The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

Thursday, November 6, 2008 by

trashcan Only tangentially trash-related, but a key resource to wasting time online.  Image ripped from The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

VOTE

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 by

flag1

The only excess paper everydaytrash endorses is a paper trail for electronic voting machines.  Hope you all voted today, it feels so good! Flag image ripped from the National Recycling Coalition site.

It all comes back to you:: take the poll

Saturday, November 1, 2008 by

Don’t read this post without taking the poll (pretty please).  I’m super excited for this handy new everydaytrash.com feature.

Halloween, day of the dead, election day, Thanksgiving…it’s festive season in America.  To add to to fun, November 15th is national America Recycles Day.  Interested trashies can take a break from all those outraged, election-themed forwards and petitions to take a recycling pledge.  This year the event carries the theme “it all comes back to you,” which I find amusing since the tone could be read according to your world view (TAKE THE POLL!!  TAKE THE POLL!!  I JUST LEARNED HOW TO INSERT ONE!!).

For the jaded and the journalists who don’t sign petitions, there’s a link to find out the details about what can be recycled in your community and where and how to do that.  This is a question that I, as a garblogger, get all the time.  Of course, I couldn’t get the link to work.  Let me know if you figure it out.  In the meantime, I’ll search for another.  That shit changes all the time and it’s nice to know whether washing out the bluberry containers is worthwhile or if the city decided only plastic shaped like bottles deserves a second chance at purposeful existance.

For my local peeps, NYC will host “Green Screens” a weekend of electronic recycling events (leave a comment if you’re interested in volunteering and I’ll forward you an email request the CENYC sent out).

P.S.  Please take the poll.

AfriGadget and creative recycling

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by

Bookmark this site, trashies.  It’s a blog highlighting creative, African grown soultions. The AfriGadget tagline is “Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity”.   Case in point: this post on iron workers in Kenya who fashion chisels from old vehicle gearshifts and automate bellows with old bike parts.  Photo ripped from AfriGadget, click through for a video of this simple machine in action.

ScrapCycle

Monday, October 27, 2008 by

Now this is my kind of show: a piece of trash is your entry fee for a night of experimental sounds and sights known as ScrapCycle.

RIP Sister Emanuelle

Sunday, October 26, 2008 by

From Voice of America:  “Born in Brussels, Sister Emmanuelle lived and worked with a scavenger community in Cairo for more than 20 years. She founded an association that built a school and provided trucks for the Zabbaleen community there, which has become internationally known for its recycling practices.”

Via FP Passport.  Photo ripped from the Washington Post

A monkey and a plastic bag

Sunday, October 26, 2008 by

One of the places I visited while taking a short vacation in Bali last weekend was the Ubud Monkey Forest.  Overall, the visit was more upsetting than pleasant.  Vendors sell bananas and sweet potatoes inside the park, a practice that encourages tourists to get very close to the animals.  While I was there, I saw monkeys steal other food from careless people who had  stupidly brought in bags of chips and juice boxes, which the monkeys made little work of snatching and opening.  I saw lots of groups getting monkeys to climb all over them by dangling oranges and bananas in thier faces.  I also saw one crazy monkey fight and a couple  of sickly looking moneys I wouldn’t want to touch.  It was all very sad.  Still sadder was the fact that there was also a lot of trash in the ravines of what might have been a beautiful park.  I wasn’t able to capture the bulk of the human arrogance and monkey aggression I witnessed, but here is a short clip of a monkey digging through fruit peels and trash in the park.

Techies, Trashers and Tightwads

Friday, October 24, 2008 by

This just in from Dumpster Taoist: the internet debut of a film he made about the lives and views of dumpster divers.  Thanks for sharing, DT!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Techies, Trashers and Tightwads on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

Soda-Club

Thursday, October 23, 2008 by

I’m not big on product pimping here, but among the flood of supposedly eco-themed press releases this week was one from a company selling seltzer bottles and soda syrups.  The eco-pitch: use fewer plastic bottles by making soda at home.  Scanning the site made me nostalgic for a) the old fashioned CO2 cartridge selzer bottle my grandparents kept on the bar for mixing with whiskey and b) the similar bottle we had at home, which I used to mix up raspberry shrub.

Photo via Soda-Club

Recycling & Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 by

From today’s Flavorpill:

American Folk Art Museum unfurls 12 quilts that were sewn together from secondhand fabrics by women during the Great You-Know-What. The striking, variegated handiwork features materials as diverse as flour sacks and dressmaking scraps, and the handsome individual pieces match up with themes such as sunbonnets, the alphabet, and Chinese fans. More than salvaged vestiges of a once-prevalent pastime, the patterns are tidy examples of the functional achieving fine-art status.”

FYI, New Yorkers, open today through March 15, $9 to get in.

Photo of a string quilt via museum website

Balinese trash factoid

Saturday, October 18, 2008 by

“Just as the layout of the village reflects the grand order, so too does the layout of the family compound. The Balinese believe each part of the house corresponds to a part of the human anatomy: the head is the family shrine, the sexual organs are the gates, the arms are the bedrooms and the social parlor, the navel is the courtyard, the legs and feet are the kitchen and granary, and the anus is the backyard garbage pit. In each corner of the yard are temples dedicated to guardian spirits.”

Quote via Kinaya tour and travel; first read about the anus of the home in Lonely Planet’s Best of Bali.  P.S.  Trash hiatus is nearly over, I’ll be home Tuesday.

Waste Digestor

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 by

Thanks to an ecogrant used to buy a “waste digestor” food from a British primary school is now churned directly into compost.

Via the Clitheroe

Dinosaurs and Robots

Monday, October 13, 2008 by

Today, via a tip from my friend Brendan to check out a post on Boing Boing, I discovered the adorably titled blog Dinosaurs and Robots.  Today’s post on trash cars won me over right away, but I was further charmed by the mission statement: “Rather than focus on the newest trend, we will seek authentic, handy, rarefied, disgusting, illuminating, delicious, mysterious, intoxicating, commonplace, historic, intensely personal, entertaining and enlightened objects, both priceless heirlooms and exquisite trash.”

I’ll be tuning in for more examples of exquisite trash and sharing what I find from this and other blogs.  Of course, with friends also combing the Web and the world, this job becomes much easier.  Big ups to my tipsters, keep the trashy content coming!

Photo ripped from Boing Boing via Dinosaurs and Robots

Vivan Sundaram

Monday, October 13, 2008 by

Artist Vivan Sundaram has been thinking about trash since the late nineties, as evidenced by the series of his large-scale photos of garbage on exhibit now at Sepia Gallery in Manhattan.  Newsweek has the scoop.

Photo of “Fly” by Vivan Sundaram via Gallery Chemould

High profile trash

Monday, October 13, 2008 by

The Washington Post offers up some trash-reducing tips today (photo ripped from article).  Apologies if posts are lazy this week.  I’m in Jakarta for the day job.  Will attempt to find some Indonesian-themed tidbits for you.