We're getting ready for Earth Day!

Earth Day is coming up this April 22nd, and to celebrate, we'll be at festivals in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. You can find us at Earth Day New York in Grand Central Station on Vanderbilt Street this Friday, April 20 from noon-7pm and Saturday, April 21 from 11am-4pm, or drop by McCarren Park in Brooklyn for Go Green! Greenpoint! Earth Day Festival this May 5th, or stop on by the Queens Central Y on May 6th for their Earth Day Fair! We'll be teaching a different crafty recycling project at each event, so come ReMake with us and celebrate at some of the greenest parties on the planet! For a full listing of our event dates and details, check out our event page.

Volunteer for Earth Day New York!

Earth Day New York is looking for eco-minded volunteers to help out with the festivities in Times Square and Grand Central Terminal over April 21, 22, 23, 2012.

Make an impact, meet tons of people, and have fun doing it! Sign up here.

RePlayGround will host an eco-crafty table outside of Grand Central Terminal, where we'll teach you to make your own recycling project to take with you. Be sure to drop by and ReMake with us! For more details, see our event calendar.

Tote Overload in New York Mag

New York magazine recently ran an article called Tote Overload (Dec. 12 2011). The article makes a good point about consumption. There's no argument that reusable totes make an impact on the burgeoning plastic trash problem we face. But over consumption can still occur with the eco-friendly tote bag. Professional personal organizer Beth Zeigler came up with an innovative solution. She staged a redistribution drive this December in L.A, and collected 1,900 unused reusable bags for redistribution. Great! Now let's get these drives to catch on in cities nationwide!

To view the entire article, click here.

Recycle-A-Bicycle

Recycle-A-Bicycle (RAB) is a community based bike shop that works with NYC youth to refurbish bicycles for new use. The non-profit organization salvages 1,200 bicycles a year from the landfill, and teaches students bike mechanics and repair techniques necessary to get junked bicycles back on the road! Every purchase from the store supports youth programs and environmental initiatives. RAB reaches kids and adults with programs where you can earn a bike through volunteer work, internships, and a Kid's Ride Club, along with adult education courses in maintenance and cycling skills. RAB estimates they have diverted 36,000 pounds of waste from NYC's landfills yearly. That's a big impact!

Another program RAB offers is Recycled Arts, where young people can transform old bike parts into crafty, artistic creations! We're always excited to see people getting creative with scrapped materials. Take a look at our own spin on recycled bicycle with our bike chain jewelry:

For information on how you can get involved with Recycle-A-Bicycle, or to donate a junked bike, check out http://www.recycleabicycle.org/

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?

Brooklyn Skillshare this Saturday!

Hey, New Yorkers!

For those of you who missed us a couple of weeks ago at Maker Faire, you have a second chance to catch us in action this Saturday, October 9th, where we'll be teaching a glass etching class at Brooklyn Skillshare at The Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School in Bed-Stuy.



The event runs from 10-4 and is open to the public with a suggested donation. Our class is at 1 pm, but come early and stay all day for a great range of classes (including crafting from plastic bags, taught by our friend Stephanie over at Garbage of Eden!).

Upcycled Interiors at Caracas Arepa Bar, Brooklyn

The RePlayGround crew recently enjoyed a delicious arepa dinner at a nearby Venezuelan restaurant. We came for the food, but were extra tickled to realize that the interior design of the restaurant, by our friends at EcoSystems, was beautiful and eco-friendly.



If you're in the neighborhood, you should visit and check out the clever use of salvaged wood and other materials, and the surprisingly grown-up and tasteful use of milk crates as seating. (And then stay and enjoy a delicious meal!)

March 7 - Climate Change event in Park Slope

If you're in the NYC area this Sunday, be sure to swing by the Parents for Climate Protection event! Better yet, it's free and open to anyone! And better still, if you're between the ages of 5 and 9 the RePlayGround crafty crew will be showing you how to craft up new projects from the stuff you usually scrap.

Here's the scoop:

Sunday, March 7 from 2pm - 4pm at Congregation Beth Elohim, 271 Garfield Place, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

Check out more details at the ToePrint Project.

