From staircases to furniture and art to lighting, a sustainably designed home requires eco-friendly accessories for a green design inside and out.  This collection of amazing eco designs goes beyond standard energy-star appliances and stainless steel cabinetry, including chairs from worn-out keyboards, elegant light fixtures from recycled aluminum, and more…

Book lovers that can’t bear to part with their old collections can transform them into bookcases and shelves to hold new books and trinkets.  These super-cool recycled bookcases are created by Jim Rosenau in Berkley, CA and can be purchased through his website.  Visit WebUrbanist for more awesome bookcase designs.

Old car parts, industrial scraps, and yesterday’s trampoline springs get new life as one-of-a-kind home decor when artist Tim Pace gets his hands on them.  Each piece of Eco-Art is imaginative, intriguing, and fashioned by hand from recycled metal.  The item pictured here is one of Tim’s amazing wine racks – other Eco-Art includes business card and candle holders, creative garden sculptures, and more.

Beautiful wood and simple steel are the only materials in this stunning spiral staircase designed by Patrick Jouin.  The magnificent set of stairs requires little space, making it ideal for modular building or prefab – not to mention the fact that it is absolutely gorgeous!  (via dornob designs)

Do your window blinds simply keep out the bright rays of sun and cool your home – or do they harvest the sun’s power and turn on your lamp?  The illuminating solar blinds, created by Yoon-Hui Kim and Eun-Kyung Kim, do just that!  During the day, the blinds shade your home while storing solar power.  Turn the blinds on after dark and an integrated table lamp, chandelier, or floor lamp will brighten the room without taking up space or using electricity.

Every home office needs a good desk.  The ‘Deborah’ is one of many pieces of innovative recycled furniture from Reestore.  An airplane wing is transformed into a sturdy and attractive surface, then topped with heavy glass.  The wing desk is supported by stainless steel legs and available for purchase for £1990.

Recycled aluminum, resin, and low-energy LEDs create amazing eco-lighting solutions.  Stem, Firefly, Cocoon, and Flur, pictured here, are part of the SKIN collection – a company featuring the award-winning lighting designs by LEED-accredited Deniece Duscheone.

Chic and modern, this creative lounger is also eco-friendly.  Named the Text-ile Chair and designed by Dante Bonnucelli and Lamm for the UMUL workshop in 2009, the furniture rescues several old keyboards to provide an intriguing and resourceful seating option.  (Via Inhabitat)

Demolition scrap piles are the perfect source for home interior remodeling – at least when A77 Studio is in charge of the job.  The house pictured here, located in Buenos Aries, was completely refurbished with discarded highway guardrails, scrap wood, and forgotten industrial doors and windows for a stunning eco interior design.

These snake-like creations are the latest innovation from designers MOI – transforming Trask lights.  The LED light fixtures are versatile and unique, doubling as an intriguing task light for your desk or end table or track lighting suspended from the ceiling.  Adding to the eco-friendliness of Trask lights, the units are manufactured from recycled sheet metal with a safe powder-coat finish and flat-pack shipped to minimize transportation costs.

Hold on to those plastic drinking straws – especially the colorful ones, and you could have your very own recycled chair, footstool, or even a lampshade.  We’re not sure exactly how many straws were used to create these intriguing pieces of recycled eco furniture, or how long they would last under regular use, but it is one of the most creative examples of reuse we’ve come across!

10 Incredible and Intriguing Eco Accessories for Your Home is a post from: Ecoble

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We’ve highlighted some amazing options for sustainable boating in the past, including the creative solar-powered bicycle boat pictured above.  In this post, we’re bringing you a few more examples of eco-friendly watercraft – a few of which are available, or will soon be available to the public!  From solar power to electric, there are some exciting innovations on the horizon for sustainable fun on the water…

The Nereus is a concept designed by Mathias Koehler for a wind-powered personal watercraft.  Using a kite to make the most of available wind, the jetski-like watercraft is designed to bounce across the waves at ‘relatively high speeds’ and also submerge beneath the water for short periods. 

The EcoWatercraft is the very first electric jet ski, created by the American-based company of the same name. The emissions-free personal watercraft has already been tested and will reach speeds near 50 mph on open water. The Eco will provide 90 minutes of fun on a full charge and the electric motor offers extremely low-maintenance. US customers will be able to enjoy the electric jet ski – manufactured in a renewable energy-powered facility – sometime in 2010 for a price of $32,000.

Eco-sailor Kenichi Horie received the Special Award of the Naomi Uemura Adventure Prize in February, 2009 after several amazing eco-friendly boating expeditions.  In his latest voyage, the Suntory Mermaid II – a wave-powered boat – sailed across the Pacific, from Hawaii to Japan, in 2008.  The ship features a series of solar panels and was constructed out of recycled aluminum, but is primarily powered by the movement of the water it propels.

