Tag Archive for: bottle

graphjam chart for summer weather heat and humidity

Chart: Summer Suffering in the Midwest

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graphjam chart for summer weather heat and humidity

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity! Oh dear, we’re at it again… instead of producing revenue or creating other things of value, I’m creating more fake charts for our amusement!

So what to do if terrible humidity is a problem? If you’re given humidity, make humi-nade! (Human Aid?!)

The Dew Bank Bottle by Ki-Tae Pak DOES in fact make humi-nade by gathering and collecting dew in desert conditions. The design won a Bronze Prize at the Idea Design Awards 2010 and interestingly, is inspired by a desert-dwelling beetle which procures water by collecting morning dew on its body.

Its High Time We Soaked Pot

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Dry times. Our regionally-inappropriate potted plants are screaming for moisture and we’re darn tired of constantly dragging around that watering can and hose, splashing, spilling and transpirating all that good water.

From the Chicago Garden blog on chicagonow.com, a practical solution for container garden pop bottle drip irrigation. While I’ve seen the idea before, their method offers a few nice refinements and is a perfect use for plastic bottles and that ready water from your rain barrel!

Please, Give It A Second Thought

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This double-taker was spotted at my local drugstore. Propel declares their product is now delivered with 33% less plastic. The proud declaration is displayed on a big, colorful hunk of…. plastic. (And, it’s the kind of plastic apparatus that’s been known to choke and maim animals.) Please, Propel, give this a second thought.

*Flippant footnote: Propel is NOT water. It is a vitamin enhanced water beverage. So there.

Beware the Ecological Inspector

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Please recycle your recyclables in the recycled container? All these -cycles are leaving me tongue-tied! Nice shot from laraine on Flickr, who snapped this photo in a large park in Mexico City. Even better, she provides a translation for the delightful signage:

Conserve a healthy environment for
the future of your children.
Flatten and deposit plastic bottles,
soda bottles,
water bottles
energy drinks.
Separate orgainc and inorganic (this is a new law in the city)
MORE FORREST, LESS GARBAGE
be careful about the ecological inspector.
Super Recycler

Smoke on the Water

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High praise for this creative packaging! I regret that I am unable to translate the Chinese label for you, as you’re likely as curious as I am about the production details for this bottled water, including any possible additives! From the Flickr photostream of The Study Abroad Experience… and what a colorful cultural collage of an education it must have been!

Post-Festival Fate of the Metheun Tree

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Sometimes I’d just stare and think…I wonder what’s become of her? Just a couple months ago we wrote about plastic bottle holiday trees, including this recyclarific example from the 2008 Methuen (Massachussetts) annual Festival of Trees. And now that the holidays are over, we sadly assumed she had been shredded to bits and cruelly bundled in a recycling center or worse, buried alive in a dank, smelly landfill.

So imagine my excitement to see her again while browsing Flickr, under the heading I WON THIS AT THE METHUEN FESTIVAL OF TREES.

This must be this the same tree, I think, but she sure looks different in the morning without her lights! So I send a message to the owner to inquire about her fate… “I’m curious… what happens to it now?”

The happy response: “We have decided to move it to our pool area and keep it as a conversation piece.”  She always loved being by the water, and now she’s a bathing beauty. And possibly headed for another adventure as a emergency rescue flotation device. Ah, life’s funny.

Creative Thinkers Hit the Bottle

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www.instructables.com, in partnershp with Tap’dNY, is running a “Keep the Bottle” Contest calling for great ideas to recycle and reuse plastic bottles. Tap’d is an organization that has been very active in promoting tap water as the preferred, smart choice as well as aggressive recycling of bottled water empties. Have a look at the entries, some are practical, some are crazy, but nearly all are pretty inventive.

At 26,000+, the “Most Viewed” entry right now is a Water Bottle Bazooka … quite impressive and as Mom would say, destined to cause someone to “put their eye out.”

Now of course, I couldn’t resist this. Although I’ve been a reader of Instructables for 5 years, I’ve never posted one of my own until now. And here it is, the “Plastic Bottle Self Extinguishing Ashtray!”


Plastic Bottle Self Extinguishing Ashtray – More DIY How To Projects

Naturally I have zero chance at a prize, given the simple concept and the political and social incorrectness of smoking. Still, I was fun to do! (Go ahead and vote for me anyway, OK?)

The aesthetics of recycling: Water bottles take flight

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Bruce Voyce is a sculptor from Vancouver B.C., Canada and in his Water Project, “the office water bottle is being transformed into a fantastic interactive world of wonder.” I am speechless. Many more fantastic variations are found at this brilliantly titled Flickr page, Excessorize.

The aesthetics of recycling: Blooms

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Behold the beauty that lies in your waste bin. These ethereal blooms are made from water bottles by RodPujante. Amazingly, he uses no glue or fasteners, just the repurposed bottles. View many more stunning photos on the Flicker page of Playa Moth, here.

The aesthetics of recycling: Water Bottle Waterfall

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If you were at the Nuit Blanche Festival in Toronto, October 4-5, 2008, you’d have been fortunate to have viewed this spectacular installation. “Waterfall” by Katherine Harvey is described as a giant “duvet” of commercial fishing nets filled with dumpster loads of recycled bottles. Draped from the Ontario Power Generation building, it was dramatically lit from below so that viewers approaching might anticipate falling water but when closer to the piece will instead discover a mass of plastic refuse.

From Flickr, Photo #1 by Veggiefrog and Photo #2 by willy chan88.