EcoStreet » EcoDIY

Go Green Month at Sew Much Ado

karma-sister — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:21 +0000

It’s Go Green Month at Sew Much Ado, and there are some great tutorials there for green creativity.

Refashioned Tutorial: Toddler Ruffle Skirt – turn an adult t-shirt into a cute toddlers skirt.

Jen’s Cloth Diapering and Doubler Tutuorial – make your own reusable nappies.

There’s also a composting tutorial if you’ve been thinking about starting and aren’t sure how.

EcoDIY: bike tube headband

karma-sister — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:00:37 +0000

Becky Stern’s cool bike tube headband at Craft: is simple to make and a great way to use up punctured bike inner-tubes. We get through these in our family. Lots of thorns in South Africa.

Bike Tube Headband [Craft:]

EcoDIY with kids: a bird’s nest

karma-sister — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:32 +0000

I like this idea for an Easter egg receptacle. We’re going to be away from home this Easter and staying in a B&B, so this is a good idea for somewhere for the Easter Bunny to leave eggs for the children. It’s messy and a great kids’ craft and it’s made of stuff that is free, natural or would otherwise end up in the bin.

For full instructions on how to make a bird’s nest, visit Growing Up Creative.

If you make one, please post a link to your image in comments, we’d love to see your works of art.

How-to make a bird’s nest [Growing Up Creative]

How to make solar-tea

Tracy Stokes — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:20:20 +0000

It’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the right time of year to cook up a brew of solar tea. Remember, your kettle is one of the biggest energy vampire gadgets you’ve probably got, so change the way you make your tea this summer? You’ve heard of slow food, this is slow tea.

Step 1: You’ll need a big jar or wide mouthed bottle.

Step 2: You can make teas with all sorts of herbs, whatever you have on hand. I used 4 rooibos teabags and 2 springs of fresh mint. Bung them into the jar and fill with cool filtered or tap water.

Step 3: Place the jar in full sun and leave for as many hours as you can wait.

Step 4: Strain and drink warm, or chill for iced tea. Sweeten with honey if desired.

Eco-friendly Xmas crafts

Tracy Stokes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:00:55 +0000

For an eco-friendly Xmas, make your own decorations out of garden and household waste. Twigs make an excellent Xmas tree, the bottoms of plastic bottles make gorgeous stars, and aluminium drink cans make sparkly baubles.

mini Christmas tree

Make miniature Christmas trees from a few twigs, or make a bigger tree with thicker branches and a threaded rod on a base, that you can decorate like a traditional Christmas tree with garlands and balls. Make recycled stars and baubles for your tree too.

mini Christmas tree [esprit cabane]

wintry stars

In the past, glass bottle bases were recycled to make tiles. Today, we can recycle the bottoms of plastic water, juice or olive oil bottles into twinkling stars with just a pair of scissors.

These transparent Christmas stars reflect light from every direction and make beautiful beaded garlands or hanging decorations suspended from a bit of wire.

wintry stars [esprit cabane]

creative Christmas balls

Make these fun balls yourself out of aluminium cans. They’re perfect for decorating your home-made tree with, or any other tree for that matter.

creative Christmas balls [esprit cabane]

EcoDIY: WALL-E the recycled robot

Tracy Stokes — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:36:27 +0000

Give some moms a big pile of recycling and instead of dropping it off at the nearest recycling centre, they come up with an inspired toy for their kids. This cute WALL-E robot is made out of what “Kitten Muffin” (not her real name, surely) found in her recycling bin, although looking at the raw materials, not much of it is recyclable in my neck of the woods, only the cardboard.

What makes this WALL-E robot project so perfect is that in the movie he’s the guy cleaning up after us humans who leave the planet in a jolly big mess, so why not have him clean out your recycling bin at home too. You can see exactly what was used and how to make your own WALL-E robot out of stuff from your bin at Kitten Muffin’s blog, Filth Wizardry (note to self: file as something cool to do for the upcoming school holidays).

Home made recycled WALL-E [Filth Wizardry]

[via elephantjournal]

EcoDIY: Home-made Massage Chair

Tracy Stokes — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:30:23 +0000

This is the first time on an EcoDIY feature that I’m not going to suggest that you try this at home, unless you have the necessary know how to avoid electrocuting yourself, or similar. But I think that this incredible chair is still worth telling you about, check this out.

