Don't throw out! Use, Store, or Donate.

When it comes to spring cleaning and getting rid of all of the junk that you no longer use take a moment to consider where you might be able to send that stuff before concluding that it is rubbish doomed to a landfill. Also in your everyday dealings with waste consider these alternatives that are more environmentally friendly.

Getting started with the spring cleaning.

Appliances:
Old appliances when no longer useful or obsolete tend to take up space in a house. I still have an old Apple I-mac I am holding on to for no good reason. Some appliances still have value and it is easy to sell them on websites such as http://www.trademe.co.nz/ or in shops such as Cash Converters. If someone else can make use of it and you can profit from it then why not?

If that doesn't work you can try giving it away for free on websites such as https://nz.freecycle.org/. Here people give objects they don't want and take objects that other people no longer need. This website encourages re-purposing of everything from televisions and keyboards to glass jars and microphone stands.

Apple Imac. Taking up space and not being used.

Household items:
Anything intact and not electronic can generally be gifted to a second hand store, clothing, furniture, household goods, toys and books.

You can find your local Salvation Army Family Store here.
You can find your local SPCA Op Shop here.
You can find your local Wellington Vinnies Opshop here.
You can find your local Wellington Mary Potter Hospice Shop here

One of Wellington's many Op-shops.
http://www.vinnies-wellington.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Khandallah-Shop-Outside-2015-small.jpg

Clothing:
As well as the Op-shops listed above, there are some places that will take only clothing. Recycled clothing experts such as Rebound Clothing and SaveMart will take all clean clothing, even if it is ripped and useless.

Read here how SaveMart recycles through every step of their business:

Where does our stock come from?
It comes from various sources including:
1.Clothing Bin Contracts,
2.Recylcing Projects,
3.Woollen Mills,
4.Clothing Manufacturers,
5.Carpet Manufacturers,
6.Imports,
7.Surplus Stock,
8.Seconds and Opportunity Stores.

Hundreds of dedicated employees sort the incoming stock in to those items deemed suitable for sale in our stores, only the very best quality makes it onto the shop floor. It is value priced to sell in the same week. Unsold stock is removed after 4 weeks.

All wearable clothing etc that is unsuitable for sale in SaveMart stores is sent to Papua New Guinea where there is great need for clothing especially in the highland villages.

Inevitably there will be garments and material that are not able to be used again as originally intended, these can still be recycled as follows;

Cottons are made into Cleaning Rags, Knitted woollens and acrylic go to India to be made into blankets for relief organisations, Carpet yarn is used in the insulation industry.

Our aim is to recycle everything possible.

The inside of a SaveMart store, full of recycled clothing for sale.
http://savemart.co.nz/images/SaveMart_New_Brighton_065.jpg

Clothing Bins can be found in most suburbs throughout Wellington.
http://everydaysustainability.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/clothing-bin.jpg

As a person who always tries to make the most out of what I have got I tend to accumulate things, I'd like to differentiate between my thriftiness and being a hoarder because I try to use the things I accumulate. I have little containers filled with bits and bobs that I use from time to time. Here are a few examples of the stuff that I have that I hold onto for later use instead of throwing away.

Paper. Empty excercise books, blank paper, coloured paper, I have a pile of all sorts of paper that I can use whenever I need it. I use it to draw pictures, design my next project, scribble on, write lyrics or poems on, anything that I need blank paper for I have it sorted.

Shelf full of assorted leftover paper, to use when I have need. 

Scraps of paper. I tend to accumulate scraps of life in the form of paper, whether this be ticket stubs, pictures, words, cards, post cards, photographs, or any number of other beautiful things; I tend to keep them. I have previously organized these onto cork boards, but more recently I have compiled them into a scrapbook. My scrapbook is a way for me to remember many scraps of time in a creative way, I glue all of the different pieces into the book, and then draw and write words around it; I empty my brain of all of the memories associated with that physical piece of my history.

A few open pages of my scrapbook.

Some of the images and physical memories within my scrapbook.

