Take a Seat: recycle a chair project

Artist Jason Eppink's latest project, which is aptly titled Take a Seat, is an ongoing series of public furniture installations in New York subway stations. Subway riders are encouraged to recycle or rescue a chair from being thrown in the landfill, and instead place it in a subway station, where it may get some good use. Eppink's goal is to increase the availability of seating in subway stations, and anyone can place a chair, take a picture of it, and send it to his blog: http://jasoneppink.com/take-a-seat/?pid=39


photo via http://jasoneppink.com/take-a-seat/?pid=39

Rescue that Trash!

Have you ever found a "junked" item on the berm or in the back of a thrift shop, and found a cool new use for it? If you happen to have a rediscovery or reuse story, send it our way, and we'll feature your story on our blog!

Here's my trash rescue story:

On by walk home one day, I noticed a neighbor had set a huge, ornate, gilt style frame out with the trash. The corners were crumbling, and some of the carved decoration had chipped away. It could have been crushed down in the garbage truck, but I saw potential, so I grabbed it and brought it to my backyard. With a can of spray paint, I painted the entire frame glossy black, so it had a sort of sleek, modern look to it. I then placed an ad for the frame on Craigslist, and within a week, I sold it for $50!

Sometimes it pays not to pass up trash!

If you have a story of a way you reused or recycled a found object, let us know, and we'll post your story on our blog!

Unbottle your crafting skills this weekend!

Get ready for some upcycling fun this weekend with GrowNYC! In order to raise recycling awareness and promote our high quality NYC tap water, you can take part in a plastic bottle sculpture project this Saturday! So unbottle your creative side, and drop by for some hands on fun!

When: Saturday May 21, 2011 11-3PM

Where: DEP Visitor Center

329 Greenpoint Ave & Humboldt St (G train to Greenpoint Ave)

Brooklyn, NY

Please note, you must be 18 or older to attend this event. Don't miss this exciting twist on recycling!

Gill the recycled holiday fish

Happy upcycling holidays everyone!

I trekked back to see my family in mid-Michigan this Christmas with many-a-handmade gift to give. My 9 year old niece and 4 year old nephew excitedly took me to see their neighborhood fish. I wondered why this particular fish lived in the parking lot of some nearby stores, but since you should never question the enthusiasm of kids, I went along with it and assumed they wouldn't be that excited if his health of living in a parking lot was questioned. When we pulled up it all made sense - Gill was constructed completely from recycled plastics. He was created mostly from laundry detergent bottles, but there were also pieces of plastic plates and an old wading pool in there, too. He also had holiday lights strung throughout him, making him a recycled aquatic Christmas tree of sorts. There's certainly more than one way to spread holiday cheer.

What's for lunch? More real food, less waste challenge!

photo by Abby Kelly

Check out this great Waste-Free Lunch Challenge that happened recently in schools across Ontario, Canada.

This program took place as a one week challenge to help schools reduce their garbage. What a great way to put the education system at work. Apparently the average student's lunch generates about 60 pounds of trash per year! That's like the size of a child! There program even has incentives for the classes that have the best participation.

The article also gives a shout out to good old TerraCycle for their dedication to collecting and upcycling hard-to-recycle food packaging. TerraCycling your food wrapper is a great solution when you can't avoid a completely waste-free lunch. You can sign up for collection brigades in the US, Canada, and many other countries.

Read the whole article here. If you're involved in a school system outside of Ontario, why not try to bring a similar program to your school?

Trash talkin' with More Hip than Hippie!

The hip ladies over at More Hip Than Hippie recently called me up to talk trash. You can listen to the podcast on their site here. It'll fill you in on all of the trash happenings around RePlayGround because we're always loaded with lots of fun upcycled goodness!

Thanks for the great interview Dori and Val! You guys rock my eco-world!

New Life for Shredded Paper

On a lunchtime stroll the other day I noticed that someone was putting shredded paper to good use in a tree pit.

We covered something similar in our Rethink/Reuse series last year, and it's always nice to see "trash" being used for noble purposes, like keeping our hard-working street trees* a little bit healthier. (*Did you know that each year, 272 tons of air pollution are intercepted or absorbed by trees in NYC? And that street trees raise surrounding property values? Learn more here.)

