New good things in and old good things out, undoubtedly we’re now living in a throw-away culture nowadays. But instead of throwing those unneeded items away, there’s actually a better way for us to deal with them: to recycle them via the Swap-O-Matic Vending Machine. The machine comes with thirteen compartments where the items to be traded can be placed in and one touchscreen interface on which users can keep track of their account. When using the vending machine, you can either directly exchange your unused item for one placed in the compartment or place it in one compartment for sale. Quite interestingly, when you buy or sell one thing, you won’t need to pay or get paid with real money but virtual credits instead. As a result, as long as you have something in hand, you can exchange it for a needed item conveniently.

Undoubtedly everyone loves coffee – while most of us are used to enjoying a cup of coffee every day, the American company Virus is intended to produce comfortable base layer fabric that traps heat close to the skin, using recycled coffee grounds. The new fabric is announced capable of increasing skin surface temperature by 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and it features anti-UV and anti-odor properties as well.

Selling Price: $30.50-$60.99

Using discarded car and bicycle parts he collected everywhere, Bangkok-based artist Roongrojna Sangwongprisarn has created a perfectly-detailed Predator-inspired motorcycles that are drivable too. Have a close look at its stunning details and florid exterior coating – who would ever believe the vehicle is made with old bike parts? Though there’s no information about its speed, we’re still quite interested in the motorcycle: when riding such a cool vehicle, who would need speed, right? Let’s just ride it slowly, and attracting everybody in the street.

Designer: Roongrojna Sangwongprisarn

The tide rises, the tide falls. The flower blossoms, the flower falls away. Every day on the surface of the Hudson River, you can see a series of giant Tide Flowers built around abandoned posts of long-gone piers- they blossom wilt at low tide and open fully at high tide, creating a beautiful scene that demonstrates the movements of water as well.

Designer: Stacy Levy

The science and technology is forwarding ahead so fast that they’ve left us many and many gadgets we no longer use, such as old-modeled radios, cellphones, music players, tablets and so on. Especially guys who are always buying new phones and updating their devices, they really don’t know what to do with those discarded one… It’s time to trade with the ecoATM. Recently emerging in California, the ecoATM is an automated gadget recycler with a touchscreen and a metal tray where you can put your devices to be recycled. The ecoATM has been inputted with over 4,000 kinds of gadgets, thus it can recognize your device, checking out if it still works and after that displays a quote for it on the screen. If you accept its offer, the ecoATM then dispenses cash in return. Or, you can cancel the trade to get your gadgets back if you’re not satisfactory with the price the ecoATM offers.

What else can the belts do for you, except for tightening your trousers? London-based designer Inghua Ting offers us an interesting but really amazing answer: the old belts could decorate your table tops, walls and floors, in forms of 12- and 18-inch square belt tiles. You got this? It’s truly practical idea to recycle your used tiles.

Designer: Inghua Ting

2D or 3D, currently almost all designs are seemingly to face that question. But actually it’s not that difficult to make a decision, because one could become both 2D and 3D at the same time. The Keyboard Wall is rightly a good example. It’s constructed with thousands of keys collected from old computer keyboards, creating a 2D image when you view them from the front while offering 3D pleasure as well since you can feel their unique shapes.

Designer: Sarah Frost

Use your head and hands, and then you’ll create something simple but magical, just as this privacy monitor. Designed and made with an old LCD monitor, the device looks all white to everybody except you, as you’re wearing “magic” glasses. But why and how? Check out the link below for more details and you may even try to make your own privacy monitor too.

【More Details Here】

There’s no waste in the designers’ mind, because anything old and unused can find their new life after redesigned by them with full imagination. These three-dimensional sculptures made out of recycled skateboard decks are rightly good examples. Created by Haroshi, each piece features a delicately distinctive pattern and shining bright colors. Who would believe they’re crafted out of layers of stacked wooden decks, if the designer didn’t tell us the truth?

Designer: Haroshi

【Source】

Almost in every part of the world we can find creativity, which now exists in Finland too. There in that country, Miina Akkijyrkka shapes some huge cows using old vehicles. By arranging different parts of cars to become sections of the cows, the artists cleverly created unique metal cows featuring a lovely appearance.

