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.
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.
We’re giving away two tickets to see ‘Radical Nature‘ at the Barbican in London. It’s the first exhibition to bring together key figures across different generations who have created utopian works and inspiring solutions for our ever-changing planet.
Radical Nature draws on ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism. The exhibition is designed as one fantastical landscape, with each piece introducing into the gallery space a dramatic portion of nature. Work by pioneering figures such as the architectural collective Ant Farm and visionary architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, artists Joseph Beuys, Agnes Denes, Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson are shown alongside pieces by a younger generation of practitioners including Heather and Ivan Morison, R&Sie(n), Philippe Rahm architects and Simon Starling. Radical Nature also features specially commissioned and restaged historical installations, some of which are located in the outdoor spaces around the Barbican while a satellite project by the architectural collective EXYZT is situated off site.
The exhibition is on until the 18th of October and if you’d like to stand a chance of winning a ticket, simply add a comment telling us about something you do in your daily life that reduces your footprint on our planet.
This competition ends on Friday 9th of October. Two winners will be drawn out of a hat and notified by email.
It’s World Environment Day and the launch day of Open Green Map, a global initiative to map out local natural, cultural and green living sites, to help people make greener lifestyle choices. There are launches being held around the world today: Cape Town, Geneva, Jakarta, Stockholm, Baltimore, Pereira Colombia, the UK towns of Swansea, Clackmannanshire, Neath Port Talbot and other places are presenting their green maps to the public.
There’s something particularly special about the Cape Town Green Map launch that I wanted to share with you. It’s probably the lowest carbon launch of all the Green Maps, and I’m quoting from the launch invitation to illustrate why/how:
The venue is “your laptop, PC or iPhone so there are no travel costs or [additional] carbon footprint. The dres code is “optional – but locally designed garb from hemp/bamboo/organic cotton is encouraged”. There are no speakers – “an untold saving on hot air and CO2 emissions”.
In addition there are “no printed invitations (save on ink/chemicals, paper/trees), no printed media packs (save on ink/chemicals, paper/trees and packaging), no travel to the venue (save on CO2 emissions, time and roadwork frustration), no food or beverages (save on packaging, waste, energy and food miles) and no speakers, official openings, ‘live’ performers (save on CO2 emissions, uncomfortable silences and the effort to look impressed)”.
Isn’t that cool? And in this very wet weather I’m extra-specially glad not to be going anywhere!
Here’s a bit more about Cape Town Green Map for Capetonians who are interested in giving it a test-drive:
Cape Town Green Map is updated by interested green Capetonians, making it a direct, democratic communication of local knowledge and action. You can find community gardens, craft centres, recycling drop-offs, areas of natural beauty, shops and markets that sell green and organic products, restaurants and bars who serve organic food and drinks and more. If you know about somewhere green that’s not on the map, you can suggest it to the mapmakers, or become a mapmaker yourself.
More great green news for Cape Town is that in October A&C Maps, who print “Not the official guide to Cape Town”, the “Pink Map” and the “Food Map” will be bringing out a printed version of the Cape Town Green Map. Look out for it!
Any advice offered on this site is to be taken in conjunction with your own intelligence and common sense. EcoStreet accepts no responsibility for anything negative that may happen to you. You are living your own karma.
mini Christmas tree
wintry stars
creative Christmas balls