I have old notebooks intended for drawing in. I challenge myself to fill them up, here I get the most crazy images that come from my mind, they are for my eyes only unless I choose to share them, and I get to use the pen and paper in a way that nobody judges. I challenge you to find an old notebook around and to fill it up with ink in anyway that you can.

A Sneak peek from my weird doodling book.

Other Junk: I keep a lot of other junk hidden away for when I need it. I use old containers to store things in. Have a look at this older blog post about storage conatiners for some examples.

As you can tell I try hard to reuse as much stuff as I can, however I am realistic and know when something is at the end of its life and should be recycled or thrown away. The key part is really trying to make things last.

When something reaches the end of its life be sure to recycle it if possible, some plastics can be added to your weekly recycling collection, as can some metals; other metals will need to be recycled by taking them to a scrap dealer, if the metal is worth anything you will also receive payment for it.

As the sun begins to stay around a bit longer and you approach spring cleaning, be sure to minimize waste, re-use and recycle.

Outdoor Furniture

As winter approached our Rover crew were able to sell off all of our firewood supplies, this freed up the pallets that were keeping the wood off the ground and dry. Back at the forge we sit through winter shivering and dreaming of the warm sun and how summer is going to be incredible with parties, BBQ's, outdoor fires and good company. We also discussed having some nice outdoor furniture to use and make use of our outdoor courtyard.

I took to the pallets in Makara, seperating the individual panels so they could fit in the car, and then driving them back to the Forge. I spent an evening removing the nails from the timber. Outdoor furniture is going to be exposed to the elements, so it does not need to be sanded down perfectly.

Piles of timber, de-nailed and ready to use.

One afternoon I jumped on the scooter and headed around to Mitre 10 around the corner, I returned with some nails, and set to work designing a simple chair. I drew some doodles and set out to work.
The chair was designed to be very square, I nailed 2x4 legs to 2x2 braces, and lastly nailed slats to the chair frame give the user some thing to sit on and then to lean against. It looked terrible. It was chunky and ridiculous.

The next day, I disassembled the chair and amended it. Using my skill saw I ripped the 2x4 pieces into two 2x2 pieces, I then trimmed them to make the chair shorter and reassembled. The chair, although a little wobbly, looked good, proportionate.

A couple of easy simple chairs.

A few days later I decided to make another chair, this time opting straight for the 2x2 legs. The result was a chair that looked the same but was somewhat stronger.

Table top Pallet, with a bit of work to do.

My recycled timber was left sitting in the courtyard for me to look at and ponder how I could use it. I had a large piece of a pallet that wasn't completely disassembled, the flatmates and I thought it would make a good table, so in my mind I tried to design it as a beautiful centerpiece. I decided to line the edges with 2x2 which I measured and cut to fit and then nailed to the main piece. I then used 4x2 to create four legs which I measured and cut to about knee height. When these were firmly attached the table was strong, with very little wobble to it.

The flat mates seemed to enjoy the new furniture.

That is a good start to the flats free, recycled, outdoor furniture. It looks good, it works well, and come summer it will be the envy of the neighborhood.

 The Sunday night after I'd made the table was a cold night but I wanted to light a fire, I lit the brazier, poured myself a drink, and Shellie my fiancee joined me for dinner outside. We were warm, and we enjoyed our furniture. We sat on the chairs and we could sit our bowls on the table. We then roasted a few marshmellows for dessert. Yum. Come summer, this will be a weekly occurrence; we'll be able to fire up the BBQ and enjoy food, drink, and good company in the sun.

Furniture, fire, music and food. A good night under the stars.

Recycling Plastic

This week I am lifting content straight from my university work, Yesterday I handed in and presented my first project in the course 'Experimenting with materials'. The project focussed on taking a material and destroying it in order to make something new. Destructive Creation. We worked with physical techniques such as smashing, heating techniques such as melting, and chemical techniques such as rusting. Read on for more.