Designer: Miina Akkijyrkka

Traditional clothes, especially those made from synthetic fiber, burns so easily in flame that they usually result in heavy burns to people who get stuck in fire.  To solve that problem, researchers from Texas A&M University have developed a nontoxic fabric that is fire-resistant. The new fabric is composed of renewable ingredients like clay and chitosan, and forms a protective layer of foam on the clothes’ surface to prevent the fabric from igniting when fire is applied to it. It is said that the flame-resistant fabric could find applications in clothes, car seats and many other fields, thus featuring a wide prospect in the market.

Designer: Texas A&M University

You know that many receipts from ATM or the stores are found to contain harmful substance Bisephenol-A (BPA)? To solve that problem, the printer manufacture Epson now boasts the world’s first BPA-free free thermal receipt paper made with recycled paper. It is already launched to the market, with a price of just $57.91 per case.

Selling Price: $57.91

Buy it here

Time again new value is found with old things. With his creative design and good work, Edouard Martinet sculptures several metal animals using waste materials such as automotive engines, typewriter keys, car lights and so on. Quite surprisingly all the sculptures are created by fitting each component into place instead of using solder, while the results still turn out to be firm and solid.

Designer: Edouard Martinet

Wish you would have a bag that can last for many years or even all your life? Possibly the Footbag should be added onto your list. It is made of a pair of boots, featuring a simple look but really good durability.

Designer: Marco Scuderi

Totally beyond imagination… With subtle design and delicate carving, Wim Delvoye has transformed unused tires into amazing sculptures. In his series “Pneu” (French for tire), each piece comes with a unique pattern and they all look so great.

Designer:  Wim Delvoye

Have you ever experienced a night in concrete pipes? Well, if not, we strongly suggest you have a try and you’ll see it’s not that boring as you may have imagined. But before that you need to get a touch with T3arc’s TuboHotel. It is a mini hotel located in Tepoztlan, Mexico and it was built from recycled concrete pipes. Each room may seem bit of small on the pictures but actually they offer a really cozy living as well as some beautiful panoramic views of the Sierra del Tepozteco.

Designer: T3arc

Jon Salerno’s Habitat Micro Home provides a clever and practical way to expand the area of your living space. It uses a small car docked underneath a 100 square feet house to act as an extra room so that the total reconfigurable space inside the Habitat Micro Home would reach 132 square feet.

Moreover, with adjustable solar panels on the house’s roof, the Habitat Micro Home can produce and store electricity energy for daily use.

Designer: Jon Salerno

A really great artist can create wonderful things almost anywhere – on walls, grounds, lips, eyelids, or on book pages. Look at these paintings from Mike Stilkey, I bet everyone would think of one same word “wow”. But wait, and imagine what will happen when these books fall apart onto the ground…

Designer: Mike Stilkey

Several years after discarded on street, one old bicycle recently finds its new functions: to work as a special city decoration. Painted with bright pink color and built with a basket for flowers, this bike now seems rightly one of fabulous sculptures commonly seen in cities. Clever!

Cheerful about the coming summer and planning to show off your cute feet? Then you must get some special shoes before that, such as Lauren Milroy’s Color Pencil Sandals. They’re all made with old color pencils, but feature a beautiful pattern and more importantly an “eco” theme. Maybe, you can still draw something with them as you walk on the road. Haha, just for kidding!

Designer: Lauren Milroy

Disposable wooden chopsticks, although deemed to have destroyed a vast amount of trees, are still in great need nowadays. But fortunately we may have the hope to see our forests saved with Chung Ran Hee’s Re-Paper Chopsticks.

They’re made of recycled paper and glue, making them both user-friendly and eco-friendly. They’re smart enough for easy transportation, and you simply need to tear them down the middle and fold them if you need a pair of chopsticks.

Designer: Chung Ran Hee

Long-Bin Chen’s Reading Sculptures prove that incredible art can be made with almost everything, even with discarded items. With his rich imagination and outstanding skills, the artist has transformed old telephone directories, old books and other printed material into sculptures shaped like human heads and figures.

Designer: Long-Bin Chen

Australia-based designer Trent Jansen have made many cycle signs out of old road signs collected from several sources in Australia. There’re two versions available: a spoke clamp and a strap. They may seem bit of small in size, but they perform quite well in reflecting light and therefore can attract other drivers’ attention.

Selling Price: $13-$31

Buy it here

42 pieces of floppy disks were recently brought together and found their new function, that is, to work as an innovative handbag! It is really a clever way to recycle old things.

