Tomorrow, millions of Americans will take to the shops and just think of all the plastic bags that don’t have to be used. Plastic bags have never been so un-fashionable.  And for good reason!  There are so many stylish options available for reusable bags these days. Here’s a round-up of three fabulous reusable bags…

Maggie Bags

We love these Maggie Bags made from Recycled Seatbelts. They come in a range of single colours, or multi-colours like the Autumn Leaves bag pictured here. These bags are made to last with four nickel plated feet on the bottom and internal zip pockets for your purse, keys or cell phone.

Rebagz Tote Bags

These Rebagz Cinchy Tote Bags are made from recycled rice sacks. The one pictured here is called Honeybee, and there are other fresh and funky styles available. These Cinchy Tote Bags are not only eco-friendly and stylish but they are human-friendly too because they are made under fair labour conditions. Makes a great shopping bag, handbag or even a briefcase!

Flip & Tumble

Finally, the Flip & Tumble Reusable Shopping Bag. Gorgeously designed in loads of colour choices. Reusable shopping bags that folds up into a tiny pouch when not in use, it’s so easy to take it along when you go shopping. This bag can hold 25 pounds and has a comfy fit felt shoulder pad.

Click here to join me and take the pledge to make plastic bags history!

Farai is a member of the Mother City Craft Collective, a collective of traffic-light crafters who you can see selling their wares as you drive through the streets of Cape Town.   This group of Zimbabwean crafters have joined forces to expand their market and create an alternative outlet for their crafts, an online shop.  This has brought a new set of challenges for these artists, because the traditional wire & bead and wirework crafts that they produce are pretty heavy, which results in very high postage costs.

To reduce the price of postage (and consequently the carbon footprint of the piece) Farai has come up with an interesting solution.  He’s using recycled materials that are a lot lighter than the materials that he usually works with.

These recycled Coke can animals and more are available from the Mother City Craft Collective’s recycled range, and as you’ll see, both the cost of the products and the postage costs are considerably less than the traditional.  While buying crafts from this store makes a huge difference in the lives of these traffic-light crafters, by choosing from the recycled range you will be making a huge difference to the environment too.

So while necessity is the mother of invention, isn’t it great when it also leads to recycling, reusing and a greener way of doing things?

No time to read this?  Then please just click on over here to see what I’m doing now.

Life changed considerably when we moved from the UK to South Africa in 2008.  It’s a completely different lifestyle, and being green can be quite a challenge here at times.   We’ve moved 4 times in the past two years, so it’s been difficult to put down roots properly and set up an eco-friendly home the way we did in England.  Our last move was 6 months ago now, and yes, we’re finally putting roots down and making plans to transform our new home into an even more eco-friendly place than our English home.   But in the meantime, something else has been taking my attention.  And that is the desperate need of so many people here in Cape Town.

Poverty is rife here.  There are some who have lots and some who have enough to live comfortably (we are fortunate to fall into this category), but there are millions of people here have to stuggle on a daily basis just to feed their families and provide a roof over their heads.

When we moved six months ago, it was to a home in a wonderful part of Cape Town called Newlands.  It was here that I met a crowd of Zimbabwean crafters who make their crafts from recycled materials where possible (for purely economic reasons).  Most of them live in Delft, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town that is notorious for its high crime rate and high unemployment rate.  They work at night, making beautiful artworks that they then sell during the day at traffic lights in Newlands.  It all sounds like a great micro-business plan, until you see your first police raid!  You see, it’s illegal to sell anything at the traffic lights in Cape Town.

The first time that I witnessed a police raid on the craft sellers at the traffic lights it really shook me up.  Police arrived in numbers and chased the craft sellers in all directions.  Those who managed to get away lost the wares that they had to drop or leave behind in their hurry to get away.  Once the police had caught a few of the sellers and loaded them into the back of the police van, they then came back to the lights to pick up their wares.

My first feelings were those of outrage and indignation.  How dare the police spend their resources on bullying these guys who are trying to be creative and make an honest living.  There is plenty of crime in this country that could really do with the attention of the police.  Murderers, hijackers, rapists, burglars, there are plenty of them at large.   Gentle creative people, displaced people trying to earn an honest buck, they really don’t need this harassment.  They need support and encouragement.

So the following day I took a walk to the lights to go and talk to these guys.  I asked about what had happened yesterday with the police.  They were very eager to tell their stories and told me that this was something that happened regularly.   I asked about their crafts, what happened to them after the police took them, could they get them back.   I was told that sometimes those who are caught and have their goods confiscated are given a ticket by the police and told that they can retrieve their goods from the police station by paying an admission of guilt fine (somewhere in the region of R200 per item).  This is usually prohibitively expensive, and more than the materials cost, often more than what the crafter can sell his wares for.  Other times, the goods are just taken without receipt (because it’s better to run away, lose your stock and be free to go home and make more, than to risk being arrested and spending the night in jail).  Often, bags, jackets and other belongings are also taken and never seen again.

