Category: Reuse

Is the Paradox of Choice an Opportunity for the Sharing Economy?

Read the full post at Shareable.

Would you rather watch cat videos or read Nate Silver’s latest election projections? Snack on traditional frosted flakes or ones dusted with maple and apple flavoring? Use a smartphone with a 3.5” or a 4.25” screen? And do these largely arbitrary decisions really improve our quality of life? In his 2005 book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, psychologist Barry Schwartz made the case that this bounty of consumption options instead contributed to a general social malaise of “anxiety, dissatisfaction and regret.”

It’s not a new idea, but an articulation of a dilemma growing increasingly resonant in a time of seeming overabundance of products, resources, and information. Minor differentiation between products creates an illusion of freedom and self-determination, Schwartz argues. It’s a costly illusion. During a 2007 TED talk, Schwartz reflected on the personal, social, and environmental toll of our addiction to options.

When students scram, tons of items find new homes

Read the full story from the University of Washington.

University of Washington Recycling wants to turn unwanted items into social change.

As a new school year begins, so do the university’s efforts to collect and donate reusable items that might otherwise go to the landfill including books that raise money to fight illiteracy  and backpacks donated to Real Change newspaper sellers.

Fort Collins Bike Library rolls into transition

Read the full story in the Coloradoan.

Getting more people on bikes is the goal of B-cycle and the newer ViaCycle, both of which were on display Oct. 5 for the public to check out.

Both of the bike-sharing companies operate off of the same concept, which is providing a community with a fleet of bikes they can rent, ride around town and return to a station or bike rack.

If it sounds similar to the current Bike Library in Old Town, that is on purpose. The two companies would be the next generation of the current Bike Library, and with funding in question after this year, the city is looking at the best course of action moving forward.

Stunning Reuse Ideas for Old Books and Maps

Read the full story at Earth911.

Have a few unreadable books in your bookshelf or out-of-date maps in your glove compartment? Before tossing them in the recycling bin, take a moment to realize their full potential. Old-school finds add a welcoming and one-of-a-kind flair to your home decor, and the antique look is way easier to achieve with real vintage treasures than new stuff made to “look old.” So, gather up your paper leftovers, hand-me-downs and thrift store finds, and check out these 10 creatively beautiful ways to reuse them.

10 Ways to Reuse an Old T-Shirt

Read the full story at Earth911.

If you’re anything like me, you have tons of old T-shirts laying around in your drawers collecting dust. Instead of dumping them all in a collection bin, turn them into something useful. You’ll be amazed at how many things you could actually make from a humble tee. Here are ten of our favorites.

ReSpace Competition Blends Design with Reuse

Read the full story at Earth911.

Earlier this year, Habitat for Humanity of Wake County launched the ReSpace design competition in an effort to raise awareness of what recycled and reused building materials can do. The challenge? Design a small, unique and transportable structure with reused materials at the core, from concept to construction.

The grand prize winner’s design will be constructed in a 48-hour build-a-thon in January, overseen by Habitat for Humanity of Wake County – which serves Raleigh, NC and surrounding neighborhoods. The final ReSpace structure will stand in the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Raleigh for several weeks before being sold to benefit Habitat for Humanity of Wake County.

How to Start a Tool Library in Your Community

Read the full story at Shareable.

Tool libraries, which have been around since at least the 1970s, offer communities a way to share resources that would otherwise spend the vast majority of the time sitting in drawers and garages. They make screwdrivers, saws, drain snakes, drills, chisels, and whatever else one might need for building and repair projects available to patrons either for free or for a small fee. By providing access to tools, these libraries help to build resilient communities, they empower their users, they lessen neighborhoods’ ecological footprints and they help to beautify areas.

Handily illustrating the benefits of access over ownership, tool lending is an idea that is quickly spreading. A directory of tool libraries now lists almost 50 around the world and there are more in the works. In August, the Center for a New American Dream, in keeping with its efforts to “change social norms around consumption and consumerism,” offered a free webinar entitled How to Start a Tool Library in Your Community. Over 200 people participated live and the webinar is now available online.

Bespoke Devices: London Workshops Demystify The Guts of Personal Technology

Read the full post at GOOD.

Everyone dreads the moment when their tablet, laptop, or iPhone turns from helpful friend to ardent foe, leaving the owner clueless and looking to the manufacturer for help or for a new device altogether.

Creative husband and wife team Daniel Hirschmann and Bethany Koby want you to know what to do when your gadget quits. They believe that technology is most beneficial to our lives when we understand how it works and can tailor it to our individual needs.

