Abstract: Eco-design and green living should extend to accessories. Safer materials (ie:cradle to cradle)or existing materials that will not go away for 50 million years should be used.
What's it like to create a completly "safe" piece of jewelry, in both processes and materials?
The way I see it, there are two basic types of jewelry: jewelry that lasts forever and jewelry that doesn't. The jewelry that doesn't last forever should be made of materials that are meant to biodegrade and maybe jewelry that is meant to last forever should be made from non-biodegradable materials.There's a lot of cheap, poorly made jewelry out there. There's a lot of nice jewelry that won't biodegrade, but this type of jewelry is the kind we keep and pass down as heirlooms. And if we do want to get rid of it, it can be recycled.(Yes, mining practices are terrible, which is why we should recycle the materials we have.)But what happens to that cheap stuff? That plastic, pot metal, "what the hell is this stuff?", trendy for 6 months, then sits around taking up space. Picture the contents of every Claire's in the country in a landfill. Nobody keeps that stuff forever, so I'm assuming it eventually winds up in a land fill. Which is bad. Plus, the processes we utilize are also bad for the earth and bad for us. Why do you think our department has a 28 page safety manual?
Materials I am considering using, thus far:
wool
organic cotton
feathers
hemp (cool stuff, not the shitty kind)
existing plastics
Styrofoam
paper
http://www.eco.barkingcrickets.org/ (click on "material")
http://hemptraders.com
http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1001/prd/
http://www.her-design.com/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment