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Turning garbage into saleable products

By Rain Noe - December 19, 2007

in Object Culture

Reverse Garbage is an Australian nonprofit that sells trash to people who will repurpose it in creative ways. And we're talking people who will transform castoffs into usable items; we've all seen messenger bags made out of diskettes and such on sites like Instructables, and Reverse Garbage is basically a clearinghouse for those types of innovators, with an added green bonus of using material that's already in the system.

Reverse Garbage now has a storefront, m.a.d. (make a difference), billed as "Australia's first permanent sustainable art and design centre."

"To make saleable products from reused items, people have to be very clever, because they need to be able to repeat or manufacture the item," [Mary-Jean Newton, m.a.d. co-founder and manager] says. "They need to rethink their material choices and tap into things like the industrial waste we get at Reverse Garbage so they can create a product design and continue to manufacture it sustainably."

For those not in Australia, click here to check out m.a.d.'s offerings online.

via sydney morning herald

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Eric Nguyen

17 years ago

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There's a handful of good places in the Bay Area for exactly this kind of thing. For example, http://www.scrap-sf.org/ and http://www.shopinberkeley.com/u/urbanore/ . Visiting some place local makes sense, of course; shipping a bunch of scrap from overseas negates a lot of the environmental benefit of reusing material.
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Prof Prague

17 years ago

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If there is one trend in all of design that I would love to see never ever end its SOCIAL DESIGN.

I love the possibilities of the most creative people (designers) in the world focusing their abilities to create amazing designs that will ultimately better the world.

this article sums it up http://24-7designheaven.com/24-7dh/2007/12/globe-in-hands-squish-eaaaaugg.php#more
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