• Unusual uses for old phone books via DIY Life;
• A doll bed made from a clementine crate via Instructables;
• Lifehacker solicits ideas for upcycling digital cameras; and
• Curbly shares readers’ answers to the question of what to do with old cardboard boxes.

Arno Mathies' cardboard furniture via Curbly

A bunch of people shared ideas on how to reuse old blue jeans. I have to say though, I have yet to see anything cute or stylish made out of old denim. Have you? By all means share links and ideas in the comments. I have a feeling there are far better industrial reuses for jeans than trying to squeeze a second fashionable life out of them. After all, the washes and colors are objectively so universally similar in virgin form, yet subtle differences act as dramatic markers of class, taste and hipness…

A plastic video made the rounds, prompting commentary from smarties like Beth of Fake Plastic Fish and Elizabeth Royte of the eponymous blog about “waste, water, whatever.”

• The HuffPo shared a review of Waste Land;
• Cool Hunting reviews “the bagster” aka dumpster in a bag;
• Ruby Re-Usable turns us on to Holly Senn;
• New York Shitty alerts us to a one-night-only (Sat) art happening involving trash bags; and
• Boing Boing discusses Seattle’s gum wall.

Garbage truck Turkish style

This week in trash news:

• 10 of the Turkish city of Mardin’s trash hauling donkeys retired so (of course) they imported new ones from Italy;
• The Guardian reviews The Garbage King, a novel turned children’s play about trash picking kids in Ethiopia;
• Gap revives its Recycle Your Blues jeans to home insulation program; and
• A random review of Amy Winehouse’s new fashion line tangents into an entertaining paragraph on upcycling and the French Revolution.

• A Mexican dump is transformed into a community garden;
• A new study reveals London is one of the biggest trash dumping cities in the world;
• Is foam recycling worth the effort?;
• New Yorkers would recycle more if they understood to rules and had bigger apartments; and
• Filipinos asked by palace to help pick up after typhoons.

• Art for Housewives featured some trashtastic shoes;
• Visible Trash shared photos from last month’s End of the Waste World events;
• Olympia Dumpster Divers turned 3 (congrats, Ruby!);
• unconsumption dug up some neat shit;
• Last Night’s Garbage educated us on coconuts;
• Elizabeth Royte turned us on bottled water art;
• 365 Days of Trash highlights the XSProject’s work (might just have to pull that out in a separate post; and
• Treehugger features toxic water bottled by the Yes Men.

If you don’t already, you might consider subscribing to the blogs above.

• A trash bag kills whales off the coast of South Carolina;
• Also in South Carolina, the unemployed find temp work cleaning up nuclear waste;
• We are reminded that garbage soup swirls in the Atlantic ocean, too;
• Vermonters recycle a restaurant;
• Frenchies produce an average of 7 tons of trash per person per year; and
• The UK explores the power of poo.

Cardboard surfboard frame via MAKE

This week around the garblogosphere:

• MAKE shows us how to upcycle cardboard into surfboards;
• Wired makes juicers from old water bottles (via unconsumption); and
• Last Night’s Garbage captures a summer scene after curtain call;

• The media claims the recession is driving women to raid men’s closets;
• Space trash threatens Hubble repairs;
• The FOUND brothers roll up in Philly;
• Some Charlotte residents aren’t hip to decorative dumpsters;
• Ditch school and your parents may be trash picking in Chattanooga;
• San Fran may mandate composting;
• Trash Panic is released for Play Station; and
• Upcycling shows hit Miami and LA.

• British rats thrive in the recession;
• Dever cuts trash in half with city composting;
• A couple in Singapore turn trash into detergent, air freshener and fertilizer (recipe included);
• California’s groundbreaking legislation to reduce its carbon footprint pits trash to fuel lobby against food to fuel lobby;
• Mother Jones’ special issue on trash includes an online forum on waste and recycling with trashperts Elizabeth Royte, Eric Lombardi, Annie Leonard and Susan Strasser; and
• Grist pooh poohs then defends Earth Day.