Heres what Interested me about this project:

Over the course of my university life I have been able to define myself as a designer by what interests me and what I think is important. The two things that this comes down to are
1: D.I.Y., The culture that surrounds it, the practice of doing it, and all of the benefits that go along with that.
2: Sustainability, creating in a sustainable way that does not impact the earth negatively, whether this be recycling old materials, making the most of green spaces, or any number of other things.

Our second lecture of this course was inspiring to say the least. As soon as I saw the calm waves seen  of the video below I knew I was watching something special. It contains all things that I love, DIY, Sustainability, Film, Fire, Re-use, and beautiful scenery to name a few.

I'll try not to get too poetic about my feelings towards this video, but I thought two things after watching this video for the first time. 1. Why aren't more people doing this, and 2. I have to do this.

After a small internet search  I found a couple of lo-fi, videos showing that people already are doing this on an amateur level.
See the videos here for a gow to turn old plastic into a new and beautiful slingshot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_XUJwINdLw
Melting plastic into a brick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZMWLkcfes
Turning plastic into a slingshot.

Needless to say it was my turn to have a go.
I started with a walk on my local beach in Makara.

My girlfriend Shellie and I walked the beach for 40 minutes filling our buckets to the top. There were bottle caps and plastic rope, and all other plastic crap you can think of.

Back at home this is our haul.
Before I could use it it needed to be sorted and washed.

Here is your daily dose of disturbing images.

As seen here, plastic discarded from people everyday that gets washed down rivers and out into the ocean gets mistaken for food by birds such as the three species of endangered albatross (There are a further 19 species of threatened albatross).

In an ideal world everyone would go out into the ocean, or down to the beach, fish out some old plastic, and use that instead of making more new stuff.

I want to work further in the area of plastic recycling, below are some of my experiments.

My first experiment was indoors on a kitchen element. The plastic melted to the extent that it was maleable but still identifiable, this created a vibrantly coloured bottle top pancake.

From this point on I opted for outdoor cooking. Using an open fireplace would give me a more intense heat, and being outside meant I wouldn't need to worry about getting bad smells throughout the house. My second attempt created a large creen/grey sheet, solid, yet able to be cut into pieces.

My next piece comprised two seperate cooks merged together, the first was perfect, using colourful plastic ropes. The second was awful, it burnt and turned to charcoal, I had used a rubbish grade of plastic. However, I was still able to chop and drill into the block.

Now I would focus my experiments a little more.

My first focussed experiment. Melting milk bottles into a goo I poured it into a cubic mould. Once cooled and removed from the mould it was scalded on the outside, once sanded away it unveiled the light coloured marbling seen here.

The next experiment was melted to extreme heats to the point that the plastic turned to liquid. The molten plsatic was poured into a mould and after bubbling, cracking and eventually setting and cooling I took to it with a band saw, exposing these brilliant marbling patterns.

My final experiment had colour. Vibrant colours that I wanted to bring out and expose. By drilling through it I exposed the colours hidden in the center.

Although it does just look like a block with holes in it, that isn't the point. The point is that by creating your own plastic mould you can create anything. Any shape that you can come up with has the potential to be made out of the rubbish found on the beach.

A very exciting prospect.


If you were curious about the end results of my first project in experimenting with materials have a look here:
http://jrhdsdn.blogspot.co.nz/2015/08/final-digital-hand-in-project-1.html

And here is the rest of my Design blog if that interests you:
http://jrhdsdn.blogspot.co.nz/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00%2B13:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00%2B13:00&max-results=20

Buy good things - Clothing, Technology, Everything

Through life as we grow we are ever changing. Our needs change in the smallest ways that effect what we do, what we use, and therefore what we buy. 

Since I was about 13 denim jeans have been my choice of trouser, warm, comfortable, and fairly sturdy. In the last few years however my lifestyle has become more active, especially as a scout and a scout leader. One of the unfortunate results of this is that being active tends to result in holes in my jeans, in particular right in the middle of the crotch. 
This has led me to reconsider the suitability of denim jeans for my lifestyle, although I have tried to mend my ripped pants, many pairs have already been thrown out. I have been led to believe that there is nothing like a new pair that won't rip in the first place.