I spent weeks mulling over this sad state of affairs.  It didn’t sit right with me.  I felt drawn to help these guys.  A few months down the line, and I’d formulated a plan and invited two of the crafters that I had got to know fairly well to join me in setting it up.

And so we started the Mother City Craft Collective, an online outlet for the arts and crafts that are currently being sold at the traffic lights n Newlands.  The goal of the project is to drum up enough sales online so that these guys don’t have to sell their goods at the traffic lights anymore.

We’ve started the project with no capital or funding, simply volunteering our time and expertise.  It’s been a slow start and at times very frustrating.   We decided to register as a cc with 3 members so that the two Zimbabwean crafters who started the project with me could apply for their business permits.  This proved impossible to navigate with CIPRO as the two Zimbabweans didn’t have South African identification documents and we ended up in a catch 22 situation where you need a business permit to get your identification document, but you can’t get the business permit without the identification document.

Our website took me quite a while to get going (I’m no web designer, just a blogging housewife after all), but we’re there now, and we have a showcase for some of the wares.  We’ve also expanded our collective from 3 to 5 people, and as soon as sales pick up, we’d like to expand this further.

Sadly, because it’s taking time to drum up sales (we’ve only had 2 sales at time of writing this), these guys are still having to support themselves by working at the traffic lights, and still taking the risks everyday of being arrested and having their goods confiscated.

Just this past weekend, one of the guys was walking through the park on the way to the traffic lights when he was stopped by the police and had all his stock confiscated.  They took well over R1000 worth of stock, and it will cost him over R800 to get it back.  R800 that he doesn’t have.  And so it carries on.

The reason why I’m telling this story here is because I’m hoping that EcoStreet readers (those that are still bothering to check this site now that I’m not updating it very often) will be interested in what we are doing.  The members of this collective and I would be immensely grateful if you would follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook page, and most importantly tell everyone you know about what we are doing, what we would like to achieve and how we need customers to make this possible.

Thanks so much for reading this and before I go, here’s our website address again: http://www.mothercitycraftcollective.co.za

Alex Makumbe collects reclaimed chipboard and old cans to make his Cape Town scenes.   This is how he makes a living. Alex came to Cape Town from Harare in Zimbabwe 8 years ago and has been making a living as an African folk artist selling his work at the traffic lights ever since.

Recently Alex has teamed up with three other Cape Town crafters to sell their work online and to the whole world via their Mother City Craft Collective Etsy shop.

He is selling custom made collages, or you can choose one he’s already done.  Have a look.

Alex’s artwork is available from the Mother City Craft Collective Etsy shop.

But back to the point because I actually want to show you some pretty things made of plastic bottles.

This green aque mobile is from Denise Carbonell’s flickr.  Isn’t it great?

And here’s one that I made.

I used washed 2-litre milk bottles and cut the flowers out free-hand with a pair of kitchen shears.   Before threading through the raw silk yarn (you could use ordinary string or wool or embroidery cotton or even plarn), I punched holes in the plastic where I was going to stitch.

And now a not so pretty thing to make from a plastic bottle, but very useful for knitters.

Check out the yarn holder from an old plastic bottle Instructable here.

Title: Drum Kit
Year: 2003
Materials: tin cans, metal wire
Dimensions: L 27 cm W 22 cm H 16 cm

[Recyclart]

This blog post is cross-posted at ecojunki.

Harness your creativity to make something useful and keep something else out of landfill. I like the idea of making unique pieces of furniture for my home, and I like not having to pay (or paying very little) for materials to make something that’s worth more than the sum of its parts. Something out of nothing, or something out of rubbish. I’ve collected some ideas from all over the web to bring you some inspiration. Let’s make a chair.

The Octopus

This is the project that inspired me to write this blog post. This chair is made of four pairs of charity shop jeans and polystyrene balls. It doesn’t look like a very difficult project, and you could probably replace the polystyrene balls with a more eco-friendly material. The seats of the jeans are sewn together to form the seat of the chair, and the legs become the octopus tentacles that are the backrest. Have a look at the octopus chair from other angles to get the idea of what needs sewing to what.

The Trolley

Once you’ve watched the video above you’ll have all the know-how needed to undertake the project of turning a shopping trolley into a very trendy chair. I do feel though that I have a moral obligation to remind DIY enthusiasts that stealing trolleys is wrong and not what I’m encouraging you to do here.

