BLOG IN A BOTTLE

Here’s London’s first fully-functioning theatre made entirely from recycled and reclaimed parts.

Using wooden pallets and disused water cooler bottles, the Jellyfish Theatre is a collaboration between theatre group The Red Room and The Architecture Foundation.

Designed by German architect Martin Kaltwasser, the temporary structure (which is a stone’s throw away from Shakespear’s Globe Theatre) has a steel frame, surrounded in materials from old theatre sets, building sites and other items brought by the public for recycling.

A wall of watter bottles, which have been decorated by local schools, is a centrepiece.

The theatre will be open between now and 9th October, showcasing green-themed plays commissioned especially for the project and written by UK playwrights Kay Adshead and Simon Wu.

Jellyfish is really an impressive community project that, essentially is built by locals for locals. Writes David Elliot of Packaging News:

“In a throwaway society that needs to drive the reuse and recycling message, this project is a symbol of what can be achieved. But it is also much more than that.

[The] build is focused on “energy-efficiency, co-operation and human-scale construction”, and it has called on carpenters, builders, craftspeople and “unskilled hands” to pitch in and offer their time to help with the build.”

The Jellyfish Theatre is located at 11 - 25 Union Street, London SE1 1LB. For ticket information and more, visit their website.

Meet Tito Ingenieri, a friend of glass living in Quilmes, Argentina. For the past 19 years, he has been building a house made of more than 6 million bottles!

Tito collects the bottles from neighbours and businesses in the city, who seem happy to keep drinking for the purpose. Says Tito:

“This house is made from all the bottles I could get. I didn’t have any other way to make my house, and his was very easy to do.”

Part eco-house, part art installation, part museum, Tito’s house (and indeed way of life) is an inspiration. Tito, we salute you!

Via: Eco-Ideas.Net

Jeremy Irons has become the latest celebrity to joint the anti single-use bag brigade with this film (see below). It’s certainly worth a watch; showing the real threat a simple everyday object holds towards the environment, migrating via wind, land and water towards the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Interestingly, California is moving towards a total ban on single-use bags. San Francisco already has a ban on these bags in large grocers, and is considering extending it to all retailers.

If you like the movie, spread the word!

The film is from Heal the Bay campaign; a group promoting the state-wide ban on single-use bags.

… it’s plastic!

Three schools in Scotland are building plastic bottle greenhouses to encourage both healthy eating and recylcing. They’ve launched a smart ‘plastic bottle appeal’ in their community, as each greenhouse needs around 1,500 plastic bottles to complete.

Excellent (and creative) idea for recycling! Congrats to St Teresa’s, St Andrew’s and St Joseph’s colleges.

If you live anywhere near the schools, why not donate-slash-recycle your plastic bottles. They can be of any size, although ideally 0.5, 1 and 2 litre bottles.

Via Dumfries & Galloway and The Greenmead Community Farm.

Here’s a good read on the pro’s and con’s of glass and plastic milk bottles for baby.

Summarized:

The problem with glass bottles is pretty obvious — drop one on the floor in the center of a late-night feeding, and you’ll have a roomful of shattered glass to clean up. Glass is also heavy and cumbersome. On the upside, glass bottles are sturdy, and they needn’t contain any chemicals that could probably get into the baby’s formula.Plastic baby or child bottles are lightweight, strong, and unbreakable. However, concerns have arisen about the polycarbonate type of plastic bottles because they contain a chemical called bisphenol A (also called BPA).

Bisphenol A is also used in everything from compact discs to the lining of cans, as well as other customer products. A 2007 report by the organization Environment California showed that when heated, five popular brands of BPA-containing plastic newborn or child bottles leached high levels of bisphenol A.

In research of lab rats, low levels of BPA were linked to changes in the brain and reproductive system that research workers speak may donate to an increased risk of prostate and breast cancers and ovarian.

But of course, this research cited that the amount of BPA is not enough to be dangerous. However, early last year, we brought you news via the BBC that 6 manufacturers of babies’ bottles were ordered to remove the controversial chemical from their products following consumer demand. And it appears that Denmark and Canada have banned it completely.

