Cotton: From Blue to Green.

They're like a second skin and you tend to wear them till there's almost nothing left, but eventually all jeans have to die. At best you dutifully send them for donation with some narrow vision of a second life in their future, but the National Jean Company and Earnest Sewn are doing one better. For three years they've sponsored a denim drive to collect these poor castaways benefiting Cotton, From Blue to Green: recycling old jeans into insulation for homes in needy communities (1000 pairs fully insulate two homes).

Last fall, Cotton's Dirty Laundry Tour travelled to 11 colleges and universities for the third year in a row and collected over 30,000 pairs (a proud 110% increase from the previous year's efforts), and 35 Guess stores participated with in-store signage and window displays, helping to make the drive an overwhelming success and helping families suffering along the gulf coast.

Sao Plastico

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, household waste pollution has dominated the landscape and the authorities ... actually, this is part of an art installation by Eduardo Srur. Giant bottle are seen on the banks of the Tiete River, one of Sao Paulo's most polluted. The installation was created to warn people of the dangers of pollution and raise awareness specifically about non-biodegradable items like plastic bottles. It takes on more significance with the recent PBA debacle coming to light.

For more about the artist and fantastic night shots, you can check it all out here.

Shopdropping: Call for Entries Reminder

A reminder from Ryan at Shopdropping.net, you have until April 1st to participate in their Greeting Card call for entries:

SHOPDROPPING.NET is now calling on artists, designers, media makers, and creative folks to purchase greeting cards and alter them in any way they see fit. Any form of commercial card, from wedding to graduation to birthday to bereavement, is eligible. But clever and witty will be given preference over easy and distasteful.

Please submit JPEG reproductions of the altered greeting cards to submissions _AT _shopdropping.net with GREETINGS as the subject line.

All files must be sized to 1024 x 768 at 72 dpi. Each altered card must include the text "www.shopdropping.net" somewhere in the new design. It can be discreet, on the back of the card, and unobtrusive but it must be present.When submitting the cover and inside of the same card please indicate this clearly in the file titles (for example "cover.jpg", "page2.jpg").

The deadline for submissions is April 1st 2008.

Once all of the digital reproductions have been submitted, selected artists will be given the address of a fellow participant to swap cards with. The cards will then be shopdropped back into circulation and the digital reproductions will be featured on SHOPDROPPING.NET. Please do not submit digital files if you do not intend to follow through with the act of shopdropping a fellow participant's work. The digital reproductions are a means to select and document the artworks, but do not replace the act of shopdropping the originals into unsuspecting stores.

News Roundup

Here are a bunch of news stories I've been meaning to post about for a while...

From the New York Times (thanks Kris):

Wal-Mart's social manifesto?

"Rethinking The Meat-Guzzler." [graphic left]

From the Wall Street Journal (thanks Mica):

Greewashing ads scrutinized by world.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

"Legless artist documents the world in 32,000 stares"

From Ode Magazine:

Solar cooking in Bhutan

Green Travel Special Report

F*&@# Planet Earth!

A funny take on the truly lovely Planet Earth series (warning: contains NSFW language!)...


Thanks Leah! Via Current

ReThinking The Environment In The Carolinas

The Raleigh AIGA recently asked me to be one of the judges for a poster competition promoting environmentalism in North and South Carolina called: re|THINK. The 20 winning posters, selected by myself and 2 other judges, will be on display (and for sale) at the Designbox gallery in Raleigh, NC for the month of April, with an opening reception on April 4th. Even if you're not in the area you can preview all of the winning designs online now HERE.

Useful tip

I was happily using some Swanson "Certified" Organic broth for my latest batch of soup and was pleased to find this useful "Organic" tip on the box: "Try with other organic ingredients"

Spotted in NYC: Bike Parking

I ran into this amazing bike parking/shelter/safety campaign thing last time I was in NYC and I seriously wondered if I had walked into an alternate universe (or at least a movie set). While it could certainly use more posts to chain bikes too, it's definitely a major (visible) step in the right direction.
You can find out more about the ad campaign shown on it HERE.

