Green jewelry - Activating a critical mass

“According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent Toxic Release Inventory, from 2006, metal mining in the worst polluting industry in the United States. While no data set exists for world pollution, it is safe to assume that commensurate data would indicate similar findings. Large ENGOs such as Earthworks and Oxfam have waged an extensive campaign to reform the mining industry, both domestically and internationally.

Conversely, precious metal and gems, once extracted, are never discarded. No one throws away gold. The traditional materials used by jewelers and metalsmiths do not fit into the categories of disposable consumerism or planned obsolescence. Precious metal refineries recycle the metal they take in and always have. The initial production of jewelry is dirty, but the aftermarket is a place where recycling and enduring value is the norm. It is in this dichotomy of conflicting perceptions and practices that jewelry and metalsmithing finds itself immersed”.

Gabriel Craig writes about green metalsmithing on the magazine Metalsmith | vol.29 | n°2. The attention paid to green jewelry is almost inexistent but the impact of metalsmithing is high and doesn’t depend only on the material sources and ethical labor production but also on good business practices, manufacturer’s energy consumption and environmental impact related to packaging, transportation and waste.

Anyway, the most important element of green jewelry is extraction; the initial extraction entails the release of mercury  as well as cyanide into water sources near the mine, and also personal safety hazards are frequent in the gold mining process. Secondary refining consist in reusing scrap gold, coming from a variety of sources recycled jewelry and electronics, bullion and material from primary refining, and refining it by different processes and bringing the material to a purity of 99.9999 percent.

Many studio jewelers are now beginning to adopt ethically sourced precious metals as an essential part of their process, by recasting the clients’ old gold and making them pay just the skilled labour on the realized piece. This way the demand of gold decreases, even if in a small way.

“No matter the reason or level of commitment to green jewelry principles” Gabriel Craig says, “every action makes a difference. If a jeweler made 100 rings using ethically sourced gold, he would eliminate a staggering 4 million pounds of rock waste this year alone. I can only imagine the kind of change that could be achieved by activating a critical mass”.

anja visini

http://www.conceptualmetalsmithing.com/
http://www.gabrielcraigmetalsmith.com/index.php?/writing/seeing-green/

Indra's Cloud - Art reusing plastic debris

Sometimes waste can be used in curios ways to communicate a problem instead of throw away objects we reject.
An object hasn’t just one life.
At the Lumenhouse in Brooklyn is  visitable CONVERGENCE, a group exhibition that brings together seven contemporary artists responding to the current environmental crisis in our oceans.
The exhibitions is organized in affiliation with Project Vortex, a not-for-profit organization committed to reusing plastic debris from our oceans and shorelines. The title references convergence zones - the ocean currents that collect the vast floating islands of non-biodegradable trash, the largest of which are several thousand miles across. Each artist's work, suggests creative possibilities for reuse of plastic and other consumer byproduct materials that often otherwise enter the waste stream.
Between the artists, Anne Percoco exhibits Indra's Cloud, a floating raft comprised of over 1000 plastic bottles constructed to draw attention to the polluted conditions of the Yamuna River in India. The mobile public sculpture brings to life an ancient mythe of Indra and Krishna raising Govardhan hill.
In Indian mythology, Indra is the god of war, storms and rainfalls. Indra’s Cloud is a sculpture representing the destructive environmental forces affecting the natural resources. This floating structure made by plastic bottles cruised the Yamuna river in Vrindavan reminding that water is a delicate element, a part of human heritage.
This poetical operation reveals the hypocrisy in day-by-day behavior. Srivatsa Goswami of Vrindavan Radharam Temple says:” We religious people are hypocrites in our relationship to Yamuna. We say she is pure, but we use Bisleri (a brand of mineral water) in our temples. If Yamuna is pure, let use Yamuna water, or else let admit that there is a problem and get on with fixing it”.
When the ride finished, a local NGO (Friends of Vrindavan) used the bottles from the sculpture to grow saplings, which were planted in and around Vrindavan.

anja visini




CONVERGENCE
October 16-December 12, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, Oct 16, 7-9PM



http://lumenhouse.com/exhibits.html
http://www.annepercoco.com/indrascloud.html

Annie Leonard#02 - The Story of Electronics

Embracing new technologies brings up a huge question: What do you do with the old stuff?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans generated about 3 million tons of electronic waste in 2007. Out of all that waste, only 13.6 percent of it was recycled — the rest wound up in landfills or was shipped to developing nations. The country’s growing mounds of e-waste are cause for concern both from a health and environmental perspective, so it’s important for consumers to properly dispose of unwanted electronics.
Electronics contain a variety of toxic components like lead, mercury, arsenic, beryllium and brominated flame retardants, some of which cause cancer and other adverse health effects
Because electronics contain so many toxins, it’s important not to throw them away with the regular trash.
Bringing discarded electronics to recycling or take-back centers is a noble action, but it’s important for consumers to only choose reliable programs.
Annie Leonard released a new video called The Story of Electronics, in which she explains why "design for the dump"is toxic for people and the planet.

http://inhabitat.com/2010/04/27/electronics-recycling-101-the-problem-with-e-waste/
http://storyofstuff.org/electronics/
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

smart works # Abitare di passaggio/design experiment on the "emergenza dimora" programme

This graduation thesis started thanks to a collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano for a project called “Emergenza dimora”, which aims to launch and realize micro-structures for temporary hospitality as an alternative to common night shelters, distributing them on the metropolitan area of Milan and Bergamo (Italy) and improving the comfort and community for the inhabitants; the purpose of the project is to promote the rehabilitation process and the social reintegration of the person to be charged with, widening the coordination nets between the organizations as to do so will develop new sustainable management forms.