What’s your view?

More and more American consumers are choosing beverages based upon how recyclable the packaging is, a recent survey has found. Good news, indeed.

Around 33% of consumers said that the most important attribute of ‘green’ packaging was a high recycled rate. 23% said that recycled content was most important, and 20% said that renewable resources was most important.

However, it does seem that there is a some misunderstanding when it comes to ‘recycled rate’.

Environmental concerns have led to all types of consumer buying changes, but different understandings of the environmental impacts of packaging led to conflicting answers.

What exactly do we (or they) mean by ‘recyclability’?

If we’re able to recycle a can once, and once only, can it be defined recyclable?

Surely, to be 100% recyclable means to be compleltely and perfectly recycled, again and again. Just like glass.

Via: Greenbiz

Kudos to Kansas City (USA), who have the right idea when it comes to recycling glass.  The responsibility doesn’t just start at home; it’s for business and industry, too.

What started as a citywide effort to get more citizens to recycle glass is now evolving into a programme that also works directly with bars, restaurants and the brewing industry in the city.

A company called Ripple Glass wants to double the city’s recycling rate (Kansas City had a recycling rate of just 5%, whereas typical American cities had a 28% recycling rate).

The company, which was founded by a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency, works with the local Boulevard Brewing Company and Owens Corning, looking for ways to use crushed glass beer bottles to make fibreglass insulation.

“We’ve long been cognizant of the fact that those bottles are basically going on a one-way trip,” said Jeff Krum, Boulevard’s CFO and a Ripple co-founder. “The idea that they’d be used once and then contribute to filling up a landfill, and thus wasting the embedded energy in them, was disheartening to us.”

Since 2009, Ripple Glass has more than doubled the city’s recycling rate, bringing it from 400 tonnes a month to over 1,100 tonnes and growing! Kansas City, we salute you!

Via Greenbiz.com

Hailed as the ‘next generation’ of Coke Bottles, take a look at these re-thought square plastic bottles.

At a glance, each one:

• Has a 25% slimmer cap, which reduces PET plastic waste drastically
• Is 25% more efficient with a smaller footprint by design, making the transportation of bottles more efficient
• Has a collapsible design once you’ve drunk what’s inside
• Is 100% plant-based, made from sugar cane by-products
• Has a smaller carbon footprint

A few weeks ago, we brought you news of the glass vs plastic wine bottle debate, in which folk also lauded the ‘lower’ carbon footprint which bottles like these offer the world.

Of course, any attempt to be ‘greener’ is a good start. But just because something yields a lower carbon footprint, it doesn’t necessarily make it greener when other issues, like 100% recylability and sustainability, come into play.

What do you think?

The Daily Mail carries an excellent article from singer/songwriter Jackson Browne making (another) strong case for intelligent consumption and re-using / recycling.

Here are a few extracts:

“Last year my touring production company decided to eliminate plastic water bottles from the list of things we are provided in the venues we perform in.

Now we carry two five-gallon coolers, and each of the band and crew carries a stainless-steel water bottle.

On our buses we use Brita filters. My production manager estimates we save between 200 and 250 bottles each show, and up to 96 bottles every day on the buses. We are one of several tours that we know of who are making these kinds of changes.

There are also some venues and festivals that are eliminating single-use plastics.”

Jackson points out that plastic almost always ends up in the same place - the ocean. A further astonishing fact, according to scientific estimates, is that the amount of oil used to produce plastic every day is the same amount as the oil that is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day from the damaged Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

What can you do to help? Stop. Re-think.  Like Jackson’s crew, who now use stainless-steel water bottles, how can you reduce (even stop) your intake of single-use materials, and increase your use of materials that can be re-used (or recycled) again and again and again?

Okay, okay. So we may be getting a little carried away with the idea of recycling, but stick with us: it works!

Here’s how to perfectly open a wine bottle if you’ve left the all-important corkscrew at home. Of course, if you’ve also left your shoes at home, then you’re somewhat in a pickle.