On this rainy Friday afternoon as I was flicking through the magazine put out by WasteMINZ my day was suddenly made just a wee bit brighter.

Amid all the doom and gloom of the world is wasting x product at ridiculous levels I came across a small feature article on something a little bit cool, a little bit different and that most definitely brightened my day: Educational computer games.

Try it... I dare you!

I did a little bit of research and the game that I played (briefly of course!) was called ” Michael, Michael, Go Recycle! .” Highly addictive, in this game (designed, I’ll admit, for kids) you run around picking up various types of rubbish and then deposit them into various recycling and rubbish bins. You get points for the more you recycle and you have to think about what you have collected and what bin it should go into.

So if are you sitting at home playing with a kid and you want to teach them about recycling or if you are at work and want just a little bit of entertainment to fill in your Friday, check it out at http://funschool.kaboose.com/globe-rider.earth-day!

Styrofoam.. Probably the most pointless substance in the world (except when it comes down to packaging your valuables) can be so damn hard to get rid of in an environmentally friendly manners. Here is an awesome blog about the “do’s” and “don’ts” of getting rid of styrofoam, but I would love to hear your ideas about what we should do with the substance.

Styrofoam, made from polysterene, is petrol based and is bad bad bad! Those innocent little styrofoam baubles and cups contain carcinogens. Now how happy are you with them getting up close and personal with your food and your food appliances?

A box filled with environmental evil...

Not only is styrofoam bad for you, its bad for the environment! It doesn’t bio-degrade, it creates huge amounts of air pollution and it is made from a non-renewable resource!

So what can we do about it?

Well we can say no… but then if your toaster breaks and you need a new one then it is still going to be packaged in styrofoam. So while we can try to change the behaviour of those around us by switching styrofoam cups to keep-cups or mugs that are washed, there really needs to be changed.

What can we use for packaging in place of styrofoam, that still is light weight, to keep shipping costs down, while offering enough protection to fragile items? get your thinking caps on and share your ideas!

We all are guilty of wasting food, and we all know that food waste is going on. How many times have you looked in your fridge to discover leftovers that weren’t eaten fast enough, or vegetables going mouldy before you had the chance to eat them?

It happens to the best of us, but trying to cut down on food waste is incredibly important for a whole host of reasons. It will save you money and it will be better for the environment (because heaps of food waste just goes to landfills, instead of being composted).

Apparently “global losses and wastage may be in the order of 50 percent between field and fork.”

So clearly there is still a lot of room for improvement!

But never fear, today’s Friday Favourite (posted on Thursday because Friday is a public holiday) is full of some handy tips to minimize your food waste over the easter break, and extending far beyond.

First keep your fridge clean. This makes sense doesn’t it? if you regularly check on what is close to expiring in your fridge and make a mental note to eat it in the next day or so it won’t go to waste! Now how is that for an easy tip.

This way you will see the food that is close to expiring!

Eat leftovers, and turn them into something even more exciting. With the internet at our disposal, recipe sites are endless, and you can enter ingredients or just surf for inspiration. One of my favourite is Allrecipes.

Don’t shop hungry! And pause in the supermarket to check you will actually use your ingredients and overcome those impulse buys.

And lastly, don’t over-eat, there is always seconds. Take as much as you think you want, but remember if you aren’t really hungry and you are just eating to clear your plate, those left overs could have been used for another meal.

Check out the full list here and let us know your favourite, easy ways to not waste food!

images from: feedintothefeed.com

iheartorganizing.blogspot.com

Takeaway coffee cups seem to be an ever present part of our busy, modern, coffee-fueled lives. When everything in the world moves so fast who has time to sit down and actually drink their coffee in the cafe? But this busy, on-the-go lifestyle creates a very big waste problem caused by the essential takeaway coffee cup.

Because takeaway coffee cups have a waterproof lining they are not recyclable… and who has time to rinse the lid if everything else is going in the trash? But this very attitude is filling our landfills at an alarming rate.

The disposable coffee cup pandemic that is filling our rubbish bins

You can read all about the environmental impact of coffee cups here and trust me, it does not make for pretty reading.