[click on the image to enlarge]

The temporary care homes should be a step towards self-sufficiency and privacy usually offered by a private house, whilst avoiding private spaces that can create conditions of exclusion and isolation.
The proposed model is a “public residence” with domestic spaces, as domesticity is the fundamental answer to the real need of comfort for the users.


Daytime is divided into different moments, specified by a typical space structure; the night is reserved to hospitality whereas during the day the same spaces are dedicated to secondary activities – call center, counseling center, library, laundry, recycling point, lost and found etc. - which can be integrated with the hospitality.


The structure must be able to change its configuration during the day and to evolve, according from time to time to the rising necessities.
The main consequence of this way of operating is the relevance of flexibility and adaptability of the internal space. It is necessary to give a wide range of possible transformations, attempting to make the first step towards experimentation of new spaces and aggregation units.


The use of poor and recycled materials minimizes the costs of the new interventions and leaves other resources available for the difficult management of the entire structure.

Politecnico di milano
facoltà architettura e società
corso di laurea specialistica in architettura
anno accademico 2006/2007

ABITARE DI PASSAGGIO
sperimentazioni progettuali sul programma “emergenza dimora”

relatore prof. giovanni la varra
correlatore arch. roberto murgia

lorenzo dalla benetta | l.dallabenetta@gmail.com
alessandro grassi | info.rnb@gmail.com

kader attia: kasbah installation

Serving as a reflection of the conditions in which the majority of the world's population lives, 'kasbah' by french-algerian artist kader attia is an installation featuring a series of shanty town roofs collected by himself and installed at different angles to make a 350 square meter patchwork of corrugated iron, satellite dishes and other scrap materials.
Visitors are invited to walk across them, but the difficulty of taking each cautious step over this uneven, variegated surface provokes a consideration of the successes and failures of the globalised economy and of the human ability to wrest a livable existence from nothing.
thus, walking tentatively over the work, one not only becomes part of it but also implicitly part of the economic and power matrix that creates these shanty towns.
Kader attia's upbringing in a north african immigrant community, studies in Paris and Barcelona, and three years spent in Congo-Brazzaville and Kinshasa have informed a practice that explores geography, history, gender, politics and philosophy.
'Kasbah' is being showcased as part of the 17th Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island which is the event's main venue.


http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/10286/kader-attia-kasbah-installation.html

Canstruction! Amazing garbage!

Canstruction held its 14th Annual International Competition in Las Vegas this year as part of the Society for Design Administration's annual convention. Canstruction is the Society for Design Administration's community service project that promotes the design community and raises food for hunger relief efforts. This year the SDA remembered Cheri Melillo, who founded Canstruction in 1993. Cheri Melillo passed away in December of 2009 after losing her battle with brain cancer. Cheri conceived Canstruction and worked tirelessly over the past 17 years to spread the vision and the mission of Canstruction to over 140 cities across the US, Canada, Australia and now the world.

http://www.canstructiontoronto.org/
http://www.archdaily.com/64225/canstruction-toronto-competition/

Combining technologies # Les Greniers du Sahel

ITERRae is a project developing conservation strategies in inter-tropical regions.
The evident lack of infrastructures pushed Pascal and Yasmina Fayet to elaborate an efficient solution to store the harvest in the small village of Niomré, in the Louga region, Senegal.
In West Africa almost half of the harvest is lost every year and, paradoxically, the more they produce the more they lose.
Mustapha Kadri, the secretary-general of the Agence Nationale de la Filière Oignon, states that the annual loss in the onion production, a traditional product of shaelian Africa, starts after only two months since the harvest and the quantity rapidly rise from the 30 to the 60% of the product between the second and the third month of storage.
Combining the capacity of the traditional materials to absorb heat and the use of the radiative cooling, it’s possible to obtain structures maintaining the interior at an adequate temperature to preserve the harvests, thanks to the desert climate: its transparent and dry atmosphere lets the solar radiation to penetrate until the lower strata of the atmosphere and the ground. On the contrary, the earth radiation during the night makes temperature go down, rising the 0°C and generating a strong thermal range. The technology combines a structure composed by changing phase materials absorbing the heat (double banco wall with a woolly insulating strata) and a coffer composed by: an aluminium box full of changing phase material; a polyethylene film; an opaque removable cover, that will be closed during the day and removed during the night.
In non-electrified regions a radiant refrigeration is an opportunity: the system doesn't need any energetical supply; the equipment is completely sustainable and non-polluting; traditional techniques are used to build the big barns. Building these structures permits to create new social and economical conditions and work opportunities to improve people's alimentation and consequently their sanitary conditions.
Finally, the landscape also changes thanks to a new and typically African new typology of building: the fields of Africa have the possibility to become greener with a more intensive farming.

"Le Greniers du Sahel" is a program supported by Pascal and Yasmina Fayet with common aims: environmental protection; support to food safety; creation of new remuneration activities and economical development.

anja visini


http://www.iterrae.org/
http://dailymotion.virgilio.it/video/x7vkhy_ecoact-projet-les-greniers-du-sahel_webcam
http://www.babnet.net/cadredetail-10631.asp
http://s280572833.onlinehome.fr/iterrae/ne3/media/images/dPresseParis1%20ITERRae.pdf