Plain and simple microwave popcorn

I love popcorn. It's always been one of my favorite snacks, ever since I'd come home from school and make a big bowlful in my family's air popper. Now I'm a grownup. I don't have an air popper, and sometimes the stovetop just feels like too much effort. And microwave popcorn is just kinda disgusting - and not so great for the environment besides. Even if you disregard the studies potentially linking the inner coating of the packaging with cancer, and even if you don't mind the nasty artificial taste (and smell that won't leave the room for days), think about all that packaging. One cardboard box (which, admittedly, can be recycled or turned into a nifty wallet), three plastic wrappers (which can't), and three wax-and-plastic-coated paper bags (which also can't), for just three bowls of popcorn? No thanks.

So what's the answer? Simple. You can make fantastic microwave popcorn at home with nothing but loose popcorn, a brown paper lunchbag, and a piece of tape. Really. I love telling people this because they are always shocked that there is not a special magic trick involved.

Your standard brown lunchbag (sold in big packs of 50 or so, for cheap) is the perfect size. Use about 1/3 cup of popcorn to fill the bag (and a bowl that will make at least two bellies very happy). Fold it over once to prevent escaping kernels, tape it shut, and go ahead and pop. After you're finished, put in a bowl and season as desired. (I like a mix of melted butter and olive oil with a little salt. Cumin, paprika or smoked paprika are also favorites.)



Usually, the "popcorn" setting on your microwave works just fine, but you might want to keep an eye on it the first few times and adjust the timing accordingly. It's also smart to shake the bag somewhere in the middle of cooking. Other than that, this method takes no more effort than regular microwave popcorn, but you've just eliminated lots of waste and some icky fake butter from your world! It's a delicious, simple, and relatively eco-friendly snack.

To boost the eco-friendly factor even further, buy organic popcorn (it's worth the extra money - tastier and pops better), and rescue brown bags from takeout orders and re-use them in the microwave. I personally don't recommend re-using the bags after they've been microwaved once (the second batch never seems to pop quite right), but you can compost or recycle the brown bags at the end of their (extended) lives.

Happy popping!

Talkin' Trash: November 3, 2009

Talkin' (Recycling)

On Tuesday, a Korean film crew joined me and Carly for a mini Talkin' Trash expedition.

The tools: recycled cardboard signs with speech bubbles and Replayground stamps; markers; tape; and a little creativity. Just like last time, our goal was to help the trash "talk" about its potential for a new, upcycled life.

It wasn't a bulk trash night and we didn't travel too far, but we still found lots of potential in just one pile of garbage.


This discarded exercise equipment (not even post- New Year's Resolution!) was in great shape. An ambitious trashpicker could use these raw materials for all sorts of things: put the seat on a milk crate for a storage stool, use the tubing for an umbrella stand or coat rack.



Six-pack caddies make great organizers for art, office or kitchen supplies. (You can cover them with wrapping or contact paper if the beer logo doesn't match your decor.)


Simple containers have such great overlooked potential!

Check out our Flickr set for more pictures and inspiration!

Confessions of a Radical Industrialist

Last week a couple of us Replaygrounders had the privilege of going to see a talk by Ray Anderson, who's on tour promoting his new book.

For those unfamiliar, he is the CEO of Interface, a Georgia carpet tile manufacturer. He's well known in the design community, having been profiled in magazines like Metropolis and received recognition and awards for his efforts over the last several years. "Confessions of a Radical Industrialist" is a followup to his book "Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model".

Ray's story is fascinating. As he will tell you himself, he worked in his extremely polluting and petroleum-based industry for decades without giving the environment a second thought. It wasn't until 1994, when an employee sent him a copy of Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce", that he had what some describe as an "eco-epiphany" - all of a sudden, he decided that protecting the environment was not just important for our future and the future of the planet, but also made great business sense.

From then on he made it his mission to transform his company and the way it did business - "doing well by doing good" - and become a leader by example. Interface now champions a cause called "Mission Zero" - zero environmental footprint by 2020. Interface is committed to its goal, and this commitment has yielded a number of happy accidents and innovations. We heard quite a few anecdotes about the interesting (and profitable) surprises that came about as Interface began to change the way it did business. It was truly inspiring to hear what Interface has achieved - just by setting out to try something new. (And as long as you're not a competitor in the carpet business, Interface will be happy to share its expertise!)

Mission Zero is ambitious and admirable, and Ray is doing a tireless job of promoting his ideals. I especially appreciate that he's putting a sensible, businesslike face on eco-friendliness: when something makes financial sense, it's a lot easier to win over eco-skeptics!

