Design-savvy Reuse at Inhabitat's Spring Greening Contest

by Emily Gertz · 2009-04-18 19:51:00 UTC
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Got junk? Apply a little imagination (and a lot of glue) and it could become your next favorite coffee table, necklace, or bookshelf.

Design blog Inhabitat (co-founded by fellow former Worldchanger Jill Fehrenbacher) has been way ahead of the "new frugality" curve on advocating upcycling: creating new goods by repurposing waste materials, instead of using energy- and resource-intensive new materials. The designers who entered Inhabitat's Spring Greening Contest have also applied some smart re-thinking that makes the most of the aesthetic potential already inherent in the materials.

If you, like me, hang on way too long to the boxes your Apple products came in, because they're just too cool-looking to trash, then you'll be inspired by with the Editor's Choice winner: Alison Cromie's Recycled Macbook Box Briefcase. Alison finds a way to give a laptop box a new purpose, taking advantage of Apple's already-excellent package design. (I could imagine adapting this idea to make something useful out of the box my iPod Touch came in, which I've been saving against having, or encountering, a good upcycling notion.)

Emily Gertz
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