February 2016

Do Re-cycle Mi

First off I apologize for the cringeworthy title.

Anyways, this week we talked about some of the different cradle-to-cradle business models, one of them being upcycling. I’ve always found upcycling to be really interesting as I like the idea of turning old and broken things that ordinary people would discard and then turning them into something new and useful.

One company that I found that practices upcycling is this shop called The Piano Gal Shop.

They are this neat little company which performs different services such as piano tuning, piano selling, music lessons, and they also make artwork out of broken piano parts and other instruments.

The owner, Marta Hansen, utilized her love of music and art into making beautiful pieces of artwork out of old materials which she can actually sell in her store.

“I wanted to do the music store thing, but in a very creative way.”

Some of the pieces of artwork include wall art out of old sheet music, broken pianos into tables, and old records into clocks. Here are some pictures of some of the stuff that she’s made:

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On the business side of things, I think it’s great to see a business like The Piano Gal Shop doing something different for a change and making a positive impact on the environment as well as making profits at the same time. They don’t incur any costs as well except time and effort as people donate their broken instruments.

Not only does this reduce waste as these old piano parts and sheet music aren’t going to the landfill, but these items are given a new purpose as Marta adds value to them by turning them into creative pieces of art that people actually want to buy and display in their homes.

All this talk about upcycling has made me pretty excited and motivates me a bit to find items around my house that I would generally discard but now I’ll see if I could turn them into anything useful like Marta.

Zero Waste Markets

Hello, Gabriel here. This week we heard Brianne’s presentation in-class and are doing research on locations in Vancouver to prepare for our case proposals next week.

Doing some information searching on Google, I found out about this zero waste market in Denver which has a relatively similar concept to the one in Vancouver. You can learn more about them in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqq9d7MGt98

There are a few differences between them and Brianne’s Zero Waste Market such as the idea of a fresh juice and smoothie bar, which I think is a pretty neat idea as I can see people being interested in having their own custom smoothies made with fresh, local ingredients on the spot.

There’s also another zero waste market in Germany, called Original Unverpackt, German for Original Unpackaged. Here’s the link to an article about them: http://www.theplaidzebra.com/zero-waste-grocery-store-no-packaging-plastic-big-name-brands/

And here are some pictures of their store:

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Aesthetically, I love the look of the overall store; it’s very clean and crisp and is a place that I wouldn’t mind browsing around and buying some produce. The store looks much more exciting than some of the grocery stores we have here in Vancouver as places like Kin’s Farm don’t really entice me to enter them and buy fruits.

What I like about these zero waste markets is that the owners of all of these businesses really show their passion. To them, it’s not so much about making money, but making a positive impact on the environment and sharing their love of zero waste with others by educating people in events such as workshops.

Hopefully, the Zero Waste Market can have similar success to the ones in Denver and Germany, and I can envision it being really popular in Vancouver and fitting in with the overall culture and current trend for buying and eating fresh, local, and organic ingredients. I will definitely consider popping by for a visit when it opens up, and am ecstatic to try out some of these delicious dried mangoes that I keep hearing about on the Zero Waste Vancouver Facebook page.