It is a junk-erful life

7 Items made from junk

You may have seen the recent news that Adidas has designed a shoe that’s made almost entirely of trash from the ocean.

It may just be a prototype, with no plans for a line to go into production at this stage, but we have to admit that it got us pretty excited. And got us thinking!

At 1-800-GOT-JUNK? it’s our mission to divert waste from the landfill via means such as recycling, donating, up-cycling, and reusing. And if junk can be made into a shoe, what other unexpected items have a similar history?

A playground for the older crowd

Why not take the time to engage your inner-child? Created by sculptor Bob Cassilly and called City Museum, this interactive museum is located in St. Louis, Missouri.

Part children’s playground, part funhouse, part architectural installation, and part unusual tourist attraction, visitors to City Museum can climb, play with, and engage with different parts of the playground, which is made of mostly repurposed industrial materials and architectural objects.

Sustainable skateboards

Answering the challenge from Do the Green Thing and WWF UK, artist Mac Premo, in collaboration with Sanford Shapes, created a series of skateboards made from waste and repurposed materials.

The boards are called Bucket Boards, an unsurprising name seeing as the main material used to create the boards was five-gallon buckets, along with plywood.

Premo was just one of 15 artists asked to use creativity to promote sustainable living as part of this Earth Hour campaign.

Designer dresses

Created by boutique marketing company Glam PR Clothing, which is based in South Florida, these dresses are unique and environmentally friendly ways for brands to promote themselves and increase their outreach.

Dresses are exclusive and made to order, giving big (and small) brands a fashionable way to market their goods and services.

Handbags for humanity

Sold online by Australian store The Green Pavilion, these bags are produced by the women from the fair-trade studios in Sumatra, Indonesia.

The bags are not only eco friendly and stylish, they are created ethically, by women working in fair conditions with good income.

Bags are made from materials such as flowers, fried leaves, cans, tires, and fashion magazines.

Micro homes

Built from discarded items and junk such as sheet metal and old wooden cabinets, these small and pretty stylish shelters were created by Derek Diedricksen and are sold for a very affordable price.

You may not expect it, but the insides are luxurious for their size, and can include carpets and funky furnishings.

Musical instruments

This is an inspiring story – a musical youth group, which lives near one of South America’s largest landfills in Paraguay, built their own instruments from junk and discarded items.

From that garbage they create beautiful music, and this has helped them go on to be recognized on an international level. Known as the Recycled Orchestra, the instruments the kids play were made from junked items such as cutlery, coins, cans, trash cans, and wooden pallets.

Junk art

Artist Zac Freeman from Florida is dedicated to his art. His series of portraits of family and friends is truly a passion project, as each portrait can take him up to two years to complete.

The artwork is made from a range of junk, such as computer keyboards, bottle lids, and even lego.

The pieces are glued to a blank canvas, using a black and white photograph of the subject as a guide. One piece can have up to 5,000 bits of junk on it.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.