  revolutionary solution but by this way, involving the people in the main process and learn more about social, economical and industrial habits to go green without loosing money, wasting time or feel guilty about the enviroment.”

Upcycling is tricky. One one hand, prolonging the lifecycle of an otherwise trashed object is fantastic because it keeps volume out of landfills. On the other hand, if you upcycle an object to a product that is not robust enough to escape landfills for a significant amount of time — what is the point? Instead of upcycling, why not focus energies on creating products that cannot be thrown away?

So, I tend to think that on a large scale (like Terracycle’s partnership with Kellogg) upcycling is not effective, because Kellogg produces a massive amount of food packaging. Unless Terracycle is able to upcycle all of Kellogg’s food packaging waste into very valuable, robust products — there is just too much packaging! In that case, I think there is more opportunity to redesign food packaging than figure out an efficient plan for upcycling.

What Upcycle Belgium is doing is different — they are not just upcycling, they are trying to start a social movement. They want to education people about the lifecycle of products. From what I understand, they are not trying to mass manufacture new upcycled goods, but take an artisan approach and create new, unique products that last a lifetime.

I’ve always wanted to go to Belgium… who knows… I am going to Europe next month, maybe I should pay Brussels a visit!

It looks gorgeous!

Oh Keebler,

I am very disappointed in your new green “marketing campaign” with Terracycle. It is a complete green washed mess. My roommate Crystal (yes, her name is also Crystal) came home tonight with a bag of Sandies Shortbread Dark Chocolate Almond cookies. The bag was already open, but there was no way to reseal it — and she didn’t want the cookies to go stale. So, she put the cookies in a tupperware, recycled the plastic tray that held them– but what could be done with the outside foil-lined plastic package? I pessemistically told her that it was unfortunately just trash.

“Wait! It says something here that it is green…” — Crystal gestured me over to read the package. I thought to myself, “Wow maybe Keebler stepped its green game up…”

The package reads ” News from the Hollow Tree! Keebler and TerraCycle have joined forces to collect and turn cookie wrappers into great eco-friendly products your family will love. Get involved and discover how this wrapper can be repurposed through upcycling — go to keebler.com to: (1) Help keep wrappers out of landfills  (2) Learn about a join a Cookie Wrapper Brigade  (3) Collect wrappers for a good cause.

Schemes like this really piss me off! Keebler is just putting up this green marketing scheme as a front so they can continue making the horribly unsustainable package that they always have. Instead of taking preventable actions — like redesigning their package to be biodegradable, recyclable, or useful past its life as a cookie package — they are just reassuring costumers that they will do something to reuse the packaging. They will just worry about it later.

You should check out the Keebler website. They encourage customers to mail in their bags and then Keebler will figure out something to do with it. Really? You expect customers to leave their home, go to the post office, and mail their bag to you? When their trash can is like 2 feet away? Yeah, sounds like you be receiving loads of bags.

Watch the Terracycle video also. I know it sounds all good and green, but I personally do not agree! These people are just elongating the lifecycle of trash — which is a temporary fix. You have to start rethinking what packaging is before you manufacture it.

Don’t expect people to change their behavior (and send in their trash) when companies like YOU refuse to change YOUR behavior.

Whew. Sorry that was a long, angry rant.

I met some amazing people from all different fields; interior design, architecture, graphic design, engineering, and more. I was one of the younger attendees and can only hope that, in ten years, I measure up to some of the other folks — their accomplishements and careers were off-the-charts impressive. Design professionals shared stories about how they started new companies, went against the status quo of company operations, and did their own thing!

This is just a general synopsis of my experience at the DFC Summit, I am going to list some links to inspiring projects I learned about in my next post. There are some amazing start ups all over the country that are devoted to public health and sustainability. Radical.

Some photos from the conference:

Woo!

A break out session, where a topic is given [ex-how to break out of the status quo within your company] 

Lovely lunch on the terrace! Gorgeous Atlanta fall weather and view of the city.

Alan Balfour, Dean of the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech, was one of many fantastic speakers.

The conference ended with a tour of Perkins + Will new office space.

The finished award! I am supremely happy with the way they turned out. Bicycle gears were slightly damaged and donated by Sopo Bicycle Co-op here in Atlanta. The middle, clear disks were cut out from plastic take out containers. The verbage was stamped on the plastic by hand with paint. The marble base was cut out of marble slab reclaimed from a demolished building in Atlanta. The big “gear head” piece is attached to the base using a simple bolt, no adhesives necessary. I think it has a tough, industrial edge with an elegant streak.

Some of the staff of the Sustainability Division holding an award; (left to right) Leslie Caceda, Mary Talukder, Diana Trettin, Bill Vondersmith, Yours Truly, Suzanne Burnes, & Lauren Travis.

The Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, presenting the Innovation Award to the staff from Unicoi State Park at the Natural Leaders Awards Ceremony this past Wednesday. For more images from the event and the list of winners, go to the Natural Leaders Awards website.

Many of you who know me know that I absolutely despise graphic design. It usually takes me a pathetically long time to design a layout that works. A lot of times it just frustrates me because I do not think I have a natural “eye” for it. Last night I was working on some posters for the exhibit — it was rough. I hadn’t been in a studio-like “time crunch” in weeks and needed to crank out some graphics last night.

Up above is one of the layouts I came up with. I always have a hard time describing the Closed Loop experiment through graphics — through trial and error, I discovered a bunch of photos of trash isn’t interesting or informative. The Closed Loop was really about me sharing my experience of living sustainably with a lot of people. So, I decided to go a more story-telling route with an illustration of me in my Closed Loop apartment and a first person narrative.

We are meeting tomorrow for a few minutes on our lunch breaks to discuss the progress of this week’s goals. Woo! The ball is finally rolling. One coworker today brought in her own cardboard box to collect scrap office paper in. Another took his own initiative to start researching if our factory recycles steel. I feel like now solving these sustainability problems have become something to talk about around the office.