This week in trash news:
(Photo credit: Dan Rivers for CNN)
I met a lot of amazing people last weekend in Oslo. One of the most inspiring was Nasra Ali Omar, a Somali-Norwegian who grew up in Somalia, then Kenya then Northern Norway. Nasra was helping out with the trash art/found object show, but her real passion is music. And environmentally friendly music at that. She and her collaborators are committed to releasing their music in electronic files only, never burned onto CDs that end up in the trash.
Still more amazing is the technology she’s developing to debut in Norway later this year. Using motion sensors designed for medical examinations and blue tooth technology, Nasra manipulates a series of electric pads stuck to her fingers and arms that allow her to affect the intensity of her sound while playing the drums, play back pre-recorded beats and lay a track while performing , adding layer upon layer to her sound. She performs with a dancer, also fitted with the sensors so that the dancer and her movements can control the music as well. Others have tried similar programming in the past, but always with lots of wires or having to wear an entire electric jacket. With the small sensors and wireless blue tooth, Nasra and co. are breaking new ground. A bit off the subject of garbage, but trashtastic nonetheless!
In other music news, and to reroot ourselves in the subject of trash, Neopolitan musicians have made lemonade out of the recent trash crisis in Naples. “Garbage Sound” is music made using instruments crafted from things found in the trash.
(That’s Nasra above, striking a silly pose during the opening of Recycling the Looking Glass)
Tipster Julie S turned me on to Earthgirl Composting, a struggling doorstep composting service in Vermont (if you live there, take note!). The waste picked up from households is delivered to a local company that makes compost and sells it to organic farmers. In addition, they do “event composting.” I’ve never heard of event composting before, but I bet a lot of green brides out there would be interested in offsetting the environmental impact of their weddings by composting the leftover cake and other waste!
Photo ripped from Earthgirl Composting Web site.
I read this in The Guardian on the plane back from Oslo, seems pretty cool. Apparently some English schools are buying fabric from the Chinese made from recycled coke bottles and having that fabric made into school uniforms. Though a bit more expensive than the old materials, the recycled material helps any school who uses it meet carbon footprint quotas set by the state. I guess the bigger question is, what do we think of these quotas?
Photo from Keetsa.com of plastic bottle hoodie.
All star tipster, Dumpster Taoist, turned me on to this adorable and horrific video explanation of the dangers and true cost of consumption. Pass it on.
Check out this TreeHugger post on dishes and chopsticks made by a Japanese company out of biscuit dough…perfect for zero waste picnics!
Photo via dezeen
Troupe de Trash will mark another year of trashtastic fashion this Friday at their annual show in California. This year’s theme: “It’s easy being green.”
Photo by Kristin Oliver via theunion.com
Photos taken by my mom.
Everydaytrash returns to nearly every day posting on Monday. In the meantime, please amuse yourselves with this Michael Recycle fun book.
Love,
Leila
I’m headed off to Uganda tomorrow to meet the demands of the day job, but Kimberly will be popping up with a post or two in the coming week, so stay tuned. Same great garblogging, slightly different voice.
…And Jennifer 8. bitch-slaps back! Check out this City Room post on D.C.’s anti-snacking campaign. I love all the comments, it makes me feel slightly less insane for my incessant Subway-defending. I can’t stand it when people compare NYC’s system to smaller, lamer systems that skip over poor neighborhoods and don’t run all night. So what if we have rats, it makes waiting for the train an adventure!
Photo by Jennifer 8. Lee for the Times, via City Room
The Times reports on the growing cohort of mothers who care about the future of the planet for their children. While I’m not sure this sentiment is new, the terms they use and blogs they follow certainly are. Happy Reading!
Check out this sweet CNET article about the wave of West Coast blogs on which trashies are tracking the waste they create and their efforts to create less. You may recognize a certain trashpert quoted. More importantly, it’s a great launching pad full of links to new and entertaining garblogs (oh how the blogroll will grow). Happy Reading!
Photo by Julio Cesar Martinez, via CNET
Pardon the interuption as I conduct a test to try to resolve my longstanding lack of tech mojo, so that I might at last become a proper guest blogger the next time Leila’s day job has her jetting off to another continent. Before we return to your regularly scheduled blogger, I want to share: This week the Guardian reports on what I think is so far the best use of all those discarded free newspapers, as collected by Londoners on the Tube: building a house. The geniuses behind Project Freesheet are blogging so you can follow along.
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