Some materials usually seem so common that we seldom though to make them into something more creative. But this PVC House designed by Hoogte Twee has proved that we should have thought of that, because we may produce really amazing things though with ordinary materials. Yups, the B (h) uis looks very magic!

Designer: Hoogte Twee

Use our intelligence. We should do this because we can create innovative or even magical things with our talent, just as Sandy Sanderson makes these mini cars with old cans, metal wires and his imagination. So incredible!

Designer: Sandy Sanderson

Old wine bottles now have their new brighter future, and soon you’ll find them back with the same function as wine cups. After cutting, polishing and other processes, old wine bottles then turn into lovely cups with beautiful decorative patterns, making them still popular at home and in the bars.

More Information Here

Craig Smith, who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has made a unique snow removal using his two old bikes. The new vehicle looks bit of impractical on pictures, if you couldn’t control two bikes at the same time. But according to Mr. Smith, his DIY snow removal three-wheeler performs very well in cleaning the snow. So will you make one too?

Designer: Craig Smith

Bike inner tubes usually have excellent flexibility and toughness, however we seldom get a chance to reuse them… Until we have these IT Clips.

They can change old inner tubes into a bungee cord or tie down, for you to use in many conditions. Moreover these resulting tie-down straps and cords are also adjustable so that they can change the size to meet your various needs.

More Information Here

Selling Price: $4.49

Buy it here

On a design show held by Triumph Motorcycles and Birmigham Institute of Art and Design, many students brought us with various smart gadgets made out of recycled motorcycle parts.

Every gadget in the collection has a stylish appearance and you’ll find that it is actually alright and good to build household items with handbrake, headlights, instrument panel and other parts of a motorbike.

What would your ideal sled be like, decorated with white and red ribbons just as the one of Mr. Santa‘s, or built with a large wheel just as the one shown here?

Though seems bit of weird on the first sight, the Big Wheel Sled actually performs quite well on snowy road as the big wheel ensures a securer riding while not adding too much weight to the sled, fluorine plastic is built onto the skateboards so as to reduce the friction between the sled and the ground. More importantly, the sled is constructed with old items: its seat is cut from a merry-go-round, its engine was once built in a motorbike, and the gearlever is made of a Coca Cola souvenir. Amazing!

What should we do to help people living in poverty-stricken areas? You can offer them with money, apparatus, or even such simple flip-flops made of old athletic balls. Even though these Sport Flops are not delicate at all, they can at least protect millions of people’s feet from harms and diseases.

Designer: Justin May-West

Italian artist Franco Recchia is a man with great curiosity. When taking apart old computers, he suddenly realized that it may be interesting to make some sculptures with their component parts and thus these mixed-media sculptures were brought to us. Each featuring rich details and clean lines, these sculptures here present a new look of Central Park, Manhattan, Boston and Pittsburgh and they’re all full of imagination and creativity. Really nice work, Recchia!

【Central Park】

【Manhattan】

【Manhattan】

【Boston】

【Pittsburgh】

Designer: Franco Recchia

The play of imagination gives a new life to an old cooking stove, which now turns into a fantastic household acoustic apparatus with four 6.5-inch loudspeakers, one 7-inch touch screen and something else. Doesn’t that look good on the pictures? I even couldn’t wait to make my own one.

Considering that the consumers may need more new hangers too after getting more new clothes, DEDE DextrousDesign has made a new series of shopping bags with a name of  “Get the Hang of It”. The hangers are detachable, serving as handles when integrated with shopping bags but function in another way when go into your wardrobes. So to end up, the Chic Wardrobe Bags save both your money and the resources.

Designer: DEDE DextrousDesign

Although typewriters have given way to computers, they never really go out of our life but turn into something more useful. Such as a waffle iron. It not only makes keyboard shaped waffles, but offers us a clever way to recycle useless items.

Designer: Chris Dimino

A luxurious but cheap couch does not always exist in IKEA, sometimes it may rightly stand in your apartment. When looking for something creative for a close friend’s wedding, Adrian Johnson came up with an idea to build a couch with a discarded refrigerator and a vintage BMW two-door coupe. And the finished item looks fine in both appearance and functions, just as shown in the pictures.

Designer: Adrian Johnson

Via

If you could have only one piece of jewelry, you’ll never need one made of recycled bottle caps, but if you do have more than one cap in your drawers, you’d better make them into jewelry like these created by Yoav Kotik. Look, they’re really fantastic on your necks and wrists.

