In case you were wondering what $50 worth of flip flops looks like, say hello to my pink rhino. I’ve decided it’s a he and that his name is P.C.
Flip flop rhino
P.S. That rad picture behind P.C. was a present from my wonderful friend Constance who found me the prettiest trash heap in the world. And framed it. As you can tell, she’s an expert gift giver.
While in Kampala a few weeks ago, I stopped in at one of my favorite stores in the world, Banana Boat, and went on a semi-conflicted shopping spree among their fine upcycled crafts made by women’s collectives from all over Africa. I bought up a dozen strands of Ugandan paper beads for my girlfriends, homemade soap wrapped in homemade paper for my colleagues and a collection of small creatures fashioned out of bottle caps including this three piece band, now residing at my friend’s music studio in Brooklyn.
Bottlecap boogie
Ok, full disclosure. I went more than once and to more than one Banana Boat location during my week in Uganda. I couldn’t help it. While normally I try to buck the inner American, my desire to consume flares at the sight of trash. The the irony of upcylcing is that it makes me want to buy MORE.
The first wave of my Banana Boat binge was stopped short by the pricetag on a string of plastic foam beads. The moment I saw them, I knew they were made of old flip flops—likely washed up on the shores of Kenya—and, because of this, I grabbed them up. But then I saw they cost roughly $30 U.S. and I looked again and decided, actually, big foam beads on a short choker strand might be a little too UN chic for my blood. So I set down the hideous necklace and made my way deliberately to the woven basket and cardboard diorama section of the store.
It was hard to walk away. Physically hard, because my urge to buy something was so strong it nearly made me twitchy. The little voices in my head debated the novelty of flip flop jewelry versus the reality of its ugliness, the feel good return of purchasing upcyled crafts from women’s collectives versus my uneasiness with the price, the uniqueness of the product versus the fancy UniquEco logo. One of the necklaces had a tag declaring “flipflop (i was)”. I took note of the confirmation that these were indeed flipped flops upcycled by Kenyan fishing communities. And I took note of the all lowercase tagline and pretentious use of parentheses. Ugh, I thought, branding.
I left the store feeling very proud of my resolve.
The next day I dropped $50 on a hot pink rhino doll/statuette from the same company. It’s adorable with a sleek and marbled hide created by a fused pile of flip flops of similar but not identical colors. This, I thought, will liven up my bookshelf. Or hip up my office. It carries a message that is both political and fun. It will make for a cool blog post and spread envy among my friends. I NEED this.
More tales to come of Kenya and consumption.
…is now a wiki. Still in fledling stage, but worth bookmarking nonetheless.
Today is the last day to check out entries in the Pratt/Terracycle Upcycling Design Competition hosted by Sustainable NYC. I may try to swing by. Report back if you go.
It’s been a trashy day for The New York Times. Here’s another featured item on young yuppies in Pakistan cleaning up the Ghalib Market area in Lahore. They use Facebook to organize Sunday meetings of a club called “Responsible Citizens”. Cool initiative, though I think the story itself stretches it a bit with the political context. See what you think.
Check out this visual diary from the Times. It’s three days old, but I somehow missed it.
The Swedish Public Radio reports that Sweden, after two years, has yet to stipulate punishment levels for breaking the European Union imposed legislation that prohobits tra$h smuggling to developing countries. Hence, there’s no knowing what to do with a container of illegal refrigerators that was confiscated this Friday by border authorities, and no way of knowing what to do with the persons trying to send it off to Uganda. Well done, parliament.
Monster dumpsters
This just in, someone’s been dressing dumpsters up like monsters in Canada’s capital. Thanks for the tip, Mod Mischief. Great photos.
While fishing as such is an agricultural practice with the ultimate goal of catching and killing fish, i.e. not fantastic for fish to begin with, fishing gear dumped at the bottom of lakes and oceans are killing fish even after the actual fishing stops, says a UN report.
Photographer: Jane Dermer, Carpentaria Ghost Nets, ghostnets.com
Apparently, discarded fishing gear compromises about 10%, or 640 000 tonnes, of all sea trash, creating a situation of so-called “ghost fishing”, when innocent maritime denizens happily enjoying off-season swim into discarded nets and related rubble, ending their lives in highest indignity. In the report, several pressures on fishers are named as contributing to this terrible situation, namely
Enforcement pressure causing those operating illegally to abandon gear; operational
pressure and weather making it more likely that gear will be left or discarded; economic pressure leading to dumping of unwanted fishing gear at sea rather than disposal onshore; and spatial pressures resulting in the loss or damage of gear through gear conflicts. Indirect causes include the unavailability of onshore waste disposal facilities, as well as their accessibility and cost of use.
