Check out this trailer for Garbage Warrior - a film about Michael Reynolds, a renegade architect who designs “earth-ships”; housing for sustainable living. Looks like a riveting film.
The Vancouver International Film Festival has a rich selection of green films this year. This one is on garbage and it sounds fascinating. Make sure to check it out.
Architect Michael Reynolds started building houses out of garbage (old tires and empty pop bottles) almost 30 years ago, but it’s taken until now for the world to catch on. “Earthships” are what Reynolds calls his style of eco-architecture; his houses are entirely self-sustaining (they generate their own power, heat and water) and often uncannily beautiful. But creating a new model of workable, green architecture is not without trial and error, and Reynolds has had some mighty big errors, including houses so hot they melted plastic. “I’m just lucky I didn’t fry a baby,” he says in typical blunt fashion. Read the rest of this entry »
I find it a bit ironic to put environmental messages about the arctic on coffee cup sleeves.
May be that is just me looking into things too much. Judge for yourself. I found this sleeve, close to my work in downtown Vancouver. It is from Starbucks.
I personally think the message should have said ‘ Don’t use so many non reusable cups, and if you do, for goodness sake take them without a sleeve.’ Callused hands are sexy after all, at least I think so. Oh I have a better idea, it should say:
“Be a real human, live life to the fullest, grab your coffee cup with your bare hands…” Ok, I will stop now, I must admit that writing slogans is not one of my top talents.
Two Torontonians attempt to produce no Garbage for a Month.
You can watch a short video that was created for the Hour and is uploaded on the CBC Website: Exposure.
The video talks about some of the practicalities surrounding a zero waste lifestyle.
Meet Hal Hewett
Hal has been an inspiration with his quirky explorations of garbage and his trip across the country in a bus where him and his counterparts did not spend any money on food and fuel, but instead dumpster dove for both. He possesses amazing mechanic skills and is the person whose famous line I still quote. ‘In nature there is no waste’
Meet Tyler Rudolph
Tyler is my partner in most crimes, a great storyteller, musician and a writer, he was designated as the note taker and stills photographer. He has a quirky fascination with ghost towns and abandoned houses. But professionally he has worked in natural resource conservation for a while and brings expertise and a passion for environmental responsibility. Thus, he does not like it when people use throw away cups.
Meet, well… me, Maia Iotzova
I collect used coffee cups and random thrown away objects that I can paint on, make prints on, and create funky things with. My primary form of art, these days, is documentary film. Since Garbage has been something I have played with for a while, I have started to look more intently into a way to approach the subject in a documentary.
When most people get away from the city they seek destinations where they can enjoy the natural beauty of the rural areas. Not us, on an early Friday morning Tyler, Hal and I started our exploration of the rural waste management sites and recycling depots on Vancouver Island and Hornby Island.
So I am spending all this time collecting garbage, looking at others collecting garbage. Filming dump sites and recycling depots. Talking about the garbage itself…filming people making unlikely things form garbage. But what I really think is that concentrating on the last link in the chain, the end product: the garbage, is like trying to solve an overpopulation problem by building more senior homes.
Vancouver’s city workers are on strike, which means that our garbage is not getting picked up. Interestingly I see, not that this is ok any time,people using to-go containers and cups and just throwing them away in the overfilled containers, which are getting worse everyday.
Garbage is getting spilled on the streets and you would think, we would put 2 and 2 together and at least cut down on our garbage creation a bit.
The interesting part is that lots of talk is done on the reuse and recycle issue, but what really is the essence or source of the problem is not addressed. The REDUCE issue.
A little stats I learned from going to the zero waste talk. When we have a product let’s say a pen, on average 94% of the resources that are used to make the pen are not in the final product.
What that means is that when we recycle we are only recycling something like 6 % of the materials/ resources used to make the pen.
Another issue is that 80% of our products end up in our landfills within 6 weeks.
You can hear Ruben Anderson, Sustainable Design Consultant talking at the Zero Waste discussion in May about some of these issues.
I am not the kind of person that wants to cover up problems and would much rather see us reduce our garbage, but the smell in Vancouver is getting king of raunchy. The CBC website has a map and list of alternative locations to bring garbage to while the city workers are on strike.
Funny,
I was at a training seminar at the Banff Centre for the Arts and they had these funny Styrofoam like coffee/water cups that said: Inspiring Creativity. I collected a bunch of them that my coworkers had used, washed them up and took them home with me to Vancouver.
Here they are inspiring creativity…or simply being used for a masquerade party.
Both masks were made by Angeline.
Angeline’s mask is made from 35 mm film and slides’ frames.
Shirlene’s mask is made from that famous coffee cup from Alberta.
My posts have dwindled for a while, but my trash involvement hasn’t.
I was just at a trip on Vancouver Island at the Pigeon Lake Waste Management Facility and also at Hornby Island’s state of the art Recycling Depot.
I will share the details of those visits a bit later; this post is about something that arose spontaneously.
We were having late brunch at my house the day of a well-known and exiting event, the Illuminares Lantern Festival. Lots of people make lanterns and come to this celebration of light, in Trout Lake Park in East Vancouver. The park is lit up by the lanterns and livened by the sounds of live music and theatre and acrobatic performances.
As my friends and I were talking about going to the festivals and that it would be great to make lanterns, an idea came to my head. Why not make lanterns from used coffee cups (luckily I have a rich collection)
So here we did.
A small part of my used coffee cup collection
The beggining of the fish lantern
Fish Face
We used the paper starbucks bags to line the holes of the lantern, creating a dimmer light effect. We also drew with color pastels on the bags, so we can get different colors of light.
Maia Iotzova is based in Vancouver. Her work concentrates on exploring environmental themes through playful and socially conscious art and she is currently creating various projects with garbage and working toward a documentary on the subject.