But luckily for all us coffee addicted people out there there is a solution: reusuable cups. They are everywhere now! Keepcups are our newest, and pretty effective answer to the coffee waste problem.

The answer to our prayers?

But it still doesn’t completely fix it because what happens when you leave your keepcup behind? You still buy these very un-environmentally friendly takeaway cups.

So here I leave you for some food for thought: wouldn’t it be amazing, on those occasions that you do buy a takeaway coffee cup if it was actually 100% recyclable? Combining that with the use of recyclable cups like the keep cup would really make a difference in the world and in our landfills!

Artists concerned with sustainability are increasingly using old, unwanted materials to make beautiful creations, sculptures and fashion (here think World of Wearable Arts).

This beautiful bird is made out of recycled, damaged CD's

This is such a cool idea, taking something that would have otherwise cluttered landfills, and making it beautiful, a point of interest. And it can even be yours to own, along with a variety of other animals if you check out the Green Muze website

So whether you have a creative streak and you think you can make your own, or whether you want to purchase sustainable art to do your bit, support this trend and have a talking point of your own, I think it is about time to embrace sustainable art.

For those of you with funkier tastes out there one artist makes recycled (sculpture) underwear

I don't think that this would be all that comfortable... but it a talking point!

Just a small something to brighten your friday

Images: Greenmuze.com

]]> http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/sustainable-art-and-the-skill-of-upcycling/feed/ 0 http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/1793/ http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/1793/#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:55:58 +0000 Admin http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/1793/

A list of the most common household wastes that cannot be recycled include:

• Broken glass
• Ceramics
• Rubber bands
• Wet, dirty or moldy paper
• Plastic types #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7
• Plastic bottle caps
• Napkins and tissues
• Fast food wrappers
• Aluminum foil
• Neon paper
• Stickers
• Waxed paper
• Milk cartons (the paper type ones, think American milk, or soy milk)

So many of these items are still common, everyday household goods, which look like they should be recyclable, but they really aren’t!

Lets take broken glass for example: currently broken glass cannot be recycled due to the danger that it poses to those sorting through the recycled materials. But we can recycle glass. The answer here seems so logical… should we have a place where we can seperate broken glass from non-broken glass, so that broken glass can be processed in a way that is safe to the operators and also enables it to still be recycled!

And what about neon paper and wet paper? Why on earth can we recycle paper, but not if its neon and not if it is wet. Can we recycle wet paper that has dried out? Turns out neon paper can’t be recycled because of the level of ink in the paper. If the colour goes all the way through the paper, it can’t be recycled. Now this just seems ridiculous! We clearly need new ideas, new technology, so we can recycle all paper!

So pretty, so handy, so NOT environmentally friendly

As for wet paper, it has absorbed too much moisture and cannot also absorb the chemicals used at the mill required to recycle the paper. However, here there is an alternative, as wet paper can be composted, and it is even advisable to line your green, compost bins with paper to stop food stuffs sticking to the bottom. But still, there is only so much paper you need, and sometimes the sill circulars that come in the mail get absolutely saturated before you get the chance to rescue them!

So get thinking, what can we do recycle or minimize our use of these common household items? Any grand ideas? I, for one, should probably cut down on my sticky note consumption, those neon colours are such good study aids but turns out they are also ruining the environment! What are you going to do/what grand ideas do you have to stop these common household waste items going to landfills?

As I dragged myself to the office early this friday morning and started looking for something to blog about this week I came across this

The Plastic Bag Monster

Now this made me smile, what a cute, fun way to make people aware of the amount of plastic bags they use!

The slogan refers to the fact that an average shopper consumes, and wastes, 500 plastic bags in a year. Now what I want to know is why no one has come up with a way to recycle these soft plastic bags! And why don’t we at least use a material that can be recyclable, if not reusable? Paper for instance can be recycled. Any while its not an answer, it has to be slightly better than being a bag monster!

So my friday favourite for the week is this photo and bagmonster.com which is all about plastic bag waste and alternatives.

Get your thinking hats on and share what you would do to help cut down on national (or global) consumption of waste

My last post was all about waste separation and recycling properly, but after reading some of the entries at My Plastic Free Life I started thinking about the age old plastic bottle debate.