F Microsoft

OpenOffice.org is a FREE multi-lingual open source mulitplatform software package that basically replaces the need for Microsoft products like Word and Excel. It may not be ideal for every work environment (yet), but if you're fed up with the software you have now (and the company that makes it), it's certainly worth checking out. Find out more or just start downloading HERE.

Visualization: A Year In Iraq

The New York Times recently published this visualization fatalities in Iraq last year. It definitely helps to make it a reality by moving beyond the numbers. The full article is HERE (requires login). Or just click on the image at left to see a full-size version.

DIY Toolbox: Screen Printing

My friend Spencer at Team 8 Press created this lovely, simple "how to" PDF for creating your own screen printed posters/t-shirts. Download it HERE.

Tap Water Quality Database

While we're on the subject of water...
Find out how clean your tap water actually is (in the U.S.) on the Environmental Working Group's National Tap Water Quality Database.

Take Back The Tap

Food & Water Watch has released a report detailing the reasoning behind choosing tap over bottled water (as encouraged in the Think Outside The Bottle campaign) and why America's sewer and water system is in need of a major overhaul. From the report:

• Bottled water costs hundreds or thousands of times more than tap water. Compare $0.002 per gallon for most tap water to a range of $0.89 to $8.26 per gallon for bottled waters.
• The Food and Drug Administration regulates only the 30 to 40 percent of bottled water sold across state lines.
• The Environmental Protection Agency requires up to several hundred water tests per month by utility companies while the FDA requires only one water test per week by bottling companies.
• Nearly 40 percent of bottled water is simply filtered or treated tap water.
• U.S. plastic bottle production requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 100,000 cars.
• About 86 percent of the empty plastic water bottles in the United States land in the garbage instead of being recycled.

Read/download the full report HERE.

Environmental Reality TV

A local cable station in Boston has created Energy Smackdown a reality TV show about families competing to see who can reduce their carbon footprint the most. You can watch episodes of the series HERE. And find out who won and how they did it HERE.

Brita Filter Recycling Campaign

Beth Terry has started a grassroots campaign on her Fake Plastic Fish blog to encourage Brita, the popular water filter manufacturer (owned by Clorox), to take back and recycle their used filters. Get the details and find out how to get involved HERE.

Thanks Jessica!

83 Ways To Change The World in Sweden

Take Action: 83 Ways To Change The World is the current exhibition at the Museum of World Culture, in Gothenburg, Sweden. If you're not in the area, you can get a preview of the exhibit, which features work that comes from the intersection of art and politics (including the seed guns created by Christopher Humes and I), HERE.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the fantastic new book from Barbara Kingsolver, author of the Poisonwood Bible. It tells the story of her family's attempt to only eat locally grown food for a year while living in the mountains of Virginia. Not only does she tell the story of planting, growing, and finding her food, but her husband and daughter get in the act as well supplying in-depth sidebar information on the issues and recipes as well. Anyone with a budding interest in where their food comes from (and happily that number seems to be rapidly growing here in the US) should read this book. It's a fantastic primer for the gamut of issues surrounding food production/distribution, but it's also totally readable, a rare and pleasant combination which I've also found in the books of Michael Pollan. You can get a preview of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as well as access to all the recipes it contains at the book's website HERE. But definitely consider picking up a copy of the actual book at your local independent book store.

Designism 2.0

If you missed this year's Art Director's Club talk on socially conscious design, "Designism 2.0", you can check out a podcast of it HERE.

My friend John attended the event and posted an excellent review on his Social Design Notes blog HERE.

The Sins of Greenwashing

If you're not familiar with the term Greenwashing, the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice has a great primer on this dastardly practice just for you: The Six Sins of Greenwashing.


Thanks Kara!

Take The Reaper Bowling

A great classic PSA from Australia...

Paper Calculator

Environmental Defense has created an easy way to determine the benefits of using recycled papers in your print projects. By filling out a few fields on their Paper Calculator you can quickly see how much wood and energy are used and how much wastewater, solid waste, and greenhouse gases are created by your paper choices. You can even compare multiple papers and display the data as a chart of graph. Check out this handy tool HERE.

