I love building upcycled displays. In fact, it's one of my favorite parts of owning Upcycled Missoula. I think the trick to good upcycled displays, is to create something that reuses materials in novel ways to best present the goods for sale. A while back I built this display for my Up Line brand, albeit to be used in another store. The display is minimalist yet elegant in design, and serves it's intended purpose well. I'm so geeked up about it, I wanted to share it with you all. It's a two sided display intended for an open floor space that shows my entire line with a minimal footprint, and it's 99.99% upcycled. Materials used are as follows: one half of a folding shutter door, three license plates, eight salvaged 5" screws, four 6" angle brackets for stabilizing feet, a mirror from a broken medicine cabinet, cereal box cardboard for the signage and new tacks to attach the signs. Have a cool upcycled project of your own? Please share a photo with us.. |
0 Comments
Every day millions of tons of reusable material is disposed of. According to the EPA, Americans alone produce about 250 million tons of waste. The good news is that per person waste is on downward trend, decreasing from a high of 4.72 lbs per day in 2000 to 4.43 lbs in 2010, a value not seen since the 1980's. The bad news is the per person reduction in waste doesn't make up for population growth, so we currently produce more trash than ever.
Our trash cans don't need to be full. Over 30% of our waste is just the packaging wrapped around the objects we actually want to consume. Another 21% is non-durable goods designed to be used once or a few times and then thrown away. There's a better way. In the coming weeks we will look at how we might reduce and reuse our way to an emptier waste basket. From most tossed to least we will examine paper, plastics, metal, textiles rubber and leather, wood and glass. For now, some simple ways we can all make a difference. When eating out, eat what you order. If you must take leftovers, bring your own reusable containers. Buy out of the bulk bins at the grocery store. Bring your own coffee cup to the espresso stand. Purchase items meant to be reused, like cloth diapers, cloth napkins and cloth towels instead of paper. Repair durable goods when you can. Consolidate your electronics. Together we can make a difference.
With the 11th annual FINA World Swimming Championships just having come to a close, we thought it would be appropriate to share with you the exciting cross road that we've discovered between the swimming community and the upcycling community. You might be familiar with Michael Phelps’ astounding eight gold medal wins at the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China but do you remember what he was wearing? Speedo sure does. He was wearing the LZR Racer Full-Body and it was considered a revolutionary swimsuit technology. However, FINA banned the suit after Phelps’ overwhelming medal haul. Consequently, Speedo found themselves with an excess of unusable suits. Seemingly unusable suits? Seemingly unusable resources? Sounds like an upcycling challenge to me!
The London based sustainable fashion label, From Somewhere, recently took on Speedo’s challenge and created an entire high fashion line of dresses and gowns made out of the LZR Racer swimsuit. Most notably, From Somewhere, created the “Unity” gown, an exquisite and vibrant garment made from Speedo’s 2008 Olympic swimsuits. I don’t know about you, but we're thrilled to see a worldwide commitment to sustainability. It’s exciting to see new materials being used in a fresh way. Who knows, maybe we will start cutting up old swim suits into headbands or braid the fabric into a rockstar statement piece even the Man Repeller could be proud of. The possibilities are endless …and that’s why we love upcycling so much! Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s define what it means to upcycle. Wikipedia defines it as: the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value. We like to think of it more as the creative reuse of refuse, or, most simply, turning our garbage into something awesome!
So, we’ve defined upcycling, but what are our goals for Upcycled Online? To start with, we want to leverage this site as an aggregate of all things upcycled, online. We will feature content from all over the web. If it’s being talked about on blogs, facebook, twitter or pintrest, we want to help you find it. Secondly, we want to know about your do-it-yourself endeavors and we love to share our own. Have a guide you’ve created or one you just really like, send us a link. Third, we want to make upcycling as available to you as possible. To do so, we have created a directory of upcycling manufacturers and upcycling friendly shops. With your help, we hope to continue to expand this directory to represent more places and to represent all place in more depth. In the future, we will be adding more directories for green trade shows and art fairs, crafters markets and upcycling related non profits. Lastly, in our words from the nerds section. We will be talking about upcycling from all angles. We may comment on others content or post content ranging from upcycling history to local events, to new business ideas or whatever is interesting to us at the moment. Eventually, we would like to host your words as well. Are you trying to earn a living upcycling? Share your successes and your foibles, and ask questions of the greater community. If you run a store or a booth, we would love to hear about that as well. We are just in the process of becoming and exciting times lay ahead. Thanks for checking us out and please check back in soon. |
WordsRandom musings, interviews and other prose... Archives
April 2016
Categories
All
|