What has more than one use?

Whilst brainstorming things we use to survive I remembered the old yellow pages advert.
Used for the wrong reason, or is that the only thing its actually good for these days?

Do we really need money? What do we need to survive?

I'v been looking into what you need to survive in extreme situations caused by climate change, but then today I thought to myself "Im surviving right now" which made me remember a documentary I had seen a while ago by Harry Byrne about 'A relaxing holiday' where he went to Japan for 3 weeks with no money for a 'homeless holiday'.
This has made me start to think about what we actually need to survive or what objects we use for more than one purpose everyday. Eventually perhaps making it possible to survive only on the things in your pockets.

Harry also has some other interesting documentaries on hitch hiking and experimenting with sleeping rough and the aspects of getting by on next to nothing.

Have a look at his blog


http://jellyfishlifestyle.com/videos/japan

Can we survive without money?

Mark Boyle decided to give up money for a whole year, This seems to be a grab way to make people live off the land and reduce their carbon footprint, as in one article in the guardian he states that he refers to them as food metres rather than food miles.
However I do not think that this way of life would be for everyone.

water pebble

The water pebble is an ingenious piece of kit that i have come across recently its sole purpose is to aid in reducing your water consumption when having a shower. it starts by glowing green, then amber, then red; indicating when you should get out the shower. Each day it slowly decreases the time so that you have shorter showers without even noticing and therefore using less water.

http://www.waterpebble.com/

Philips microbial home

The guys at philips have designed a whole heap of fancy new products in a bid to encourage people to 'go green' my favourite is the urban beehive.



take a look at their other new designs

http://www.design.philips.com/about/design/designportfolio/design_futures/design_probes/projects/microbial_home/index.page

Recycling and re-using

Products are now becoming obsolete very fast especially computer technology with things advancing so fast, can we continue to find uses for these items once they have fulfilled their original purpose?
Above is the Macquarium. The shell of an old mac computer modified into a fish tank.
There are more innovative designs at the website below, including such things as sex dolls being used as jackets?

http://www.takepart.com/photos/upcycled-recycled-repurposed-stuff-found-second-life

Al Gore

Looking at climate change I decided to watch a film by Al Gore 'An inconvenient Truth' it is actually very interesting and not as dull as you would imagine.

Here is the trailer

recycled snowboard

This year I have been looking into reducing our carbon footprint so here is a great video from the guys at Signal snowboards who like to experiment with snowboard design, this is the recycled snowboard