Sustainability - CADS 2000

All images: Adidas 

By Idha Valeur 

The all-white clothes range for Wimbledon, designed by Stella McCartney, is also going green by using recycled materials. 

In this new range of tennis-wear Adidas and McCartney are taking steps towards sustainability by creating the clothes out of recycled polyester, a synthetic fibre created using waste materials like plastic bottles and previously used clothing items that have been cleaned and processed again to turn them into new fibres ready for a new purpose. 

As well as using recycled polyester, the collection is also made by using parley ocean plastic, which is a material developed from upcycled plastic waste which was picked up and hindered from entering the oceans at beaches and coastal areas before being turned into yarn, according to a press release. 

Not only is the clothes made from recycled materials, with a better environmental footprint, but the technology used to create the range – dope dye technology – is also greening the line. The method wastes less water by incorporating colour directly into the material mix at the beginning stage in the production process. 

‘Therefore, when the fibre is formed, it is already the desired colour and as a result, reduces wastewater by at least 10 litres per garment,’ the release stated. 

I just started using reusable bamboo pads as another small step to reducing my waste. If you use cotton pads, I recommend investing in reusable ones. Like most things, we don’t realize how much waste they produce. When you factor in the packaging they come in, plus using them once every day or two, the waste adds up. Not to mention the energy it takes to produce them. These are from Marleys Monsters and they’re great!

Sustainable Permaculture – Build It in Fall and Enjoy a Weed Free, Self Fertilizing, Till Free Garden

To have a system in place to provide a weed free, self-fertilizing, till free garden sounds good to me. A method of gardening to do that is a sustainable permaculture bed. One way to develop them is in the fall, which is the best time to do this, set up you beds and use lots of mulch. Why Fall? It gives the winter season for that mulch to break down providing their benefits to your garden bed. To learn more about building these sustainable permaculture garden beds head on over to the next pages where you’ll also find a video all about Permaculture and No-till methods including Ramial wood chip method, strawbale gardens, soil/compost bombing, sheet mulching,

Did you know that most wrapping paper is not recyclable? Most of the fancy wrapping paper with images and shiny bits are lined with plastic, making it not suitable for recycling.

Last year I used recyclable brown paper wrapping paper, which worked fine, but this year I decided I’m going to save on waste AND money by using the newspaper/flyers I get every week. The amount of flyers we get every week is absurd, and I definitely do not look through them, so I’m sure others are not either.

So instead of just throwing them in the recycling bin, I saved a bunch and am giving them a second purpose by using them to wrap gifts. I find that they are a lot easier to use than traditional wrapping paper. Then I tied string around the gifts to make them more festive, which can be reused over and over.

Why spend money on something that is literally made to be ripped open and thrown out?

“Soapack” by Mi Zhou,

Central Saint Martins post-graduate student Mi Zhou has created toiletry bottles called Soapack that are cast from soap and melt away once they are no longer useful.

To make each Soapack, vegetable oil-based soap is dyed using pigments from minerals, plants and flowers and formed in a mould, in a process similar to slip-casting ceramics.

A thin layer of beeswax is used to line the bottles to make them waterproof, and prevent the liquid contents from dissolving the bottles before they are used up.

Users can keep Soapack bottles in a dry place to preserve them, or rest them on a soap dish and allow them to melt away on contact with water and with use.

To complete her concept Zhou consulted with Yanhao Shi, a soap artisan, and Luis Spitz, an expert in the soap industry

A standard plastic bottle can take up to 450 years to break down, and non-recycled plastic often ends up polluting the ocean.

🌲🌿 Being A Green Student 🌿🌲

Hello my studious friends! I’ve decided I’d (finally) make the green student guide that I’ve been promising forever. Here you’ll find a handy list of ways you can stay environmentally conscious while hitting the books. Feel free to pick a choose what suggestions work best for you and your lifestyle. Again, these are purely suggestions, but I really recommend adopting as many as you can. All of us, especially those in the traditionally “western” nations with outrageous carbon footprints (aka America and many parts of Europe), need to start thinking about how we impact our planet in our daily lives. It’s the only one we have. At first, these suggestions may seem excessive or strange, but I promise, after a week or two, they’ll feel like second nature. So, I hope you take up these tips, and enjoy my guide to be a greener student!

Disclaimer: I understand that being green can be expensive, with little reward besides a cleaner lifestyle and conscious. I’m a financially impaired student, just like many of you. I’m not one to go around attacking people for not trying to be sustainable, just passing along tips I’ve picked up. That said, most of these tips can be modified, with a dash of creativity, to fit your monetary needs. And, obviously, I’m not saying that if you’re struggling to feed yourself you should go drop all your money on recycled notebooks, because that would be ridiculous.

Open the Read More to, well, read more!