Check out this CNN bit on ecochic bags. Corporations are teaming up with designers to make use of leftover and misprinted packaging donated in exchange for the free branding. Image via CNN. Thanks for the tip, Al!
Here’s a link to a video featuring Ecoist, one of the first companies linked to on the everydaytrash.com sidebar. It’s nice to see the rest of the world catching on.
Duh. Plenty has the fuller answer. Also, this nice picture.
In my humble opinion, any article that includes the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” should include a picture. This one by the Cristian Science Monitor does not (oddly, they went for audio instead), but we’ll let them slide just this once since they found the only interesting angle on today’s Naples trash crisis update. It appears Italy will have to defend itself at the European Court of Justice for bad trash management…
“But what the EU is tackling through the courts, artists here have been taking on with their paintbrushes and movie cameras. From trash-themed satires of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” to music played with abandoned mattresses, these a artists are finding creative and ironic ways to express the malaise of living amid the rotting piles of waste. After years of largely unfulfilled promises from politicians, the grass-roots movement is also trying to use artwork to put forward practical solutions, such as increasing the region’s dismal recycling rates.”
Photo via Rain News
Check out this and the two linked and related articles on Boston eateries and how they like to throw away bottles.
Photo by Jess Gately for the Boston Herald
Check out this “Toxic Series” on VBS.TV about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that floating dump in the ocean.
Yesterday was a “sanitation day” in Benin City, Nigeria. Everyone but medical doctors must stay home between 7-10am or risk major fines. The “holiday” is statewide and observed on different days in other states. People are supposed to clean up their homes and compounds, though many choose to simply sleep in.
I’ll be bouncing around Nigeria over the next couple of weeks and while I know the Internet access in the cities I’ll be visiting is probably good, I’ll be in constant transit and may not be able to post often. Please investigate the sidebar links while I’m gone. I think you’ll find good stuff over there!
Just got a tip from Maxwell about an international gathering of trash pickers hosted by the Bogotá Association of Recyclers (ARB).
“The 18,000-member ARB hosted hundreds of waste pickers from over 40 countries for a four-day conference in early March. Funded by international non-profits, the First World Congress of Waste Pickers was held “to exchange experiences and to create national and international alliances that will protect us from being stepped on by local governments,” said Ospina. The conference demonstrated that although trash recyclers around the world face socio-economic marginalization and harassment from local authorities, recyclers are also becoming increasingly organized and are winning important victories.”
(Photo by Marty Chen for ARB)
As Earth Day approaches, I’m nudged more and more each day by emails from PR agencies to blog about one or another eco-product (a note to publicists: I am happy to receive press releases, but everydaytrash.com is very specifically about garbage so story ideas about the environment in general are best sent to green bloggers). One such nudge came recently from the buzz marketing manager at the New York TImes, aka my sister. She thought you guys might like to see this video (takes a minute to load) about a modern homestead in California where one family has gone beyond recycling to self-sufficiency. The clip goes along with this week’s eco-themed Times magazine. Here are the trash-related blurbs I found interesting, despite a general distaste for the concept of a green issue:
Image ripped from nytimes.com
A recent report from the Ocean Conservancy shows that volunteers around the world collected 6 million tons of beach debris in a single day. Wired.com has the full report and some downloadable spreadsheets for data geeks.
This week in trash news:
(Photo by Mark Lennihan for the AP)
Beth over at Fake Plastic Fish gave me the heads up about a new campaign to get The Clorox Company, North American distributor of Brita water pitchers, to start a recycling program for the filters ala the one run by the original Brita makers in Europe. For more on the campaign, check out the Web site.
I watched Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse this weekend, the Belgian film about the French law requiring farmers to allow peasants to collect the leftovers after seasonal harvests that I posted on last week. It was fantastic. Complete with a very present eccentric narrator. For others who haven’t yet seen it, here’s a preview from a British TV station. My favorite was a gourmet chef in the country who picks his own herbs, veggies and grapes from other people’s farms after harvest and cooks and serves them at his restaurant. There are some touchingly somber scenes as well depicting those who really need free produce to get by.
One thing I’ve been meaning to post more about here is the ecochic backlash, or the mass marketing of “green” goods that encourage us to buy more instead of create less. I for one am always tempted to buy trash-themed items, even ones I don’t need because I’m enticed by the idea of repurposed and recycled goods. It’s hard to tame my inner consumer! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
everydaytrash 