If you ever get the chance to see him speak, I highly recommend it. In the meantime, add his book to your reading list.



"Never underestimate the power of a good question" - Ray Anderson

Everybody's doing it!

Here at Replayground we love to hear about others' adventures in upcycling. Check out this post over at New American Dream about some inspiring recycling projects - including more recycled homes, and an artist who won a $15,000 grant with work made from found materials.

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse: Newspaper

Another Rethink - Refuse - Reuse, this time for all you gardeners out there.

Mulch is great. Mulch helps keep down moisture - reducing the need for watering. Mulch suppresses weeds - reducing the need for weeding and/or herbicides. You can mulch your garden with a myriad of natural and artificial materials, many of them extremely eco-friendly and available at a shop near you.

But what's eco-friendlier than not buying new stuff in the first place? It's temptingly easy to spend your energy shopping for the "greenest" solution to a problem, but it's even greener to use what you already have. Before you head to the garden center for a big bag of shredded mulch bark, take a look at that stack of old newspapers.



Shredded newspaper is fantastic at keeping moisture in and weeds at bay. It's more realistic for those of us with smaller gardens, and it's not the most decorative option, but it works wonders in vegetable gardens and around newly-established plants that need lots of water and TLC. Newspaper mulch is recommended by many gardeners, including the folks at Organic Gardening. Shredded or torn, it makes a nice airy mulch around plants. Or, if you're trying to eradicate stubborn weeds, put down a few layers of intact newspaper as a barrier.

Most newspapers today are printed with soy ink, but if you're unsure about what your local paper uses, don't hesitate to ask. (And if they're still using petroleum-based inks, encourage them to switch!)

Rethink | Refuse | Reuse: Glass Jars, Take 2

Some of the ways I like to reuse things are so dead simple that it doesn't even occur to me to talk about it. But our new Rethink - Refuse - Reuse series reminded me to pass on a very easy, and very functional, way of keeping your glass out of a landfill.

(Yes, glass is recyclable, but people often overlook the fact that recycling something takes a pretty substantial amount of energy. It's almost always better to find a new use for existing items when we can. Reduce and Reuse should be the headliners in the way we deal with waste, with Recycle playing a small part when necessary.)

I store just about everything in my kitchen in glass jars leftover from groceries I've bought. (The process is pretty easy: soak the label off in some hot soapy water, and eliminate any lingering smells from, say, pasta sauce, by letting some white vinegar sit in it for a few hours.) Glass is easy to clean and doesn't pick up smells the way plastic does. It's great at preserving dry goods, pasta, spices, and snacks, and looks beautiful besides. And I've never understood the allure of buying an expensive set of matching glass containers when I get lovely ones for free pretty much every time I go to the store. (Personally, I think the mismatched jars can look charming, and if you're like me and buy the same brand of peanut butter all the time, you'll probably have a matching set sooner than you think!)



Of course you can't save every single glass jar that comes your way. But a little goes a long way, and keeping even 5% of your waste out of that fossil-fuel-using recycling truck is a big move. You might be surprised at how much use you get out of that old olive jar!

built to last

Going home for the holidays reminded me of how I grew up and how my family was eco-friendly long before we knew we were being ecofriendly. We heated a large portion of our house with a wood burning stove fueled by fallen trees from the woods in our backyard. We put vegetable peels in a backyard compost pile. It was nice to return home again to take part in these rituals.

In fact, the way most everyone lived 20 - 30 years ago, before plastic bags became popular and 100 calorie single serving snacks appeared on store shelves, would be considered eco-friendly by today's standards. Back then it wasn't considered special. Now, more effort is required to tell a cashier that you don't need a plastic bag, rather than taking one. And it's more convenient to buy a plastic bottle of water than to drink from a drinking fountain. What changed?

My dad pulled out his toy train from when he was a kid and set it up to see if it still worked. Sure enough, the train still went forward, in reverse and even whistled as it went (along with some entertaining sparks when we added toy cow obstacles). It was over 50 years old and still worked just fine. My dad recalls that it probably cost his family around $100 at that time, which by today's standards would be a lot of money. And the plastic toy train that my 2 year old nephew received this year probably cost less than 40 bucks. That's a pretty amazing feat that, even with inflation, manufacturing costs were lowered after 50 years. But I bet you a herd of toy cows that long after my nephew's train is broken, my dad's train will still be running. Which one would you rather have - the fancy new plastic one, or the old, black vintage train with tin toy tunnels and curious looking conductors? Call me crunchy, but I think I'm more of the vintage-type.

garbage - what a waste!

