Plastic is fantastic to craft withand these imaginative, whimsical creations are out of the ordinary! From colorful canine silhouette pins and magnets and a holiday snowflake decoration to marvelous masks, they turn recycling into art.Organized by level of difficulty, the items range from simple creations even a schoolchild can do to a fanciful, rolling biplane and a slithering, jointed serpent stuffed with lids and caps. All the necessary techniquescutting, shaping, fastening, heat-forming, making tabsunfold in step-by-step photos, along with clear, comprehensive instructions. Sidebars provide extra information on plastics, recycling, and more. Plus there s a gallery of innovative international work by professional artists to inspire you.What a great way to get creativewhile saving the earth, too! "
Turn trash into treasure with 25 incredible recycling craft projects! Never throw away a plastic bottle again with this cool book of recycling crafts and creations. Make monster pins, an awesome jet pack, a secret hideaway, and even a wearable pirate ship! Plastic just got a whole lot more fantastic.
Discusses the scientific scandal that arose when researchers at Bell Laboratories discovered that wunderkind physicist Jan Hendrik Schön falsified his data to prove that he had discovered a simpler way to make transistors, which would have drastically improved energy technology.
“Guides readers toward the road less consumptive, offering practical advice and moral support while making a convincing case that individual actions . . . do matter.” —Elizabeth Royte, author, Garbage Land and Bottlemania Like many people, Beth Terry didn’t think an individual could have much impact on the environment. But while laid up after surgery, she read an article about the staggering amount of plastic polluting the oceans, and decided then and there to kick her plastic habit. In Plastic-Free, she shows you how you can too, providing personal anecdotes, stats about the environmental and health problems related to plastic, and individual solutions and tips on how to limit your plastic footprint. Presenting both beginner and advanced steps, Terry includes handy checklists and tables for easy reference, ways to get involved in larger community actions, and profiles of individuals—Plastic-Free Heroes—who have gone beyond personal solutions to create change on a larger scale. Fully updated for the paperback edition, Plastic-Free also includes sections on letting go of eco-guilt, strategies for coping with overwhelming problems, and ways to relate to other people who aren’t as far along on the plastic-free path. Both a practical guide and the story of a personal journey from helplessness to empowerment, Plastic-Free is a must-read for those concerned about the ongoing health and happiness of themselves, their children, and the planet.
The extraordinary story of the woman who made plastics recycling possible. Milly Zantow wanted to solve the problem of her town’s full landfill and ended up creating a global recycling standard — the system of numbers you see inside the little triangle on plastics. This is the inspiring story of how she mobilized her community, creating sweeping change to help the environment. On a trip to Japan in 1978, Milly noticed that people were putting little bundles out on the street each morning. They were recycling — something that hadn’t taken hold in North America. When she returned to Sauk City, Wisconsin, she discovered that her town’s landfill was nearing capacity, and that plastic made up a large part of the garbage. No one was recycling plastics. Milly decided to figure out how. She discovered that there are more than seven kinds of plastic, and they can’t be combined for recycling, so she learned how to use various tests to identify them. Then she found a company willing to use recycled plastic, but the plastic would have to be ground up first. Milly and her friend bought a huge industrial grinder and established E-Z Recycling. They worked with local school children and their community, and they helped other communities start their own recycling programs. But Milly knew that the large-scale recycling of plastics would never work unless people could easily identify the seven types. She came up with the idea of placing an identifying number in the little recycling triangle, which has become the international standard. Milly's story is a glimpse into the early days of the recycling movement and shows how, thanks to her determination, hard work and community-building, huge changes took place, spreading rapidly across North America. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.3 Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.7 Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears.
Construct a space station out of cardboard boxes, tin-can stilts, a cotton-reel robot, a mobile of straws, a pinball machine using rubber bands and much more. This text includes 50 fantastic things to make from junk, shown step-by-step.
Upcycling goes upscale in this beautiful, elegant, and global collection that showcases what today’s designers are creating out of yesterday’s materials. Upcycling is the process of transforming seemingly low value items into something new. Today’s upcyclists are creating stunning furniture, lighting, and art objects that combine values of superb craftsmanship and design with ideas of how "waste" can be both inspiring and informing. While the environmental and financial benefits of upcycling are readily acknowledged in Upcyclist: Reclaimed and Remade Furniture, Lighting and Interiors, the designers and makers profiled show how the practice can result in pieces that are as aesthetically exciting as anything created using only raw materials. Based on the author’s popular website, this book features hundreds of creations from an international collection of today’s most exciting designers. It is organized by material, with chapters dedicated to wood, metal, glass and ceramics, textiles, plastic, paper, and mixed media. Reclaimed tree branches and barn doors are transformed into exquisite pieces of furniture; bicycle chains into chandeliers; t-shirts into rugs; saris into upholstery. Filled with an enormous range of materials and objects, this unique book will inspire any designer or design-conscious consumer to incorporate upcycling into their creative practice or interior design projects.
Fantastic Plastic provides a fascinating look at how designs using plastics can be considered works of art, as well as objects of our everyday lives. Within Fantastic Plastic the material is explored, from the high end of furniture and product design, to the throwaway, disposable world of condoms and plastic bags. Fantastic Plastic shows how product design has developed and considers plastics' usability, technology and appearance. From the trademarked names of Spandex, Teflon, Nylon, Rayon, Formica and Tupperware, this book follows plastic through its iconic incarnations and reflects on how their function and reputation have changed over their lifetime.
