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Post tags: Art, biodegradable paper, Decorative Objects, Faux Nature, folding paper, marine creatures, recycled books, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, sea inspiration, swiss artist, turning paper, twisting paper, Valérie Buess

We all know that avoiding information overload is pretty difficult these days, but here are some interesting (to say the least) designs that will help you regain your sense of self. Handmade by Design Academy Eindhoven‘s graduate Nacho Carbonell, Evolution Collection is a series of furniture pieces that provide places to find peace with yourself or with others. Made from chicken wire and recycled paper, these bench-cocoons offer a calm retreat from everyday life.

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Post tags: "green furniture", chicken wire, coccon, Design Academy Eindhoven, Eindhoven, evolution collection, hand made furniture, hidding furniture, Nacho Carbonell, recycled furniture, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, retreat, retreat pod, spanish design

Crotos is an Argentine brand that turns all kinds of urban trash paper into useful recycled notebooks. Metro tickets, scrap photocopies, old forms and even risque flyers are sorted and binded into surprisingly attractive all-size notebooks. Founded by Buenos Aires-based artist Florencia Dacal, the brand turns a waste problem into a practical solution.

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Post tags: argentine design, crotos, eco design, green design, green products, recycled cardboard, Recycled Materials, recycled notebooks, recycled paper, sex flyers, sustainable design, Sustainable Materials, urban trash

Although more expensive and less durable than their plastic counterparts, biodegradable cat litter boxes have some sustainable aspects that shouldn’t be ignored by feline owners. Designed by French Studio-aparte, the Ecolite recycles waste paper into a molded paper pulp litter box. And not only does the box take little energy to produce, it can also be broken down and flushed or composted at the end of its useful life!

+ Studio-aparte

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Post tags: Animals, biodegradable cat litter, cat litter, compostable, green materials, green products, modern pets, paper pulp, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, recycling / compost

By asking themselves how  to add a more human touch to objects in the age of mass production, Joon & Jung created these adorable recycled alarm clocks made from recycled paper pulp. Born in Korea and based in the Netherlands, Joonsoo Kim, Jungyou Choi and Hyunwook Lee designed black and white versions of possibly the most hated appliance known to man and replaced the nasty plastic for hand-made, paper pulp iterations. These ‘Paper Alarm Clocks’ will wake you up in a softer way ensuring you start your day in a happier and more sustainable manner.

Read the rest of Cool Paper Pulp Alarm Clocks by Joon & Jung Give Mass Produced Objects a Human Touch

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Post tags: alarm clock, Art, Eindhoven, Green Appliances, green gadgets, green materials, human design, Korean Design, paper pulp, paper pulp clock, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, recycling / compost

The Inhabitat team is about to do something we’d never thought we’d do. We’re going to advise you to stop recycling something that is fully recyclable: thermal cash register receipts. It turns out that the ubiquitous receipts — the kind you find at most major department stores, grocery stores, bank machines etc. — contain the nasty cancer causing chemical Bisphenol A or BPA for short. When you recycle the receipts, the BPA that they contain gets tangled up in the paper pulp and then contaminates the recycled paper napkins, toilet paper, plates and cups that come out on the other end of the process.

Read the rest of Warning: Recycling Your Old Receipts Is Contaminating Paper with BPA

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Post tags: bisphenol, bisphenol A, BPA, bpa contamination, bpa disease, BPA Free, bpa receipt, is BPA harmful, paper contamination, paper recycling, products with BPA, recycled paper, what is bisphenol a, what is bpa

STICK is an eco-friendly wall covering product designed by Birmingham City University postgraduate Jiaqi Zhou. The wall ornament is made from recycled paper, and it can be used to display light items. STICK won the BCU MA Product Design 2011 Best Overall Project award, which was presented during a private exhibition showing at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.

+ STICK

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Post tags: "green furniture", eco furnishing, eco furniture, eco shelf, green design, green home decor, green home design, green products, green shelf, Jiaqi Zhou, recycled paper, stick, sustainable design

Read the rest of Packaging the Future: Can Plantable Seed Paper Give Way to a Blooming Garden?

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Post tags: flower seed paper, Gardening, green gardening, green paper eco paper, guerilla gardens, packaging the future, plantable seed paper, recyclable paper, recycled paper, seed bombs, seed paper, starre vartan, wildflower seeds

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Post tags: eco design, jennifer collier, paper objects, recycled books, recycled material, recycled paper, reused materials, unit twelve

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Post tags: "green furniture", bamboo plywood, bella center, CODE11, COP 15, copenhagen design week 2011, Decorative Objects, DIY, Green Design Events, green home decor, green materials, green packaging, green products, green resources, paper pulp coffin, recycled cotton, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, renewable cork, trade fair

If you have dozens of ugly, depressing tax returns filling up your filing cabinet, then these scrawling art pieces might be just the thing you need to see. Nava Lubelski rolls up tax returns, rejection letters, and a variety of other old paperwork that can’t be tossed just yet, and turns them into what looks like paper molecules.

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Post tags: eco design, green design, molecules, nava lubelski, recycled art, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, sustainable design, tax returns, tree ring

This holiday season, send your friends and family eco-friendly New Year wishes with these new greeting cards by Pöko Design.  In order to raise awareness about sustainable management, conservation and the sustainable development of all types of forests, the United Nations is declaring 2011 as the ‘International Year of Forests‘. To help the cause along, designer Petz Scholtus created a connect-the-dots New Year card from recycled paper printed with vegetable ink, and set with an array of dots on each card that would form a series of trees. Scholtus hopes that each greeting will provide individuals with an opportunity for reflection, and move both senders and receivers to think about the need to protect the world’s forests.