I got an up close look at a landfill for the first time last week. And boy was it up close. It was part of a project that I'm doing with TerraCycle and our assignment was to go digging around a landfill in Central New Jersey. Wow - was there a mountain of waste. Speaking to Joe, this landfill's head-honcho, I learned that this mountain was garbage collected just in Burlington county. It took them 11 years to fill up 1 enormous hole and then cover it up. They were well on their way to filling up another. Walking through all of the materials, I discovered most of what was in there could've been diverted had it been handled appropriately before tossing. There was paper, glass bottles, plastic containers, leaves. All covered with a layer of gunk. It was so gross and smelled utterly nauseating! I've been known to dig through my fair share of dumpsters and piles of garbage, but once this stuff lands in a landfill, even I don't want to touch it! There was a layer of slime on everything.

This visit reconfirmed that what I've been doing - diverting scraps before they get this far - is so important. And it made me realize that there's a supply of garbage out there that is seemingly unlimited at this point. We have a long way to go before we reach zero waste but it's not impossible. We just have a lot of work to do. I guarantee it won't be a waste.


Both photos were taken from my cell phone. The photo at top is from on top of the 11 year old landfill that has been covered with grass, looking onto the new landfill. The photo above is a "small" pile of garbage accumulated from a few weeks. Landfills get layered with garbage and then soil, so behind that garbage pile, there's another larger pile covered in soil.

packaged goods

I love bright colorful packaging! Tony the Tiger, the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee dude, Toucan Sam - I love them all. Cereal boxes in particular are one of my favorite items to recycle - as you can see in Craft's recent green issue. The graphics on the outside of the boxes add snap crackle and pop to any project and these containers of cereal have structural value long beyond their first life.

Then there's statistics. About 40% of landfill volume is packaging. Holy cardboard! This brings us to the question of whether packaging should be made in the first place. Granted a certain amount of packaging is necessary to transport objects home, but by offering clever reuse solutions are we giving manufacturers encouragement to continue to overpackage goods? Do we really need 20 twist ties to hold down a single toy doll? Should instead we encourage packages to be more reusable? Design the first life with the second life in mind? Should all packaging be biodegradable? Then should composting collection for packaging start to be put in place? Whew - one solution creates another need.

Which comes first - the chicken packaged in biodegradable packaging or the egg carton that can be turned into game play?


Mancala egg carton image from This into That Garbage Games book

Wall-e

Wow! I can't believe this movie has been out for months and I just recently saw it for the first time. I have been pretty busy with moving, coordinating a big Pepsi event, and re-designing scrap for Terracycle, among other scrappy things.

Wall-e had such an important message with a great delivery. Well, anything in cartoon form gets my attention. This one was particularly well done. Wall-e is the last robot on Earth who's programmed to clean up garbage by compacting and stacking it.

The movie is sending a message about changing the way we live and also giving us hope that we can change. All of the humans were sent to space while robots cleaned the Earth. The humans were huge and floated around all day on hovers and never had to walk. They drank their food. They communicated with the person sitting next to them via the screen right in front of their face.

I won't give away the ending, but will say that what they craved was plant life, swimming, dancing.... earth. All of the things you can't get from a hovercraft or blended drink shake.

boxes... and more boxes

I recently moved my design studio and even though the new place is only 3 blocks from the old, I still had to pack up every single scrap material in the place. If you've ever moved, you know the importance of boxes.... and more boxes. I certainly do - because it's how I keep all of my scrap materials organized.

If you've ever gone to the grocery store on recycling day you can find bales of boxes stacked like a tree fort (a replayground of sorts?). Help get a second use out of those boxes. It's just silly to buy new ones, when so many used ones exist.

I do understand that moving ranks high as one of the most stressful life events. So if you're running out of time for a full-on box recollection, the next best thing is to buy them used - like these from usedcardboardboxes.com.

Reduce - Repackage

I was shoe shopping with a friend earlier this week and while the new shoes are cool, the shoebox is even cooler! This box from the company BC has handles attached so the box becomes the bag. No need for an extra shopping bag when carries these puppies out the door. What a smart design with a simple adjustment to the old classic. How often do you fall in love with a shoebox at first site?