Think Outside The Bottle

It's nice to see that America's obsession with bottled water is finally waning. Think Outside The Bottle is a pledge campaign which encourages the drinking of tap water. They've already nearly reached their 25,000 person goal, but hopefully they'll set the bar a bit higher once it's been met.

Thanks Cally!

Living Simply in Richmond, VA: February 19th

If you are in the Richmond, VA area please consider attending the free community forum Living Simply: Making Green & Just Choices on February 19th, where I will be one of several speakers. Here are the details:

This community event is all about how to live and consume in ecologically and socially conscious ways here in the Richmond area. Please come, and spread the word.

Living Simply: Making Green & Just Choices

Panel discussion followed by networking time
Tuesday, February 19, 7 p.m.
VCU Student Commons Ballroom
Free and open to the public

* Connect with farmers markets, urban gardens, energy alternatives, green
building, natural products, and fair trade opportunities here in Richmond!

* Learn how your buying choices impact community, economic justice, and
the global environment!

Speakers
Karl Bren--Green Visions Consulting, Earthcraft Virginia, social justice
advocate
Noah Scalin--founder of Another Limited Rebellion and Sprout
Azibo Turner--Vanguard Ranch Limited Natural Gourmet Products
..and more

Co-sponsored by the Falls of the James Group of the Sierra Club, the Green
Party, Richmond Peace Education Center, Sierra Student Coalition at VCU.

For more information go to www.rpec.org

Painting with pollution

via Wooster Collective

A year in art

My talented painter friend Jason is out sharing his experience of trying to make a life and living as an artist for the year. Inspiring fellowship for anyone who struggles trying to create something on their own.

http://jasonbrockert.com/ayearinart/

Everything's Cool

Everything's Cool is a documentary about responding to the global warming naysayers...

Socially Conscious T-Shirts

Why wear a shirt with a celebrity on it when you can have Makenna Gigliari from Bradford, Ontario or Franka Tomic from Korkula, Croatia? Joy Apparel is an intriguing socially conscious company with the goal of promoting peace & equality through introducing normal people from around the world...by putting their faces on T-shirts! If you buy a shirt you can submit your own face and join in the fun. Find out more on their site.

Thanks Jo!

Illustrated Obsessive Consumption

Artist Kate Bingaman-Burt has been documenting her consumer purchases with a lovely daily illustration for several years. You can keep track of them all on her blog Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today.

Thanks Mica!

Shopdropping: Two Calls for Entries

The folks at Shopdropping.net have 2 calls for entries for activist-artists:

Call 1:
SHOPDROPPING.NET is now calling on artists, designers, media makers, and creative folks to purchase greeting cards and alter them in any way they see fit. Any form of commercial card, from wedding to graduation to birthday to bereavement, is eligible. But clever and witty will be given preference over easy and distasteful.

Please submit JPEG reproductions of the altered greeting cards to "submissions" AT "shopdropping.net" with GREETINGS as the subject line.

All files must be sized to 1024 x 768 at 72 dpi. Each altered card must include the text "www.shopdropping.net" somewhere in the new design. It can be discreet, on the back of the card, and unobtrusive but it must be present.When submitting the cover and inside of the same card please indicate this clearly in the file titles (for example "cover.jpg", "page2.jpg").

The deadline for submissions is April 1st 2008.

Once all of the digital reproductions have been submitted, selected artists will be given the address of a fellow participant to swap cards with. The cards will then be shopdropped back into circulation and the digital reproductions will be featured on SHOPDROPPING.NET. Please do not submit digital files if you do not intend to follow through with the act of shopdropping a fellow participant's work. The digital reproductions are a means to select and document the artworks, but do not replace the act of shopdropping the originals into unsuspecting stores.


Call 2:
SHOPDROPPING.NET is currently seeking 20 artists aged 20-29 to feature and interview for an upcoming book. SHOPDROPPING.NET presents 20/20 will profile each artist and their work and copies of the limited edition book will be shopdropped into bookstores throughout the world.

In the spirit of shopdropping, we are seeking artists who are exploring new forms and pushing boundaries within their field. Bands and musicians with hard to define genres, Internet filmmakers and compulsive bloggers, curators and gallerists working out of their homes, post-vinyl dj's and digital vj's, actors and writers working outside of film, theater, and television, artist collectives, culture jammers, and other hard-to-define creative minds are in demand.