The duo calls their London-based startup—Technology Will Save Us—a “haberdashery for technology.” Their workshops and kits demystify things like micro-controllers and circuit boards and reignite the joy that comes from making something, whether it’s foldable speakers or a thirsty plant detector.

Remains of the Games: A website for all of your used Olympic furniture needs

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

London took impressive, unprecedented measures to inject a healthy dose of sustainability into the 2012 Summer Games including, but not limited to, erecting a recyclable basketball stadium (the temporary steel structure will be dissembled and shipped elsewhere for further use, possibly to Rio for the 2016 Olympics), repurposing the water used to clean swimming pool filters in Zaha Hadid’s stunning Aquatics Centre for toilet flushing, launching an ambitious recycling scheme for all those millions of spent crisp packets, and resurrecting Trackpants Spice and Co. from the dead for the Closing Ceremonies.
And for those wondering what will become of the Olympic Village that housed about 17,000 athletes and officials from around the globe — those buildings will be transformed into East Village, a park-heavy East London district with 2,818 new housing units (1,379 of them will be affordable) for sale and rent. In each of the units, temporary partitions installed for the games will be removed and kitchens will be installed to make way for proper apartments and townhouses.
Sounds fantastic but what about all that brand new furniture and all those fixtures and fittings installed throughout the Olympic Village that only got about two week’s worth of use? Chances are that it’s up for grabs at Remains of the Games, a giant online fire sale dedicated to unloading all the stuff — 100 percent authentic stuff ranging from bookcases, beanbag chairs and Usain Bolt-sized beds — found in the Olympic Village apartments and, yes, used by the athletes themselves.

Nine Novel Ways to Re-Use a Novel (or Any Other Book)

Read the full post at Networx.

If you’re the type of person who could never imagine taking apart a book – removing its pages, cutting off its cover, etc – then please stop reading now. This article is not for you. And I totally understand! Some people have such emotional attachments to books; the thought of repurposing them is simply horrific. (For all of you, Atlanta painter and decorating expert Kass Wilson wrote a tutorial on how to make bookshelves the focal point of a room.)

But for the rest of you, here’s a few awesome ideas (other than creating a decorative library) for upcycling the used books you’ve got lying around:

WEBINAR: How to Start a Tool Library in Your Community

Date: Thursday, August 9, 2012
Time: 2:00-3:00 p.m. EST
Register at http://www.newdream.org/resources/webinar-start-a-tool-library

The Center for a New American Dream presents a free webinar about how to start up a new tool library in your community. Topics will include obtaining funding, finding a location, tracking tools, navigating through legal issues, and more. The webinar will feature speakers from successful tool libraries around the country.

Guest speakers:

Froehlich, Hatch, McElligott, and Yurgelevic will share wisdom and stories about how they got their tool libraries off the ground, and answer your questions about how you can launch one in your own town.

Creative reuse of an old entertainment center

Photos courtesy of the BetterAfter blog. For more ideas, search the blog for “entertainment center”. Projects include a dollhouse, a coat rack, and an attractive side table.

Discarded entertainment center coverted to kids play kitchen

In a Sanitation Garage, a Gallery of Scavenged Art

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Nelson Molina has been collecting treasures from household trash for the past 20 years, all of it on display in a Sanitation Department parking garage.

Design It: Create the International ”Reuse’ Symbol

Read the full story at Earth911.

While recycling is an effective means of preventing waste, reuse is just as crucial of a step. Resources are inherently conserved by reuse, because it removes the need to buy new products by repurposing those already in-hand.

Earth911.com hopes to make reuse as prevalent and recognizable as recycling by hosting a competition to design a reuse symbol. The winning design will receive a $500 prize, and the symbol will be made a part of the public domain to be reused, remixed and distributed without royalties.

To do this, Earth911 partnered with GOOD Maker, a tool that gives individuals and organizations the ability to tap into the public’s creativity and energy to address an issue that’s important to them.

London Water Tower Upcycled into Townhouse

Read the full story at Earth911.

Just when I thought I had officially retired my “All along the water tower” series, along comes another eye-catching instance of a decommissioned elongated water storage container transformed into a stair-heavy private residence (hat tip to Mark Boyer over at Inhabitat). And this repurposed water tower dwelling located in North Kensington, London, couldn’t pop up at a better time as it includes three private rooms for rent via Airbnb starting at $209 per night. Perfect for Summer Olympics lodgings, am I right? And, somewhat surprisingly, it looks like there’s vacancies during the Games!