+ Pöko Design

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Post tags: forests, greeting cards, international year of forests, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, recycling, Trees, vegetable ink

If you’re feeling bummed about having to head back to school (yes, it’s almost that time already!), cheer yourself up with these vibrant and stylish notebooks, planners and journals from ecosystem. Made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, they’re clearly a smarter choice than notebooks that are made from new paper – in fact, ecosystem has already saved (as of 2009) 3,046 full-grown trees, 1,299,751 gallons of water and 283,974 pounds of greenhouse gases! Each book has its own unique ID number that can be used to track its origins and even to find out how to recycle it once you’re done.

+ Ecosystem Notebooks

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Post tags: eco design, eco friendly notebook, green design, green notebook, green products, journal, moleskine, Notebooks, notepad, planner, Recycled Materials, recycled paper

These pretty vases by Ceylon are made from recycled paper and sand and are biodegradable and (believe it or not) waterproof! The wooden parts of the pieces are made from leftover scraps from the furniture industry. Check out the whole selection here!

+ Ceylon Paper Pottery

Via Designspotter

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Post tags: Biodegradable, ceylon, eco-friendly products, green products, paper pots, paper pottery, Reclaimed Materials, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, sand, vases

Enamored by Apple’s iPad but not ready to drop $500 on another piece of tech? Check out the Pixel Pad! Made with environmentally friendly paper and vegetable-based inks, this clever notepad mirrors the physical attributes of the iPad, providing a humorously low-tech solution for high-tech gadget lovers.

Read the rest of Pixel Pad: An “Energy-Efficient” iPad Alternative

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Post tags: iPad, ipad alternatives, ipad applications, ipad apps, pixel pad, recycled paper, sketch paper, vegetable based inks

Welcome back to Inhabitat’s Green Wedding Guide! So far in this summer series we’ve covered eco-friendly jewelry, locations, invitations and now we’re bringing you our tips and suggestions for eco-friendly gift giving. Favors, gifts and registries are sometimes thought of as the bane of a green wedding. It can get overwhelming to plan details of sustainability into an eco-friendly wedding — let alone find meaningful gifts that aren’t a load of eco-guilt. Some fight the gift giving, but giving and receiving is fun, and there are many easy ways to make wedding gift exchanges more environmentally friendly.

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Post tags: eco wedding, favors, gifts, green wedding, green wedding guide, invitations, recycled paper, registry, wedding, wedding planning

Welcome to our third installment of the Inhabitat Green Wedding Guide column. So far we’ve covered eco-friendly rings and locations in our Green Wedding Guide. In our third installment of our series, we are talking eco-friendly wedding invitations. Invitations set the mood for the wedding – simple and casual, fancy and elegant, quirky and fun, the possibilities are endless. Your guests will gather information on what to wear and what type of wedding it will be from your wedding invitation. And by sending out an eco-friendly invite, you’re setting the bar for the rest of your gorgeously green and eco-conscious wedding.

Read the rest of GREEN WEDDING GUIDE: Invitations

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Post tags: eco friendly wedding, eco-friendly invitations, green wedding, green wedding guide, invitations, invites, recycled paper, wedding

As a child, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree was a somber reminder of how much trees give us and how little we give back. Wood and paper are ubituquos materials in our society– but they can be harvested responsibly. There are likely no viable replacements for wood or paper, but many artists and designers have created works that highlight the role of trees (and their by-products) in our lives. This week we are featuring designs and products that made us ponder a little more deeply about the issues that surround tree by-products.

World Architecture News reports that a renovation in Japan left behind numerous wood columns, creating a forest-like appearance in an otherwise modern apartment.

Fresh Home shares Alexander Pelikan’s Plastic Nature chairs that juxtapose old-fashioned wood with its modern rival, plastic.

Notcot features a snippet of Patrick Dougherty’s famous — and ephemeral — installations made of tree branches.

Ecopreneurist points us in the direction of a rather ingenious Swedish company that produces environmentally-sensitive paper that will launch on Earth Day this year.

Re-nest features these PopMats Recycled Paper Placemats, available at Delight.

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Post tags: deforestation, fsc certified wood, recycled paper, wood art, wood character, wood harvest

Wondering what to do with all those old greeting cards and thank you notes? Now you can stick them in the ground and sprout wildflowers with Botanical Paperworks plantable greeting cards.. We’ve written about sprouting stamps and blooming business cards before, so it was only a matter of time before someone came up with plantable greeting cards. Available as thank-you cards, wedding invitations, baby announcements and customizable cards for any occasion, each card is handmade from 100% post-consumer waste fiber and is embedded with wildflower seeds. Simply plant them in a pot of soil and a few spring showers will start them on their way to a beautiful bouquet.

READ MORE AT INHABITOTS >

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Post tags: botanical paperworks, green design, green gardening, Recycled Materials, recycled paper, seed cards, sustainable design

Did you know that recycling a single ton of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000 kilowatts of energy!? Statistics like these were key points at a sustainable print and paper workshop at the London Design Festival’s sustainability hub, Greengaged. The workshop, hosted by UK-based nonprofit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest, set out to explore how different print processes affect the paper’s recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process.

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Post tags: Greengaged, London Design Festival, recycled paper, Recycling paper, Sustainable printing, Waste reduction