Are you a fan of everydaytrash.com on Facebook? Check out our ever expanding album, Global Trash, made up of photos from Leila’s travels plus some amazing shots contributed by friends around the world.
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Global Trash
Sunday, February 6, 2011Card catalog cards!
Friday, January 28, 2011The library at the Brooklyn Museum switched over to an online book archiving system and thus have no more use for the cards in their old card catalog. So they’ve been giving them away to artists, art of the book design students and, more recently, anyone who let’s them know what they plan to do with the cards. I wrote in and requested a bunch and arranged an appointment to pick them up. Stay tuned for literary upcycling updates.
Cards
I tried to pick cards that had some personal significance, which was not as hard as I’d imagined it would me. More on that later. In the meantime, when’s the last time you watched Party Girl?
A shout out from WE Magazine
Monday, January 24, 2011everydaytrash.com just made WE Magazine’s list of sites written by “101 Women Bloggers to Watch”!
Trash is Cash
Monday, January 24, 2011Thanks, Jasmine, for sharing a link to this amazing video made by Zuh-d and Wafalme & Makia, a group of kids from the slums of Nairobi.
Check the remix here. According to the caption on YouTube, they won a Positive Climate award from MTV for this video. Not surprising given the catchy and uplifting chourus: “No more Pollution (trash is cash!)/This my solution (trash is cash!)”
Side note: In two weeks I’ll be touring Kabira slum with another amazing group of slum kids. The trip is day-job focused, but I predict some urban trash stories and photos will be popping up here. Stay tuned.
Brooklyn Spaces
Friday, January 21, 2011My friend Oriana, whose name you may recognize as a frequently-thanked tipster, has an amazing new blog project of her own called Brooklyn Spaces documenting creative use of space in our fine borough and interviewing the masterminds behind each project. The latest entry on the community garden and guerrilla gardening group Trees Not Trash will be of particular interest to readers of this blog.
Photo by Maximus Comissar (ripped from Brooklyn Spaces)
Members set up planters made from used tires and other recycled material around the Bushwick neighborhood, built a community garden out of a previously garbage-filled lot and have requested and helped to plant thousands of trees throughout the area. Also, they have a cute tagline: “Putting the bush back in Bushwick.” Check it out Oriana’s interview with co-founder Kate here.
Kids in Cameroon make toy cars from trash
Wednesday, January 19, 2011Adorable video and post from the always-inspiring AfriGadget.
Decorative Dumpster Day 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011Mark your calendars, trashies. Decorative Dumpster Day 2011 will take place on May 1st across the garblogosphere.
#DDD2011
In case you forgot, DDD is the biennial holiday during which we take a moment to think about where we are depositing our waste by posting photos on blogs of decorated trash receptacles. Here are some links to the inaugural event. Logo by Little Shiva of the Visible Trash Society who, along with Ruby Re-Usable of Olympia Dumpster Divers and everydaytrash.com co-founded this special day. Pass it on and start taking photos.
Up-posting
Tuesday, January 11, 2011Apologies for the light posting of late. In the spirit of getting back on a regular schedule, I thought I’d first upcycle some posts from the past and recommend some of my favorite past snippets of trash info brought into my life by the blog. But first, I’d like to remind you that everydaytrash.com has a Facebook page. In addition to notification of new posts, we share interesting links and photos of trash from around the world such as this one from Agra, India (where I spent Christmas Day with my mother and sister).
Waiting in line to get into the Taj Mahal
Show your love of trash by going to http://www.facebook.com/everydaytrash, becoming a fan and sharing the page with your friends on Facebook.
Ok, end of pitch. While we regroup for 2011, please peruse these fond and trashy memories.
Indonesia beats, upcycled; Literary trash week; our entire Trashtastic Tuesday interview series; Decorative Dumpster Day; Trash Track; How the Fed disposes of old money; Joshua Harris’ bear and giraffe…and so many more. Check out the 4+ years of archives and stay tuned for new trash coming soon.
Atis Rezistans
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Haitian trash sculpture
Follow this link. Follow this link. Incredible trash art from sculptures in Haiti. Click on each artist’s name to view the work. And/or check out this badass documentary.
