Saturday, April 3, 2010

In the spirit of Earth Day!

Like our ancestors, humans are still recycling, upcycling or repurposing to get the most out of the resources available to us.  It is economical and realistic, beyond being idealistic.  I currently participate in two online trading sites, swaptree and paperbackswap, where users recycle media by trading with other members of this online community.  Not are we only reusing media that would otherwise sit on a shelf, but most of the members re-use packaging. Fantastic!
In the spirit of Earth Day I wanted to highlight a few of the items on Etsy that are created with the idea of recycling, upcycling or repurposing in mind.
Alyssa Jackson's upcycled jewelry is a hit in our hometown of Oneonta, NY.  She's been collecting game pieces to make pendants, rings, necklaces and earrings for over a year.  Her jewelry has a hip, romantic flair.

In the same spirit comes Diana Cozzens' creations.  Also romantic, yet more in the vein of 80's punk, a lot the jewelry Diana has created for the shop thus far is from discarded leather scraps originally meant for furniture.
A couple of weeks ago, I added some new blank cards on Etsy by Joseph Von Stengel to highlight Earth Day.  His 8-Bit Creations and Culture Catalogue Silhouettes images grace 100% recycled note cards, the brown ones are also 20% post-consumer and the white 100% post-consumer recycled.  Rad!

Happy Earth Day!