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I’ve started stripping this room in preparation for making a new bathroom.

I pulled out every single nail I could find and used a powerful magnet to collect them all on a wonderful little nail-ball. Harcore recycling going on, but also to prevent kids and animals to step on them when I put the planks outside. I also did it to make it safe for my kids to “help” me. I want them to take as much part as possible, but a teardown involves many small dangers for tiny people. On this project my two sons age four and five helped tear down panels and cupboards, beating the crap out of everything I pointed to. Great fun! And after removing all the nails my oldest son Noah helped me throw it all out the windows.

Linklove: This photo was favorited by the National Wildlife Foundation on Flickr.

This is a good project to do with kids. Just start gathering bits and pieces of junk in a box, or clean out a few drawers, and you soon have enough raw material to create your own little eco warrior tribe!

Any material can be used. On the creature above we have a wine cork body, milk bottle cap feet, Elton John glasses made from a piece of balsa from a broken 3d puzzle, some feathers, a thumbtack nose, and eyes made from nuts. Oh, and the mouth was cut from a newspaper.

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Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Smileplastics has created a solution that gives hard plastics a new life as building materials. On their website you can see interesting uses for this mixed plastics material. I’ve been facinated and frustrated with plastic for years. It is a beautiful material with endless uses, strong, and colorful, but we usually use it to make things with a very limited shelflife, like shampobottles and cheap toys that get thrown into a landfill after use. It is difficult to recycle and reuse because there are so many different ways to create plastics, making it hard to mix it up and create something new in a predictable fashion.

But it seems like smileplastics has found a way to do it. Check out their stuff on www.smile-plastics.co.uk.