MIAMI at Kew Gardens

Hilary and the Two Clares escaped from MIAMI Towers on Friday to spend a great day at Kew Gardens, despite the grey skies and the endless rain. We were invited there by the lovely people at START UK to demonstrate how you can make a contribution to sustainability by upcycling instead of buying new stuff all the time. (see more about START UK and the Start@Kew Festival in the post below)

Clare O shared some scary statistics on the amount of perfectly good furniture that ends up in landfill, then Hilary showed how she turned some very shabby old dining chairs into swanky new ones. You can find out how she did it on the MIAMI website.

Here she is with the before and lined up below are the afters - three very different treatments, including a decoupage chair made from old comic books. Each one is explained in more detail on the MIAMI website.

There were some fantastic people at the event, which was a real gathering of movers and shakers in sustainability - and we'll be sharing with you in the future some of the great things they're doing. People like Clay Swift aka The Green Marine, Edible Bustop, and the schoolboys from Savio Salesian College Bootle who make bat or bird boxes - called the BoBBox, as well as the people from Morsbags, Project Dirt,  Carbon Leapfrog, Gustavo Montes De Oca from the Golden Company, my old friend Amy Cooper from the Secret Seed Society  and many more. Lots of them have agreed to write guest posts for us so look out for more on here and our website about the wonderful things they're all doing.

We hope we passed on some inspiration - and we certainly came away with much more! Thanks to Michael, Catherine, Laurena and everyone at Start Uk for a great festival.

Clare F