The Aqua Watercraft is the winner of the 2008 IDEA Design Awards and is an intriguing concept of a submersible electric-powered watercraft.  Joystick controls, oxygen supplies, and even water pressure monitoring were integrated into the futuristic single passenger design.  The Aqua is an option for underwater living in the future and provides a sustainable mode of transportation both above and below the ocean’s surface.

Buffalo Solar Boats, formerly Tamarack Lake Electric, offers 2 models of solar-electric watercraft.  The Loon is their newest option, featuring twin electric motors that are assisted by top-mounted solar panels.  The Loon is an 8-passenger boat, similar to a pontoon, and requires no gas for operation.  The company also sales used electric boats, a selection of inflatable electric watercraft, and the 30-passenger solar-electric Osprey.

5 (More) Extraordinary Examples of Eco-Friendly Watercraft is a post from: Ecoble

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Last week, we featured 10 projects that reuse and recycle plastic bottles – this week, we’re looking at some amazing things created with reused cardboard.  From bridges and bikes to furniture and homes, cardboard is becoming a preferred material for innovative recyclable products.  We’ve even included a few cardboard reuse projects you can make at home!

Giles Miller is a master of cardboard design.  While he usually concentrates on furniture made of cardboard, these sustainable laptop cases were part of the 2006 London (re)Design Exhibit.  Miller personalizes his bags with initials or logos, but you can make a cardboard laptop case of your own with this tutorial.

Nothing, a creative agency in Amsterdam, wanted an office that reflected their brand as well as their creativity – a cardboard office was the answer.  Complete with cubicles, storage space, and a loft-style conference room, the Nothing Office is made entirely of cardboard.  The blank walls were custom decorated with drawings after completion.

Sheffield Hallam University design student, Phil Bridge, created a working bicycle made of recycled cardboard.  The bike is functional, but limited, and could sell for just $30.  The cardboard frame is sturdy and completely recyclable, but probably not too durable in the rain.

Shigeru Ban’s recycled cardboard bridge is an amazing example of just how versatile cardboard can be.  281 cardboard tubes have been recycled into the frame of the footbridge and the steps are made from recycled paper and plastic – the structure is strong enough to support up to 20 people at once.

The YOC – Your Own Chair – is an entry from DesignBloom’s 2003 cardboard folding chair competition.  YOC is a portable chair that looks like a shopping bag but provides the perfect resting spot wherever you go.  The chair was created by Johan Carlsson of Denmark.

Bringing a whole new meaning to living in a cardboard box, this lightweight and low-cost house is made of 85% recycled materials and can be completely recycled when demolished.  The roof is made with HDPE plastic to protect the cardboard house from rain and moisture.

How do you furnish a cardboard house?  With cardboard furniture, of course!  These miniature models are designed for lightweight use and can both be made at home.  The cardboard cat chaise was created by oskay (tutorial) and several types of cardboard children’s furniture patterns can be found at FoldSchool.

If you’re looking for something a bit more grown-up, there are an assortment of designers that create recycled cardboard furniture.  The desk and bookcase above were made by French furniture makers, Les Cartonnistes.  You’ll also find a few Instructables on DIY cardboard furniture projects.

Cardboard can also be used to create amazing art and is the medium of choice for Mark Langan.  This is one of many pieces Langan has created from nothing but recycled cardboard.  Most of his cardboard art is designed for companies within the paper or recycling industry and features extraordinary logo art.

Gray Chang first made this working cardboard camera in 1983, modeled after his personal 35 mm at the time.  The camera was repaired in 2005 after being damaged by vandals.  A pinhole design, the camera requires total darkness to load and unload the single 4×5 sheet of film.

More Extraordinary Reuse Projects: 10 Creative Ways to Recycle Cardboard is a post from: Ecoble

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Over-packaging seems to be the norm in our excessive society but too much packaging causes problems for the consumer, as well as the planet.  It’s frustrating to tear through huge boxes filled with endless packaging foam to finally unwrap the tiny iPod you’ve been waiting on – getting rid of all that waste is an entirely new battle, not to mention all the unnecessary space required during shipping for too much packaging.  We’ve gathered some of the most ridiculous examples of over-packaging and included a few ways you can help diminish the excess.