Lin Shuseng, a 78-year old Chinese pensioner and ex-car mechanic, has spent 8 years building this massage chair for his wife who suffers from painful joints. The incredible thing about this undertaking is that he’s made the chair entirely out of scrap, and from the look on his face in this picture, it’s pretty effective.

The chair started out as a means of administering a neck massage, and has grown into a full-body massage tool that even has a warmed seat, for comfort. The chair remains a work in progress.

[via ananova]

Eco-DIY: recycle old gutters into a vertical garden

Tracy Stokes — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:59:53 +0000

When Suzanne Forsling moved from the US Midwest to Alaska, she discovered this novel idea for keeping her salad crops off the cold ground and away from critters who messed with them. She used new guttering, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t use old guttering, either that from your own home, or from a reclamation yard. This is a very inventive way of gardening if you don’t have a garden. Use a house wall, your balcony or expand your garden if you have one by using a garden wall.

You can read exactly how Suzanne set up her gutter garden in this article from the Juneau Empire.

To conserve water, you could place potted plants under the guttering to soak up any water that drains away from your salad crops.

How does your garden grow? [Juneau Empire]

[via: greenUPGRADER]

Eco-DIY: recycle old cardboard boxes into a cool laptop case

Tracy Stokes — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:23:13 +0000

I’m particularly obsessed with cardboard boxes at the moment, because I’ve just moved house and the empties are everywhere. Of course I could just take them to the recycling depot down the road, but then I came across this awesome Instructable and just knew that this was what my boxes were destined to be.

What becomes of the rest of the boxes cluttering up my house is yet to be seen. If you have any brilliant recycling ideas, please leave a comment. Alternatively, if you live in the Cape Town area and are moving soon, you’re welcome to come and collect the boxes from me to reuse.

Beautiful and ecological, cardboard laptop case [Instructables]

How to cook in a hot box (and save energy)

Tracy Stokes — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:00:53 +0000

When I heard about cooking in a hot box on Pia Taylor’s Mother City Living blog last year, I knew straight away that I had to have one. I’m always looking for ways to reduce my energy usage, so a hot box seemed a perfect addition to my energy saving toolbox. I did a bit of research into where to buy a hot box, and settled on buying a Salathiso hot box, because the sales of these particular hot boxes don’t line the pockets of any business owner, but have brought hope and light into the lives of unemployed single mothers in Kayamandi (Stellenbosch, South Africa) by allowing them to generate a small income for themselves.

Salathiso hot boxes are simply two polystyrene-filled cushions in beautiful Shweshwe fabric that can be placed in a cardboard box for insulation, but I’ve been using my hot box without the cardboard box and it works pretty well. During winter I plan to use a cardboard box for extra insulation.

Here’s how to use a hot box:

Once you’ve brought your pot of food to the boil, remove it from the heat source and place it (still in the pot) in the bottom half of the hot box (I put a folded piece of newspaper under the pot for extra insulation and to soak up spills should they happen). Then fit the top cushion snugly on top. You can now leave your food safely cooking away while you get on with your day.

I’ve made a series of very successful dishes with my hot box over the past few months including stews, savoury mince and curries, and my absolute favourite thing to cook in the hot box is rice, because, for the first time in my life, now I too can cook rice perfectly.

It’s been easy to adapt my usual recipes for use in the hot box, all you need to do is reduce the amount of cooking liquid (because less is lost through evaporation in a hot box than on the stove), and leave the food to cook in the hot box for a longer period than you would do on the stove. For example I’ve found that 2-3 hours makes for perfect rice, while stew, soups and curries need between 6 and 12 hours for optimal results.

If you’d prefer to get started with some tried and tested recipes, check out this link (pdf).

In South Africa:

Salathiso hot boxes are available in Cape Town from Wendy Walton who is based in Diep River. You can contact her at waltfam@telkomsa.net or on 021 712 6424 (please tell Wendy I sent you). A hot box from Salathiso will set you back R140, but if used often will save you far more than that in electricity in the long run. (BTW these are still cheaper than other locally available hot boxes.)

In the UK & US:

Hot boxes (or hay boxes as they’re also known) don’t seem to be available for sale in the UK or US. So how about making your own. Try the links below for instructions:

Mother Earth News
The Prepared Home
Instructables
Selfsufficientish