Thanks for the tip, Charles!
Green Vinyl
Tuesday, December 21, 2010Hello from Mumbai! Apologies in advance if posts this week and next are a bit stripped down and sans images, I’m traveling over the holiday season with limited internet connection. Vacation from the day job, however, does not mean a slow down in the influx of trash tips. Today’s came from Brooklyn Based, a local email newsletter I subscribe to (and which you should sign up for if you, too, live in Brooklyn). The update for today, entitled Green Vinyl, can be found online and read in full here. It features Brooklyn Phono, a local record making company that has started to offer recycled vinyl as an option for bands and labels interested in pressing a record. Check out a video of the process here.
I’m hoping my band can opt for green vinyl when we make our first 7″ this Spring. Our studio, Clean and Humble Recordings, is also located in Sunset Park, so I can’t think of a more local choice.
Speaking of the studio and recycling records, does anyone have any ideas for reusing 78’s made of shellac? My bandmate, Flex Unger, the owner/operator of Clean and Humble, recently inherited 7 crates of crap records and is taking ideas for what to do with the raw materials. You may recall from past posts that Flex is big into DIY recording and musical recycling, e.g. sampling old records to mix new beats and salvaging old instruments to build new ones.
Post ideas for upcycling 78’s in the comments, please.
Counterbalance
Wednesday, December 15, 2010WITNESS, the organization that “uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations” made this short educational piece on trash pickers in India. Much like the dilemma at the center of Mai Iskander‘s film Garbage Dreams, trash pickers in India are seeing their livelihoods threatened as the government signs more and more contracts with foreign private waste hauling companies. This short and sweet video compares and contrasts New Dehli where trash pickers’ work has been eclipsed to New Dehli where the NGO Chintan has worked to integrate traditional trash pickers in waste and recycling collection even as the city modernizes its systems. But you don’t have to take my word for it…
Click here for more in this WITNESS project.
The intellectual properties of a plastic bag
Tuesday, December 14, 2010Does it count as idea theft if the rip off is for an environmental PSA? This interesting post by Michael Tully for Hammer to Nail asks this very question. Case in point: Rahmin Bahrani‘s Plastic Bag as jacked by The Magestic Plastic Bag, A Mocumentary. The original is narrated by Werner Herzog, the knock off by Jeremy Irons. No contest. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this particular imitation has been selected to play at Sundance.
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Sunday, December 12, 2010Creative houses from reclaimed stuff
Tuesday, November 30, 2010I love TED Talks. My friend Leah (thank you!) just sent me this one. It’s adorable and informative. I think you’ll dig it, too. It’s this guy, Dan Phillips, explaining how he makes neat houses from salvaged materials. He shows photos, but also gets high brow about it all, explaining that the real problem is our need for things to look the same.
The Twist-Ties that Bind
Tuesday, November 30, 2010On Wednesday, December 8th, Dr. Robin Nagle, New York’s Department of Sanitation anthropologist in residence, is giving a talk entitled “The Twist-Ties that Bind” as part of an ongoing series of Freshkills Park talks. Here’s the description:
Join Dr. Robin Nagle to learn (almost) everything you ever wanted to know about garbage in New York. Discover how profoundly it connects us to each other, to history, to politics, to infrastructure and technology. Hear stories and reflections from people who shoulder its burdens. Glimpse some of its surprising secrets. Consider why we need to ignore it, and ponder the consequences of its invisibility. The insights you glean migh…t just change forever the way you see your city.
Dr. Nagle is the anthropologist-in-residence for the Department of Sanitation. She is also director of the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University, where she teaches anthropology and urban studies. Her book Picking Up, about what it is to be a sanitation worker in New York and why you should care, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
This lecture is co-sponsored by the New York City Department of Sanitation and the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University.
I highly recommend checking out this event if you’re in or near NYC. Freshkills Park has created a Facebook event so you don’t forget. And even if you can’t make it, check out Dr. Nagle’s garblog, Discard Studies. As we’ve mentioned before, it’s rad.
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