The recycling bin, one of three or four, or more. Perfect to hold the household recycling until collection day

Just a few of the many options for decorating recycling bins

 

Something special in recycling and storage

I looked at the constructed recycling bin with a creative eye and laughed out loud.

The lid forms a collar on the top of a boxed body.

I saw the personality of the box begin to speak, and away I went.

My “stuffed shirts” have been presented in many places, the most recent The Ministry for the Environment, where they were an instant hit.

As a recycling bin, the Stuffed Shirt invites the separation of plastic from glass, tins and aluminium from bottles.

I have several sets of the recycling bins already sold and established around the city.

They are themed to match the decor or the personality of the homes they inhabit and have proved very successful. Some are art deco, others in a beach theme, dressed up posh or in a more conservative fashion.

After six months, they are still in very good order.

As for their personalities, I have just scratched the surface of their potential.

The resources ( collections of junk) I have stored and transported from house to house for 20 years are finally becoming useful.

The corporate Stuffed Shirt

The recycling bin is a billboard for those with a message to broadcast. It can carry words and images telling the householder many things in a thousand different ways.

Branding the bins with a subtle corporate logo and some attractive images would make them a far more appreciated gift at the end of the year than yet another calendar.

We retail the bins at $9.95 each and they are an affordable canvas for whatever the artist sees fit.. Using stencils and found objects can speed up the design process. The bins ideally sell in sets of three or four.

At a Saturday market or door to door, the recycling bins offer a cash business to students.

 I have professional quotes for the printing of a lid panel and the front of the bin only, to allow short runs, as printing the whole bin requires expensive printing plates and unless some volume is expected at a later date, it is not an economic way to proceed.

An employment possibility.

I see this as an opportunity for artists to express themselves in an instant and accessible way to the public, at an affordable price and for a practical application.

Marketing and Promotion.

 Most businesses  have messages to convey and would benefit from a permanent promotion in people’s homes and places of work. They are also looking for the feel good factor and an opportunity to “green themselves up.”

Tourism opportunity.

By photographing scenes from the local area, the recycling bins can serve to promote a city or region while beaming out a message of clean, green living. Reusable and light weight, they recycling bins can be transported as a flat pack and constructed on location. No sorting is required of recyclables at collection and the bins can be emptied or reused, or disposed of, depending on their condition.

Bins yet to be born…

In my plastic drawer stack awaiting the light of day:

Nurses buttons for a voluptuous woman dressed in white

Pink tulle awaiting a ballet tutu, for a rather fat ballerina.

Black tulle and some old diamantes, for an evening bin.

A bib and mittens, booties and a length of ribbon for a bashful obese baby.

A set of policeman’s uniform buttons, to make a fair cop.

Old tissue paper patterns from several eras, to create a montage of styles depicting a former season’s fashion.

The ‘instant pudding’ of composts is quickly whipped up, finds Helen Mays

Making good compost; it sounds like alchemy, something restricted to those truly in the know. Are you worthy to know how to make… good compost?  A beautiful autumn afternoon in The Square on World Environment Day revealed a very simple method of making compost and keeping the weeds at bay.

All it takes, according to the expert, is a good supply of newspapers (easy so far) a bag or three of untreated sawdust and a pile of lawn clippings. The only difficulty may be finding the untreated sawdust. This can be bought from a local sawmill, but local nurseryman Eddie Welsh suggests dead leaves are a good substitute.

“First you fold the newspaper so there’s a thickness of layers, then you place it on the garden and throw some sawdust or leaves on top of it.”

Good so far, no science degree necessary. Now what?

“Then you add lawn clippings on top, to weight the paper and the sawdust or leaves down.”

Aha. It really is simple. Eddie explains it’s the paper that keeps the light off the weed seeds and stops them sprouting, and the sawdust helps weight the paper and hold the weeds at bay. Sawdust is low in nitrogen but the addition of lawn clippings raises the nitrogen levels, speeding up the breaking down process. Lawn clippings are heavy and help prevent the sawdust from being blown away. The lawn clippings are also hot as they decompose and keep the mix moist.

He says when the mixture is high in nitrogen it all breaks down well.

“It’s a mulch and a composting all in one go,” says Eddie.

The compost bin can be circumvented completely by diverting some of the daily vegetable scraps and laying them on top of the newspaper, sawdust or leaves.

This sees a quick turnaround for those wanting maximum garden in minimum time.

Ripe vegetables, plucked out of the garden, carried proudly and triumphantly into the kitchen for a quick cleanup before serving, then the scraps or inedible bits put straight back onto the garden as a mulch and compost. And no, sorry kids, leaving out the actual eating of the vegetables isn’t an option.