Holes around the crotch

I was gifted a $100 voucher for my birthday redeemable at Kathmandu, an outdoors retail store. I'd browsed the store previously and noticed they had a range of trousers for men and women ideal for tramping and other outdoors activities. I went in one day and grabbed a few pairs that looked like my size. I tried a few of them on and went back to ensure that I had the best fit for me; only for the store worker to tell me that they were women's pants. I thought this can't be right, they were regular black pants with no sign of being catered to women, but I checked and surely enough they were measured in size numbers 14, 16, 18... instead of the blokes sizes of S, M, L, XL ... I went back to the shelf and realized there were no remaining men's trousers.

This conflicted me a little bit. I knew that they fit me quite nicely, and I knew that if I couldn't tell the difference between men's and women's trousers no one else would. But I still knew that I was wearing women's pants, would this knowledge leave me feeling emasculated? I decided to buy them anyway. 3 pairs of pants for $90 was an absolute steal.

At the counter the worker told me I can always come back to change them if I feel uncomfortable wearing them. Even in that moment I had made up my mind and I knew I wouldn't return them; even now as I type this I am wearing them and they are as snug as ever without the slightest tear in them. My testicles are in tact too.

Kathmandu Womans Size 14.

I have learnt to purchase good items that are suitable for my lifestyle that are going to last. These may cost a bit more than the cheaper alternative (I still keep an eye out for a sale though).

I still have old clothes, these are used when I do physical labouring work, gardening, painting, or exercise. Nobody cares how I present myself in any of these situations; and I don't care if my old clothes get ripped, dirty, or painted on.

Paint splattered clothing for my eyes only

In my first year of university study my first big purchase was a decent DSLR camera (Cannon 550D), saving up a wee bit more money for a decent model of camera that would be sufficient throughout my studies and beyond. I'm still using it and it has no sign of giving up just yet.

Buying one expensive thing that will last a long time is far better than buying hundreds of cheap things that will break. In the long run it is more economical, and it is much more environmentally friendly.

Cheesy reflection shot

I have always wanted to own a pair of doc martins boots, among my hip friends many have their own pair of docs which they purchased brand new; apparently the best way to buy something so valuable and personal. For me the opportunity came when a friend was selling his boots I seized the chance. $50 I had my own pair of docs, I had to grind down my own gradient to the shoes and find some new laces but now I own them and they fit me as any new pair would; with a bit of shoe polish they look brand new as well and none of my doc wearing friends know any different.

With a bit of Shoe polish they look brand new again.

The list goes on and I can give you innumerable examples of when spending more is better than buying the cheap alternative. But each situation requires its own thought from you, the consumer.

I am a practical person. Spending more should result in a better product. I don't believe in spending more just for the status of investing in a brand, but I don't want to waste my pennies purchasing rubbish that is inevitably going to end up in landfill. I search for the reasonable middle ground. Practical lasting quality from a good product is what my money is worth.

Manifesto - What I Stand For

I am a designer. I am a Scout. I am a practitioner of D.I.Y. I am thrifty. I am an outdoors lover. I am a sharer of experience. I am a physical explorer. I am pleased by organization. I enjoy good food.

I am Jayden. For now that is all you need to know about me, I'm sure you will gain more insight into who I am through this blog; starting with below; my written manifesto, advocating D.I.Y. and Sustainability.

This is what I stand for. These thoughts of mine were arranged in this way during my undergraduate degree, and as of now I still agree with it all. It first deals with sustainability in regards to the maker, and then in regards to the consumer.

As a designer both consuming and making are of equal importance. The designers decisions in all steps of the design process make an impact on the world in a great number of ways; from whether or not a local produce grower is getting paid a decent wage as you purchase their goods, or if you are paying a lesser amount, and therefore supporting the exploitation of migrant workers in countries throughout the world.

In a world where consumerist culture is everywhere it is easy to spend money on cheap items that break and get thrown away. Throughout this blog I will be advocating for the reuse and recycling of your everyday items when their current useful life is over.

That is all for now, I will be posting an article about a new activity or project each week.

JH.