These 2 little bitty Bluetooth ear hooks from Motorola were really the only items in this super-sized box.  The 2-inch components could have easily shared a padded envelope and maybe even saved on shipping costs – but everyone appreciates a big complimentary box of air. (Source: Overpackaging on Gizmodo)

This over-packaging mishap was committed by the Danish kitchenwares company, Rosti.  Within this humongous box, 2 pizza pans and a water pitcher could have safely survived in a container less than half the size. (Source: Bamakko)

The tiny iPhone headphone adapter above, already in it’s manufacturing packaging, was shipped from PC Connection. The bubble envelope it was placed in would have probably been sufficient for shipping, but to be on the safe side(?), the envelope was carefully placed on top of another empty envelope, surrounded by needless paper, and sent on its way in a waste of cardboard. (Source: Consumerist.com)

Amazon seems to be a fan of excessive packaging, earning themselves multiple spots in our collection. This particular shipment was nothing but the minute iPod Nano – in a box big enough to hold a child. (Source: Overpackaging.com)

Dell (or a Dell vendor, according to their spokesperson via Treehugger) is also guilty of overdoing the packaging materials. This lonely little flash drive’s only companion inside a way-too-big empty box was a waste of shipping paper. Source: Overpackaging at Treehugger)

HP isn’t doing much better. What would  you expect to find after unwrapping this much plastic and tape – all neatly packaged on its very own wooden pallet?  A small box that could have been shipped without the pallet and extras, containing nothing more than a mere PS2 mouse. (Source: The Register)

Notice the small bottle sitting in front of all these boxes? The glass bottle contains 1 gram of a toxic chemical called ethidium bromide. There were definitely no worries of contamination the way this thing was (over)packaged – bubble wrap, inside a large paper-filled bag, inside a closed tin, in a really big box, in an even bigger box. (Source: Too Much Packaging at Wired)

This is a first-class example of waayy too much packaging. The 6 very small boxes in the corner were shipped by iittala. Rather than pack all 6 boxes in one larger box (with plenty of room to spare), each little box deserved its own big box for one great big over-packaging mistake. (Source: Treehugger)

What would you like in your gigantic HP box? I’ll bet it isn’t 32 sheets of paper! The mega box shown here was filled with 16 smaller boxes, each containing 2 pages of obviously fragile info. Do envelopes still exist? (Source: The Register)

This is another over-packaging example from Amazon.  The lone webcam couldn’t have asked for a bigger shipping box unless it was coming from HP!  (Source: Tom Bullock via Flickr)

What Can You Do?

Employees of LUSH Cosmetics get naked to draw attention to the waste of unneeded packaging.  The ‘bare message’ campaign has been held for 2 years now, with 24 different locations participating in 2008.

UK Environment Minister, Ben Bradshaw, has given shoppers a new voice in the fight against over-packaging.  After a disappointing reduction of only 12% between 1999 and 2005, consumers were urged to leave their excess and unnecessary packaging at the checkout counter – forcing grocers to take action.

Tesco is working to meet the goal of waste reduction by 2010 – with the help of their customers.  Shoppers are asked to dump packaging they find excessive before leaving the store, helping the company learn where the biggest reductions can be made.

If leaving your packaging waste at the counter isn’t an option and getting naked doesn’t seem like the most effective strategy, continue to submit your excessive packaging photos to websites like ours and those mentioned above.  

You can also do your best to avoid products with excessive packaging and send a note to online companies that over-package to let them know you’re disappointed.  Contact Congress and the Obama administration and urge the US to step forward and take action against excessive packaging.

10 Ridiculous Wastes of Packaging Materials and How to Stop It is a post from: Ecoble

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No matter how hard we try, a paperless world just doesn’t seem possible. From newspapers and magazines to printed memos and note-taking, we still depend on paper – so why not find an alternative to our traditional tree-based paper? Here’s what a few innovative companies are doing to solve the paper problem…

For the most part maps and driving directions have gone digital – but for those of us who still like the tangibility of a printed map, Rand McNally has the paperless solution. Microfiber maps are durable, they’re waterproof, and should be a lot easier to fold than paper maps; they look pretty cool and, if nothing else, you could always use it to clean your GPS screen!

We’ve already seen the potential of poop for energy production – but what about elephant poop paper? Just 4 grown elephants can produce a ton of this sh*t each day, so why not! 2008’s Green Business Leader Award winner, Mr. Ellie Pooh creates recycled elephant poo paper. Buy your own from retailers throughout North America.

Image by Dan Diemer via Flickr

Xerox is developing a creative alternative to the paperless office. Instead of eliminating tree-based paper, they’re making it erasable. With the use of certain light waves, the printed images will automatically disappear from the paper in less than a day – why didn’t James Bond think of that?!

Limestone Gotland by Per Ola Wiberg

Chicago based company, GPA has created a tree-free paper made out of rocks. For every ton of paper, if Ultra Green were used instead – it would save 20 trees and eliminate nearly 7500 gallons of wastewater, as well as eliminating huge amounts of carbon and solid waste. The paper is made from limestone and calcium carbonate powders, using a nontoxic binding agent.

The world would be a much cleaner place if every sheet of paper not only decomposed naturally into the ground, but also grew flowers, grass, or catnip in the process. The Green Field Paper Company makes a variety of tree-free paper, including card stock, note cards, and other plantable seed papers.

There may not be a need for a paperless world after all with creative alternatives like these!

Paperless World? 5 Creative Alternatives to Cutting Trees is a post from: Ecoble

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