My Journey at The RE Store is Slowly Coming To an End

I have had such an amazing experience working with The RE Store for my spring quarter internship. I worked with some pretty awesome people over the last few months.  There was so much I learned and got to work with; I don’t even know where to begin! There are a few things that do stick out in my head that are worth talking about though.

The Trash Fashion Show made my jaw drop! I had never worked with one before, let alone seen one before. A lot had to be done to get ready for the event, like putting up posters and promoting our sponsors on our social media sites. I had a blast working at the event! It made me realize how much you can do with materials that are and aren’t recyclable. Even being at the store it made me realize this, especially with the REvision Division and Eberhard Eichner. I learned a lot from gathering information for a press release to promote the REvision Division. Old salvaged materials are brought together to create pieces with functional design, like chests, side tables, and benches.

I came to this internship only knowing what I learned from a sustainability marketing class and knowing less of how The RE Store actually helps the sustainability movement. Coming out the internship I have learned so much more about what they do and what a great organization they are. They help the community members learn how to reuse salvaged materials from demolished buildings and make them into something that can be used in a new way.

Old Food Posters Are Coming Back in Style

Here are some of the old time posters that are coming back to help us not waste food and buy locally. There are more at TreeHugger.

Locust Beach Clean Up

Last Saturday I volunteered with The RE Store and ReSources to do a beach clean up at Locust Beach in Bellingham. Not only did I help clean up, but I got to be at the beach and enjoy the sun! By that's beside the point right now. The point was to clean up the beach and then make some art out of it afterwards.

It was awesome cleaning up he beach. We found so much garbage! We also found a ton of Styrofoam, in tiny tiny pieces. One of the pictures is what we think may be from a washer off of a boat. We also found several huge pieces of fiberglass that may have been from a boat.

One other piece we found was huge mass of fishing net. The artist, Kuros Zahedi, that was going to make art out of the garbage, was able to cut most of the mass out from being buried in the sand. It was a good few feet long.

Sadly I couldn't stay long enough to see what the art looked like, but I'm sure if you go to re-sources.org they will have more info and pictures for you.

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Green Cartoons

So I just realized I did not do a post last Friday, which happened to be the 40th Earth Day. I was a little busy last week with looking for apartments, but I found some funny stuff for you today. I found these at Today's Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen.

This fits right up my alley. Here's another great one:

I found these at other sites.

This one is by Natalie Dee. She has some pretty funny cartoons.

ReUSE A SHOE

One of my awesome roommates gave me this idea for today, involving both our favorite shoes, Converse and their ReUSE A SHOE program.

ReUSE A SHOE

Converse and Nike are coming together on this one and having people recycle their old athletic shoes to help make new basketball courts, playgrounds, and tracks. You can recycle your shoes at Converse stores, but they can only be athletic shoes, everything else can't be recycled into the new courts and playgrounds.

I think this is a great idea and way to lessen the amount of stuff in landfills.

This is how it works:

After shoes are dropped off, they are transported to facilities, where each shoe is cut into three slices – rubber outsole, foam midsole and fiber upper. These slices are then fed through grinders and purified. The result is three high-quality Nike Grind materials ready to be put back in the game:

• Nike Grind Rubber – made from the shoe’s outsole and used in track surfaces, interlocking gym flooring tiles and playground surfaces.
• Nike Grind Foam – made from the shoe’s midsole and used as cushion for outdoor basketball and tennis courts, as well as futsal fields.
• Nike Grind Fiber – made from the shoe’s fabric upper and used in the creation of cushioning pads for facilities like indoor synthetic courts and wood courts.

To create these surfaces, Converse partners with Nike and top-quality surfacing companies, providing them with Nike Grind material and working together to develop innovative sports surfaces.

What do you think about that? Wouldn't it be awesome to know that your shoes could be a part of the surface of the next playground in your neighborhood? Talk about a way to be a part of a cause!

The Trash Fashion Show!!

It finally came...the Trash Fashion Show in Seattle by The RE Store. I waited so long for it to come and now, it's already over. I had blast though! It was my first ever fashion show and I want to go back next year.

The theme for the fashion show was "Plastic Pollution." All the designers made their garments out of plastic materials that can't be recycled. Sadly I don't have my pictures uploaded on my computer yet, but you can check out one of the photographer's website and see all the amazing pieces. Go here: http://www.face52.org/. (If after you are done with those pictures and you click on the "More Photos!!!!" link, you can check out some of the behind the scenes stuff and just might see a picture of me on there! And if you are counting, I'm picture #25. You will also see some amazing people that I worked with to make this show happen from The RE Store in Seattle.)

What I want to do is show you my top 5 favorite dresses though from http://www.face52.org/. And here they are:

1. Don't Flip Your Lid by Diane Kurzyna (aka Ruby Reusable)

 *This dress is made out the lids from the Red Robin kids cups

2. Mail Order Bride by Cindi Brooks and modeled herself

*This is made out of packaging materials. I talked to the designer's friend and she said that it only took Cindi 2 weeks to make this dress!

3. Marriage of Inconvenience by Rebecca Maxim

* This dress is made out the wrappers from the HIV medications. She was also helping with the awareness of HIV and what an inconvenient marriage it is with the medication.

4. Royal Mail by Mary Welch

*This dress is also made of packaging materials. They also have a cute pair of "underwear" (if you want to call them that) to match.

5. Cat on a Hot Red Carpet  by Tamara Adlin

* This dress was made entirely out of cat treat bags, head piece included! There is just unbelievable detail with this dress and being made out of cat treat bags.

 6. Haute Cature by "Kitty Liture" and "Juene K Reuse"

*Alright, so you get a bonus picture! This dress also has unbelievable detail since it is also made out of cat food bags.

Like I said before, go to face52.org to check out the rest of the pictures from the show! Let me know what your favorites are!

The Budweiser House & other Recycled Homes

So you have to watch this video. This guy, Dan Phillips, makes houses out of recycled materials. One house in particular, he was inspired by the Budweiser can. In the bathroom, the tub resembles a  glass of beer with bubbles going up the tile side. The faucet for this tub, is an actual beer tap!

He goes on to talk about why he does what he does. He is motivated by the fact that things don't need to be perfect and that people need to stop wasting what doesn't fit in an expectation. In all of his houses, he features all of the broken, warped and imperfect pieces that no longer fit in some people's "perfect" world.

One thing he talks about is how we are pretty much never satisfied with what we have because there are always products made that have one little thing that is different from what we have. Our satisfaction is creating more of a need for satisfaction. Take for example, cell phones. People buy them every two years because they aren't what we currently have. The main purpose of a phone is to make phone calls, not to have all these other gadgets, but that's what we have and what we are trained to want.

What do you think about this video?