Tristin and Tyler talk trash with Tiffany

My new friends Tristen and Tyler stopped by my design studio a few weeks ago. I showed them the latest in RePlayGround trash projects and we upcycled up a storm. Check out this "Tristin and Tyler's Tales from the City" clip and maybe you can make something for yourself, too:

Garbage Moguls! Airing this Saturday!

Hi there friends of RePlayGround! If you're friends of us, chances are you're friends of TerraCycle, too! I'm excited to announce that TerraCycle's trashy reality show, Garbage Moguls, is airing this Saturday. And it's not just one episode. It's four trash-packed episodes airing in a eco-marathon. You can catch me in the shows along with the rest of the TerraCycle crew.

Tune in to the National Geographic Network at 7pm EST and rewatch the pilot kite-flying episode. From 8pm - 10pm you can watch three all-new episodes. What garbage will we attack? That's why you need to tune in. You never know what kind of trash turns up at TerraCycle.

woo hoo garbage moguls!

Sometimes it's ok to throw things away

I caught my lovely and talented friend Mama Spell performing her variety show at Otto's Shrunken Head a few weeks ago. We were talkin' trash after the show and discussing the benefits to reusing garbage and turning it into new. The discussion led to her friend who is a pack rat and never throws anything away. But also never really intends to use or reuse those items. Like stacks of newspapers. 3 broken printers. If they don't work now, they don't exactly heal themselves. Remember - when stuff is taking up space, that's wasting precious resources, too. Inspired, Mama wrote and recorded a rough of this totally sweet and trashy song - Garbage Song.

Love it!! Because if you can't reuse it, you just gotta let it go. If I accepted all of the trash that people offered me, I would have no room to move. And if I couldn't move, that would make my design projects pretty difficult to work on.

Everyone together now, "It's ok to throw things away. Not everything was meant to stay...."
It's catchy.



ps. If you're in the NYC area, let Mama put you under her laughing spell every Wednesday's at Ottos.

NY Times "Year In Ideas": Trash Tracking

One of the items in this year's New York Times "Year in Ideas" feature caught my eye: a piece on smart garbage.

The problem: curbside recycling programs are still fairly primitive compared to today's trash output. Highly recyclable (and often toxic) items, like computer parts and cellphones, are mixed in with regular garbage because there's no easy curbside pickup. (ed. note: Though if you're currently faced with disposing of this type of item, I highly encourage you to look into donating or recycling it - lots of major electronics retailers, among other places, offer free E-waste recycling prgrams these days.)

Read about Valerie Thomas, a Georgia Tech professor working to change that - she wants to create special smart trash cans that will be able to scan, and eventually help sort, our trash. Imagine if our 'disposal' process actually helped everyone pick treasure out of the trash! (In the meantime, there's always Talkin' Trash.)

Times for trash!

We've had a great month of some fabulous news articles here at our RePlayGround.

Rob Walker from the New York Times wrote a great article called Trash Talk in today's Sunday Times magazine. You can read all about RePlayGround's upcycling adventures and our philosophy of giving garbage another go. Plus super-design website Core77 already picked this and posted about this article.

And be sure to check out the October issue of Everyday with Rachael Ray to see our ReMake It wine cork trivet in the faves section.

We're all about rethinking your garbage and teaching you how to upcycle on your own. It's really not that hard. RePlayGround is here to help show you how you can do-it-yourself!

Good times!

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse - glass jars

In need of a vase? There's no reason to buy one when you have a perfectly good FREE one hangin' out in your recycling bin.

This is the latest edition of the Rethink | Refuse | Reuse photo series. We're talking straight reuse here! No artsy craftyness necessary.

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse - tins cans

Tin cans are the latest in the Rethink | Refuse | Reuse photo series. See how easy it is - you can do it, too! The best thing about these projects are that the materials are FREE! Everyone loves the word FREE these days.

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse - Repost

Abby and I were talkin' trash today and realized that an added layer to the Refuse | Reuse photo series is to Rethink it and add an image of the item as you could buy in a store. Then continue on to show the Refuse and the Reuse solution. Showing that something you would normally spend $ on, can sometimes be found in your trash can. Take a good look at your trash. Sometimes it's not trash after all.

Refuse | Reuse - part 1

I'm always eyeing garbage on the street, looking for new things to do with others' refuse. As I was walking down 14th Street this week, I spied two large garbage bags full of shredded paper. It instantly reminded me of paper shred that packs holiday gifts. Sitting at the curb, this bag is considered garbage. Pick it up off the street and put it in a box to protect a precious gift and it's now paper shred. Used to protect and celebrate the item inside. Simply by switching the context the refuse is useful again.