Designer: Yoav Kotik

Buy it here

Nobody would like to collect old cans, plastic or floorboards, but I would, simply because I’d love to make an interesting guitar by myself. But before you see my work, you can now check out some awesome DIY guitars here.

【Oil Can Guitar】

【Cigar Box Guitar】

【Candy Box Guitar】

【Steampunk Guitar】

【Rifle Guitar】

【Cyclotron Recycled Guitar】

【Cyclotron Recycled Guitar】

【Big Tin Guitar】

【Altoids Guitar】

【Skateboard Guitar】

Via

Have you ever realized how much biomass energy you’re wasting when throwing rubbish away? Let the trash bag designed by Ahhaproject tell you something: a full bag of rubbish is sufficient enough to boil 100 cups of tea, recharge cellphones 300 times or drive your car 16 miles. You see, even the trash can still do so many things, isn’t that amazing? Something more amazing is that these new trash bags can not only visualize the amount of energy contained, but leave no prints to the environment as they’re completely biodegradable PLA material.

Designer: Ahhaproject

Who would ever imagine that ugly metal cranks can be transformed into such cute cup coasters? Truly amazing. Dubbed Crank Coasters, they’re all made from discarded cranks, with yellow-colored rubber filled around.

Designer: Tom Baker

On Holy Island in the UK, you’ll see some truly old storage sheds with a sharp point built along the shore. And when you come nearer to them, you’ll find that they’re actually transformed from retired wooden fishing boats and retrofitted with a door. Maybe until then, you’ll really know what an important and clever work the local fishermen have done to recycle the resources.

This time we’ll firstly tell you that this is something made of black rubber and then it’s your turn to tell us what the item is used for?

It is in fact a stool, crafter from recycled rubber and comes in a flat knock-down state for the users to assemble by themselves: simply twist off the legs and lock them into place and then you’ll have a new stool!

Designer: Satoshi Itasaka

To provide a new way for recycling waste paper, a China based design team has come up with the P&P Office Waste Paper Processor, a smart device that “eats up” useless paper memos and then offers a pencil on the other side. Really magic idea!

Designer: Chengzhu Ruan, Yuanyuan Liu, Xinwei Yuan & Chao Chen

New Zealand businessman Peter Lewis has created an innovative machine that can transform discarded plastic like bottles and bags into building blocks. Believe it or not, such bricks can be used to build emergency houses or landscaping walls and they’re more durable than you can imagine, as each brick is comprised of an estimated 10kg (22lbs) of plastic. So you needn’t worry they’ll be blown away by the wind.

Designer: Peter Lewis

I am ready to bet you were preparing to make some cardboard wheelers and handles at home. Just like what David Graham have done to create the Move-It concept. It’s an easy do-it-yourself project, consisting of wheels and handles that are made from cardboard. The parts are self-adhesive, making them easy to assemble; the handles are available in two different types, allowing you to haul the cargo in any positions that best suit you. And most importantly, the simple Move-It concept makes moving the cargo no longer a trouble and everyone can easily handle it.

Designer: David Graham

Based on the same principles as a hydroelectric power station, Leicester De Montfort University industrial design’s graduate Tom Broadbent invented a creative device that harvests energy from waste water falling through the pipes of high-rise buildings. Though the “HighDro Power” is not that effective in producing large amount of energy, it does have provided us a possible solution to recycle the waste water.

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The following information is from Tom:

“HighDro Power works by using the water discharged from appliances such as showers, toilets and sinks in high-rise apartments. The water goes down the pipe and hits four turbine blades that drive one generator.”

Designer: Tom Broadbent

Czech design student Jiri Richter has offered us a possible solution to recycle materials. He bounded dozens of empty 2L Coca Cola bottles together and therefore created the lightweight, portable concave seating unit. You may have thought of the same concept, but it is Jiri Richter that gives us a real one.

Designer: Jiri Richter

Welcome to New York, and we’d like to show you a truly amazing architecture — an art studio made from recycled shipping containers. To make sure that the room will have a good lighting, the designer has built the two containers on top of a foundation wall that measures 2.75meters high. Therefore when standing in the interior, you’ll find the two story studio featuring an atmosphere of spaciousness, also with plenty of sunshine. Good news for those who also want such a perfect container building is that you can contact the Mb Architecture here to make an order now.

Designer: Mb Architecture

Designer: Kyung-soo Park