We’ve kinda already covered this before – in with spent energy saving bulbs and old lightbulbs in general – but I just spotted this very cool reuse of old strip lights so thought it was worth mentioning more specifically again.

Castor Canadensis, a design studio in Canada, has thought to turn a whole bunch of old tubes into a new light fitting – with an energy efficient bulb inside to provide the actual illumination. (On a similar theme, Ikea used to do “bucket” light shades that you could fill with whatever you liked and old lightbulbs looked cool in there.) I imagine that if you were handy, you could make a flat version for a wall light too – but I don’t know how you’d go about lighting that evenly – any suggestions? A spread of white LEDs maybe?

Anyway, as I said, this is a bit of a retread so there is plenty of recycling/disposal advice for these tubes on the energy-saving bulbs post – but basically, BE CAREFUL! They’re a hazardous material and shouldn’t be thrown into an open van, shattering and sending crap and glass all over the road (as some scrap collectors did on our street a couple of months ago…). Dispose of them properly at your local household waste site.

(Photo courtesy of Castor Canadensis)

Most of our recycling-stuff-into-art posts so far have been rather crafty so here is something at the more fine art end of the scale.

Despite the exhibition being around for a decade, I’ve some how managed to miss HA Schult’s ‘Trash People’.

This army of 1000 figures – made from crushed cans, electronic waste and other rubbish – has stood in public spaces in Rome, Barcelona, Moscow, New York, Paris – and even dotted along the Great Wall of China.

The pictures show you the detail but it takes a video (or the very long shots on Schult’s website) to show you the scale – the amount of the figures. The video below shows someone walked around the Cologne, Germany exhibition.

A very cool display – and hopefully one that got people thinking more creatively about their rubbish, or at least thinking about not producing so much.

(Creative Commons Attribution photos from dbking on Flickr – bigger pictures available on there too)

Following on in our impromptu series of all things water-y, I have a bit of a random query about a canoe/kayak.

Because of the wonders of wireless, I am currently sat our (still not paved) garden enjoying the fact it’s not raining for once and watching with bemusement as our neighbour Jason tries out his new homemade canoe trailer for his bike.

I’ve mentioned Jason’s love of creatively building trailers before but the difference this time is that he’s fixed up the canoe too. He has a habit of acquiring random things in a broken state and either fixing them (as he did with the canoe – although he’s yet to water test it – that’s why he built the trailer, to take it down to the river) or cannibalising them for bits. The previously cracked (fibreglass?) canoe has been fixed, the trailer built from salvaged planks and pram wheels.

But if he hadn’t fixed the canoe, what else could he have done with it?

I guess it could be used as a fun, feature pot for the garden – but a very big one that – if mostly covered like this one – doesn’t offer much room for the plants to surface. Any other suggestions?

(Photo by gundolf)

Right, another one in our new Reverse Recycle This series: how can I make something out of recycled stuff?

I’ve got a lot of costume jewellery because it’s really easy & fun to make and/or find going unbelievably cheap in charity shops (one of my favourite necklaces cost 10p – ace!).

At the moment it’s all dumped on the top shelf of a three-shelf unit we’ve got in the bedroom but necklaces and floppy bracelets frequently get tangled up and I can’t see what all my options are whenever I’m having an accessorising crisis (usually happening about 15 minutes after we should have left). Some of the necklaces particularly are really quite pretty too, so it’s a shame for them to be in an untidy heap.

I thought about making a wall hanging – with some cool flock-style fabric I found in a scrap-material bin a few years ago – but didn’t know how I would be best to go about this. I imagine cup hooks or something – but would have to find really big, ugly ones for my solid ’80s style bangles.

So any suggestions on how I can make something to display/tidy up the jewellery, using recycled/reused things from around the home etc, that’ll look pretty or cool enough to be in a fairly focal point of our bedroom?

We’ve had an email from Amy, asking:

I have a large kiddie pool with a crack in the bottom that is not repairable. How can I recycle this?

She doesn’t say whether it’s an inflatable one (which are the most common type in the UK) or a more solid one – the “crack” suggests the latter – so feel free to make suggestions for either.

(We’ve covered smaller inflatables before and in a similar water-holding-thing-no-longer-holding-water, we covered fish tanks last week.)

(Photo by ssdg4773)