As seen, fishing trash management isn’t working out that well. The report suggests preventive efforts and says that mitigation is crucial, etc. We could also just stop fishing, but while poverty exists, one might need to recognize that’s not a very realistic scenario.
Lastly, extracurricular nerd info: The report teaches us a new acronym; ALDFG (Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear)!
This week in trash news:
If you happen to pass through Litz, Austria, May 14-15th, you should head out to the Subversive Fair (somewhere in the docks, check website for directions), and check out Interacting Arts’ performance Dumpster Cooking.
The performance, according to Interacting Arts,
Consists of two parts. The first part includes dumpster diving and collecting food for the performance. These excursions will be documented through video. The second part takes place at the fair where cooking of the retrieved goods will be carried out in public.
When the food is done everyone present is welcome to join in the meal. The cooking is done against a projected background of the earlier documented food retrieval.
As cream on top, Interacting Arts says the following about trash:
The middle class standpoint: Only trash consumes trash. It’s from this point of view that dumpster diving can be seen as not only an anti-capitalist way of survival but also a true rebellion against society as whole.
In other words, head for Litz, discover what those Austrians really eat! It can’t be all schnitzel, ya?
…will exist in Long Island City, Queens, New York until August 3rd. More to come.
Thanks for the tip, Dacia!
Waste Management thinks the energy plan should include giving them money to convert trash to energy. What do you think?
Hat tip: Amy.
You know why I loved Decorative Dumpster Day? Because it gave me a festive sense of community and solidarity among garbloggers.Thanks again to all who participated in this international extravaganza. And start collecting decorative dumpster images for next year!
For those who missed the first annual adventure in group blogging about trash receptacles, here’s the roundup. Co-organizer and DDD logo designer Little Shiva was traveling and without solid internet connection on May 1, here’s her late breaking submission à la française.
Be sure to also check out MS the Younger‘s 3-part entry on the lack of decorated dumpsters in Japan at MadSilence here, here and here.
While the crew behind everydaytrash.com spend the day editing and recoding our lovely blog, we have the honour of presenting a report of recent trash activities in Nicaragua! Many thanks to Fernanda Siles for sending us this!
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We are a group of Sociology and Social communication students, amateur performers and friends. We picked up trash from the dumpsters of our university and decided to put it back together writing the word globalization with it.
Nicaraguan university trash
Twice, first on Saturday April 25 and afterwards on Monday april 27, without any previous notice, we took over one of the halls of our university (Universidad Centroamericana) and performed the next scene:
Two people with masks and Ronald McDonald smiles on their faces directed the movements of four others that carried the trash and picked up some more from the areas near the improvised stage. These four started forming the word globalization with the garbage. Meanwhile, the two dominant figures impeded the students watching the act to walk through the area, trying to establish some interaction with the public without speaking (we try not to speak so that the message is not only taken as we had thought it); they also invited some of them to participate in the writing.
Masked trash people with famous smiles
Two of the initial four ended up lying on the ground, representing the I’s. Once the word was entirely written down, one of the masked characters started a fight with one of the I’s who opposed resistance not only physically, but also by removing labels of transnational chains from his clothes; he got to free himself from the pressure of the dominants and walked freely around the word starting a conversation with the people around. The ending on Saturday was different because the I instead of immediately starting the dialogue, put a plant in the end of the word.
The reactions were quite different both days. On Saturday, the audience was mainly constituted by people who study Social Sciences, and the dialogue was fluent and extremely refreshing! The plant also represented an important difference. We tried not to make our message so explicit because what we want is for people to reflect on their own about the issues we are dealing with in our performances; this time, people gave very deep meanings to many our symbols – some of which were not even intentional.
Trash globalization dialouge
The discussion revolved around the presence of transnational products in the word, the role our country and other “developing” nations play in the globalization process; our individual roles as consumer and active forces in the building and maintenance of neoliberal globalization; the immense production of trash in a global consumer society; the impact of the production of goods and their later dumping in our environment; human capacity to give another form and meaning to globalization.
On Monday, the discussion was harder to establish; the audience was diverse regarding the area of study, but it was mainly young people watching. The most remarkable response we got was the look on people’s faces when they found out the garbage was found in our university.
everydaytrash 