Everything today is wrapped or packaged in plastic, with nothing more obvious than the plastic water bottle.

unnecessary waste or needed water?

Here in Christchurch we are blessed with one of the most pure water supplies of a New Zealand city, and it always made me laugh a little when people bought bottled water, because most New Zealand water brands are filled with Christchurch tap water.

But after reading the many articles on plastic bottle waste, it doesn’t seem so funny anymore. Each New Zealander consumes approximately 31kg of plastic waste a year, so while I was writing about the importance of separating our waste, it turns out we still have a very big problem with minimizing our waste, and in particular our plastic waste.

How is this alright?!

So what are we going to do about it?

There’s a heap of easy steps, and the first one is buy a decent, reusuable water bottle, get into the habit of taking it everywhere so you don’t need to buy that plastic water bottle that will just get thrown into the recycling (or even worse, the rubbish) later!

If you think your up for it, you can even try some of the challenges on My Plastic-Free Life ranging from preparing a meal without plastic, to taking plastic waste tallies… but whatever you do, we should all be trying to be more conscious about our plastic waste… especially when it comes to bottled water. Save some money and try to minimize your consumption, turn it into a challenge and it could be fun!

Images:

http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=pump+bottle&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2d46T-T_I6SdiAeT9MztCQ&biw=1366&bih=667&sei=2946T–gJcariAektdT7CQ#um=1

http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=pump+bottle&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2d46T-T_I6SdiAeT9MztCQ&biw=1366&bih=667&sei=2946T–gJcariAektdT7

Waste separation schemes help to minimize the amount of useable waste going to landfills

As wheelie bins allocated to different types of waste are appearing throughout the country, it is becoming increasingly obvious that separating and treating our various types of waste correctly could have a major impact on the amount of waste that is, well, wasted instead of used constructively.

In Canterbury, we now have three bins dedicated to separating waste and enabling more efficient waste collection , and Auckland has just got the ‘yellow’ recycling bin, which means for the most part we can effectively separate our waste.

However, some places in New Zealand, such as Greymouth, West Coast, have not yet implemented a kerbside collection service , which is resulting in large amounts of unnecessary waste still going to landfills. Statistics New Zealand has produced data which indicates just how much waste New Zealand is sending to landfills every year, which shows just how important waste minimization initiatives are!

With such high levels of waste going to landfills, as a country we surely have room for improvement to ensure that as much waste is recycled as possible. Smaller communities need to implement some level of kerbside collection, which can be grown to a greater scale at later dates, as residents become more aware of the benefits of recycling.

Meanwhile, larger communities, such as Christchurch City and Auckland, which already have established kerbside collection systems could further expand their systems.

WasteMINZ detailed a report related to the benefit of separating household waste in their recent magazine, which states:

“without food scraps in the household rubbish, waste volumes become substantially smaller with less smell, allowing less frequent collection (which is good becomes it minimises carbon emission caused by waste collections). By not co-mingling food and garden waste, contamination is reduced and the amount of garden waste drawn into the system is controlled, enabling more efficient and cheaper processing into high quality compost.”

This highlights the importance of trying to minimize our waste and attempting to separate our waste correctly so it can be used in the most efficient, effective manner. The difference between separating food scraps from rubbish or recycling is the difference between sending your useable waste to the landfill or actually putting it to good use. To find more about food waste collection, you can watch a video which outlines the findings in the test community of Putaruru, which is what WasteMINZ was discussing in their newsletter.

Your own, at home, waste separation scheme

For now, while these kerbside collection schemes are still taking off around the country, you can always start a separation scheme at your own home, building a worm farm out of food waste and collecting garden waste to make compost to revitalize your home garden. And you can make sure to put the right waste into the right bin!

Images from:  http://www.google.co.nz/imgres?q=kerbside+collection+bins&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbnid=lYwnSZutzT7lVM:&imgrefurl=http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/sus-dev/talk-sustaina

http://www.google.co.nz/imgres?q=worm+farm&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=624&tbm=isch&tbnid=BYXJHysrVySxlM:&imgrefurl=http://www.nedlands.wa.gov.au/Health_Environment/Ru