The Tractor Seat

If you have an old tractor seat or lawn-mower seat lying around (or you could put a wanted ad on Freecycle, I’ve acquired an old tractor tyre in this way to make a sandpit for my young daughter) and a broken office chair, you can make this really cool tractor seat swivel chair. Full instructions here. I once bought one of these (with a flimsy plastic seat) from Ikea for my son and was charged a whopping great £19.99. You can make this project for nothing. But even if you resort to buying a tractor seat at a car boot sale or similar, it’ll still be a whole lot cheaper, and more unique, than shelling out for the plastic manufactured alternative (and of course there’s always the karma that comes from keeping stuff out of landfill – priceless).

The Cardboard Stool

You’ll need three large bits of corrugated cardboard to make this stool, so would be a great way to populate your new home with furniture once you’ve unpacked the boxes. It reminds me of a Djembe drum, so great for that entho-bongo look, and you could decorate the stool by painting it or gluing embellishments onto it. The full instructions at dangerouslyfun warn not to tilt or lean the stool while you’re sitting on it, or you will seriously shorten its useful life.

Grow your own lawn chair

While not strictly recycling, this chair is so amazing that I just had to include it here. You could argue that you’re reusing soil and turning a lawn into something useful. And there’s no need to buy the rather expensive cardboard frame and grass seed kit, just study the image shown to create your own frame from old cardboard boxes, then purchase some grass seed down at your local garden centre and decide where you want to “plant” your chair. Assemble your cardboard frame and place it where you want your chair, then fill it with soil and sprinkle with grass seed. Water every few days. For best results, wait until spring before starting this project.

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular Eco-DIY feature here at EcoStreet to include recycling ideas, home DIY projects and eco-friendly crafts Please stay tuned.

I’m completely enchanted by Makazi’s Guesthouse. It’s built out of sandbags, and is kitted out with solar heating, composting toilets and recycled furniture. The house has been beautifully decorated (inside and out) and all profit made is used to fund the community-based Indlovu project, including a crèche, youth centre, clinic and soup kitchen.

This would be an eye-opening and different stay for any visitor to Cape Town,

Makazi’s Guesthouse is a community-built project in the Monwabisi Park area of Khayelitsha. For more information or to book accommodation, email office@shaster.org.za or phone +27 216571026 or +27 833750988.

sisonke singenza amahluko is Xhosa for “together we can make a difference”

photo credit: mamakalisa

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Here you are folks, a random assortment of things you can make for people you love. Things that are better than things you can get in shops because: a) they’ve been made locally, b) they’ve not cost you much, and c) they’re made with love.

1. Pony Tyre Swing
What child wouldn’t love one of these? Instead of spending a fortune on a swing from a shop, just recycle an old tyre off your car, add a few nuts and bolts, a bit of elbow grease, and Bob’s your uncle. A pony fit for a prince or princess, whichever applies. Here’s the pattern and full details on how to make it.

2. Blooming Recycled-Tyre Planter
Here’s one that the moms, girlfriends and wives will love, I know I would, and another way to recycle one of your old car tyres. Again a bit of elbow grease is required, but the results are worth it. The instructions mention it being easier to do out in the warm sunshine. At this time of year you may need to warm the tyre up next to a radiator (make sure you don’t make dirty marks on the carpet). Pictures and instructions here.

3. Recycled Blanket Slippers
Who doesn’t like a comfy, warm pair of slippers? An old woollen blanket will make these cute slippers for your granny, husband or mum. Sewing skills required. Full tutorial from Sew Green.

4. Frame it
There’s no better gift for a grandparent than a photograph of a beloved grandchild. Take a picture, and frame it in a fancy frame made from recycled corrugated cardboard. Here’s how.

5. I am a plastic bag
Get rid of all the plastic bags cluttering up your under-sink cupboard in the kitchen and give your best friend, sister or mom a really cool shopping bag all at the same time. Eat your heart out Anja Hindmarch! Crochet this large plastic shopping bag.

6. I am a plastic bag too
A bag with dads and brothers in mind. This messenger bag is made by ironing plastic bags together to make them thicker, and then sewing them together to make a bag with style.

7. Have we forgotten anyone
Here’s a special something for man’s best friend, or your feline friend too. And a way of getting rid of all the odd socks that build up after the washing machine eats one of the pair. Make your pet a comfy, warm bed out of old socks.

If you haven’t got a crafty bone in your body, keep your eyes open for our green and ethical xmas gift guide, coming to EcoStreet sometime this week.