RePlayGround's mission is to bring garbage back to life. The Refuse | Reuse photo series shows these objects side by side - first as refuse and then as their simple reuse counterparts.

I often get complaints from people who say they don't reuse because they're not artsy or crafty. These photos demonstrate that there's nothing artsy or crafty about these items. They are simply reused as-is. No fancy drawing and cutting. No special knitting and weaving. It's taking a look at your waste. And not seeing waste. It's putting your garbage back to use!

Check out your trash can the next time you walk by. What can be upcycled into something more valuable this time around? If you have any images you'd like to share, send 'em to me at tiffany {at} replayground {dot} com. I'll happily reuse them and post them here.

"Waste is a natural resource in the wrong place. Change the place or the context and you have usable objects."
-Daniel Freitag

Talkin' trash: june 1, 2009 edition

The Talkin' Trash team

Last night a few of us ventured into the wilds of Williamsburg on garbage night for a little PSA. Our goal: identify and label all the reusable "trash" we saw, hoping to inspire passersby to rethink their garbage.

The tools: recycled cardboard signs with speech bubbles and Replayground stamps; markers; tape; and a little creativity.



Some of our suggestions were simple and practical.


Empty drawer: "Take me home, I can store books in your home too!". Artillery case (?): "I can be a magnetic memoboard!"


Skateboard: "I can be a shelf, too!" (ed. note: kinda wish I'd taken this home)


5 gallon bucket: "I can be a trash can!" (ed. note: These also make excellent containers for tomatoes and other veggies on your fire escape or stoop - just drill some drainage holes in the bottom!)

Some were a little more elaborate.


Styrofoam speaker packaging: "Turn me into a lamp - fill me with xmas lights and put me on the wall or on a table!"


Old TV: "Turn me into a fish tank!"

And some weren't that practical.


Mystery funnel: "I could be a large monocle!"

See more pictures on Flickr.

Hopefully someone even took us up on some of our suggestions - but if we just got a few people to think of their trash in a new way, we accomplished our mission.

If Earth Day were every day we'd need more (organic) coffee

This Earth Week was loaded with green goodness! Between Earth Day activities at the Bronx Zoo and Earth Day at Grand Central Station, there were loads of promos happening all week to promote the launch of Garbage Moguls. Thanks to all of you show supporters - our cookie wrapper kite wouldn't have wanted to fly without you! I did radio interviews, prepped special projects for Tom's Szaky's Good Morning America appearance (and Garbage Moguls was on Oprah the same day!). Watched Garbage Moguls on it's national premiere with all of my TerraCycle buddies at a bar in the city, attended other Earth Day events like the Heart of Green Awards at the Daily Green (thanks for the nomination, Carly!) and finished it off again at the Bronx Zoo. Whew. What an eco-fabulous Earth Day week! Stay tuned because even more recycling good times are to come!


one of the Bronx Zoo guests decorating a CD suncatcher

Garbage Moguls! Premiering this Earth Day!

Celebrate Earth Day with me and all of my TerraCycle friends!

Garbage Moguls is a new show on the National Geographic channel that follows TerraCycle through all of the crazy chaos that happens with our product development. This first episode has us creating kites out of cookie wrappers and messenger bags out of old billboards. How do we do it? Well, that's what your TV is for.

Catch us this Wednesday, 9pm, on the National Geographic network.

And check out the Garbage website, too - there are even some DIY projects I helped with - turning cookie wrappers into a wallet and beaded jewelry.

Waste Nought!

If you're ever in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn, Waste Nought is a definite destination. This little eco-store sells items made from TerraCycle - everything from household cleaners, lawn and garden supplies, and upcycled school and office accessories.

Situated at the intersection of Van Brunt and Van Dyke Streets, Waste Nought is just around the corner from the new, massive Ikea. Once you've had your fill of Ikea's cheap cinnamon rolls, tea lights, and storage bins, head on over to Waste Nought for a breather. Rather than creating mass quantities of household goods from virgin materials, all of the products sold at Nought are made from upcycled stuff. Giving you a new appreciation for garbage.

address: 424 Van Brunt St. (at Van Dyke)
hours: Wed-Sun 12- 6pm
tel:347-987-3434