To be considered for this project or to nominate someone you feel fits the bill please submit work samples via web link to: "submissions" AT "shopdropping.net" with 20/20 as the subject line.

DO NOT send jpgs, mp3s, or other file types directly. Links only please. There is no deadline for this project as of yet.

Please repost this information and pass it along to anyone who may be interested.

For additional information please see:
http://www.shopdropping.net

Body of War

Body of War is a new documentary about what happens to a soldier who returns home paralyzed after fighting in Iraq...




Thanks Melinda!

News Roundup

Some more recent articles worth reading in the Christian Science Monitor:

New Alternative Fuel: Chocolate!

Is Bioplastic a Viable Alternative to "Paper or Plastic"?

Person-To-Person Lending: Internet Based Microloans Helping Internationally.

Good Copy Bad Copy

Good Copy Bad Copy is an excellent new documentary from Denmark that reviews the current state of copyright law and its relationship to creative culture, using a range of international interviews. Watch the entire hour long film below (also worth checking out is the work in progress Copyright Criminals)...



Thanks Kit!

Michael Pollan in NYT on "Sustainability"

A recent New York Times article by Michael Pollan (author of The Ominivore's Dilemma) questions the sustainability of our current agriculture system and even the definition of the word itself:

The word “sustainability” has gotten such a workout lately that the whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of inoffensiveness. Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever “it” means. On a recent visit to a land-grant university’s spanking-new sustainability institute, I asked my host how many of the school’s faculty members were involved. She beamed: When letters went out asking who on campus was doing research that might fit under that rubric, virtually everyone replied in the affirmative. What a nice surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul working in agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other field of endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against sustainability? When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak themselves in the term, you have to wonder if we haven’t succeeded in defining sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan, and if it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like “natural” or “green” or “nice.”

Read the entire article HERE.

via Treehugger
Thanks Scott!

Design Rebels 2007: RISE-NOW

Students in my Fall 2007 Design Rebels class on socially conscious design created two terrific community based projects as their final assignments.

The first is RISE-NOW a poster/web campaign to educate on the issues of sexual assault and domestic violence. Read more about it in my article on Osocio HERE.

I'll post about the 2nd project CHOMP, a healthy living program for middle school students, when the finished version is online.

Theater of Democracy

One of my clients, The Foundry Theatre, is producing an intriguing experimental play about democracy and consumerism titled Democracy In America (a reference to the classic de Tocqueville work). Since November 26th they've been allowing the public to determine every aspect of the show (from lighting cues to plotlines) by purchasing them. The market closes on February 14th after which they will create a show from what they've been given and present it starting April 1st, 2008 at P.S.122 in NYC. Find out more about the show (or take part) at BuyDemocracy.com.

My Favorite Pen

I teach a class on socially conscious design and as a way of demonstrating the power of design to explain complicated issues I use a pen as a prop. It's not just any pen though, it's one designed by Stefan Sagmeister for the community action group TrueMajority.org as a means of demonstrating the disproportionate spending on the U.S. military in comparison to our "enemies". The reverse shows how a fraction of that budget could be used to fully support several other government programs that have continual underfunding problems. To buy your own pens and other well designed politically minded goodies check out the TrueMajorityShop.

Word of the Year: Locavore

The Oxford American Dictionary recently announced "Locavore" as its Word of The Year for 2007. By way of explanation the Oxford University Press blog notes:

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

Find out the runners-up HERE.

Thanks Mim!
via NYT LEDE blog

Parsons Opens Socially Conscious Game Lab

Parsons The New School for Design in New York City has just launched a new research lab focused on creating video games centered around educating on social issues. The New School of Design PETlab is a partnership with the non-profit Games for Change. From their press release:

The initiative was made possible by a $450,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as part of the foundation’s digital media and learning initiative established in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

In its first year, PETLab will work with Microsoft’s Xbox development platform and MTV’s Think.MTV.com youth-focused online activist community on the development of both learning tools and digital games that explore social issues.

Read more in the AP article.