Recycling Roundup

Inspiration for recycling, reusing - or upcycling as it's now becoming known. We've pulled together a quick guide to help you find recycling inspiration, whatever your interests.

Ideas and tips - ways to make new things out of old from beds to plastic bags:

Old beds into bowers - how to turn unwanted beds into fantastic garden furniture
Top 10 Ideas for Inspired Recycling at Home
How to make fused plastic out of old carrier bags
New life for old sofas
Re-using tin foil to clean your silver

Recycled Fashion - from vintage fashion to revamping your wardrobe you'll find loads of inspiration here:

Refashion, defashion, upfashion, downfashion - there's no limits!
10 Ways to update your wardrobe without spending a fortune
Bags from old tyres and Debenhams' suit made from plastic bottles
Checking out the Vintage Fashion Fair
Shoes made from London Underground seats
Charity fashion show of restyled clothes
Recycled dress for breast cancer
How to knit with recycled plastic carrier bags
Charity shop clothes on the Oscar's red carpet
Hairy legwarmers made from an old jacket

Creative inspiration - how artists and sculptors have used materials that might otherwise have been thrown away to create some fascinating new pieces:

Tim Gentry’s “Pleasure Spheres” and Paul Matosic’s “Landfill
Photography - seeing beauty in industrial waste
MEND - an exhibition in New York using recycled materials
Sculpture from living trees
Art from toilet rolls
Art from the floor-sweepings of China's factories
Sculpture from old shopping trolleys
The Knitted Brain
A Buddhist temple from old beer bottles

Advice on Recycling

Top Tips from Which? magazine to ensure your recycling actually gets recycled
Third World Wisdom - what we can learn from others
Start a fixers' collective - a Brooklyn scheme sets a great example
Five top tips for sorting your recycling
Go to work on an egg - why eggs are highly useful materials for inspired recycling
All about upcycling
A new lexicon for recycling

Recycling News
How London Transport is "oiling the wheels" with recycled cooking oil

Charity fashion show of restyled clothes

At Make it and Mend it we are committed to reusing and refashioning our wardrobes and have already extolled the virtues of "Swishing" (holding parties to exchange clothes).

NOVO have come up with an innovative way of organizing a clothing drive for their community in Southern California. They have encouraged aspiring fashion designers to collaborate with the rest of the NOVO team in creating original clothing lines with donated clothes as an act of making the old, new. Their mission is to connect the Los Angeles community to a cause through clothing.

For the past 3 months, Jessica Chang and Ellen Chang have been collecting clothes from the community and on April 25th 2009 they have invited designers to come and create fashion lines from the donated clothes. These newly modelled clothes will be auctioned off with 100% of the proceeds donated to organizations working to address local poverty. Any leftover clothes will be donated to local shelters and charitable organizations.

We love this idea and would like to hear of anyone sles doing something similar.

More about Novo
How to organise a Swishing party