Two friends, Esther and Nanda, driven by the wish to change how easily perfectly usable things are just thrown away. Add to that a creative spirit and a touch of trendy and cheerful, and you’ve been introduced to I am recycled. One more thing though: most of the products sold on I am recycled have been made by social work groups.

We like the ‘industrial look’, where you can tell where the new products come from, you see the life they’ve already been through, yet they’ve been transformed into cool objects that add something special to your home.

Great stuff!

FSC, Forest Stewardship Council, certifies forest product – wood, paper and in this case cork – from sustainably managed forests. Sustainable management is a good thing, and seeing FSC deals with the forest as a whole and not just individual trees, I guess this is where a difference can still be made, also when it comes to cork, but I still want to point out a few facts about cork in general:

- Cork is sustainable in itself: it is harvested without cutting down the tree (you could say: renewable), and the trees live to be very old

- Cork can be recycled and some initiatives have started up using recycled cork e.g. for shoes

- The process from planting a tree to the first cork harvest is very long, as is the time needed in between harvests- cork is a slow product.

The burden put on the environment from screwcaps is immensly higher compared to cork. So whereas FSC-certified cork may have some benefits above other options, it’s still good to bear in mind that cork itself has benefits above alternatives.

“FASTVÍNIC is a new space where we pay tribute to local, seasonal and ecological produce in the form of the sandwich. And we do it, just like in Monvínic, by exalting the finest products that Catalonia has to offer. Our chef Sergi de Meià (2009 National Prize-winner for Best Young Chef) and his team make sandwiches that not only taste great but also epitomize the gastronomic essence of Catalonia.”

In addition to that the food looks good, the creative interior design of the place really caught my attention.

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Fastvínic is a restaurant to be added to the “To Visit List” and it is located in the centre of Barcelona on C/ Diputació 251 (open from 12-24 from Mondays to Saturdays).  We at Grazzhopprz, we’ll be celebrating our annual meeting  in April in Barcelona,  so stay tuned for the follow-up post us trying out the food.

You can get sugar from different sources. The European sugar beet, for instance, which is subsidized and the most common source in Europe – yet a recent reform in the support package has led to more imports of the number 1 sugar source globally: sugar cane. And then there’s the Sugar palm. Ever heard of it? We hadn’t either, but this is what we came across in the supermarket:

Several different shades of dark brown colours, the sugar looks different but not unpleasant. The several different languages on the package tells us this is sold in many countries, and the story told on the backside makes our Grazzhopprz antennas stand up straight: here’s a story to be shared!

Picture: www.masarang.nl 

This is the Sugar Palm story:

Willie Smits dedicates his life to save the Indonesisan environment by planting new forests and providing sustainable opportunities to the local people living there. His foundation, Masarang, goes straight to the core of the greatest environmental problems and looks not only to the environment but also to the alternatives for the people living there. And that’s how Sugar Palm enters the picture.

Sugar palm only grows in divers forests, which is not unimportant as this means you’ll never end up with a situation where other flora and fauna have to give way for the sugar palm (as is happening at a large scale for palm oil). The sugar palm has some great features: it has high energy values, can be harvested throughout the year without cutting of branches, grows on poor soil…according to Willie Smits, this is the “champion of the forest”.

The sugar palm production offers work to the local people. Whereas the Masarang foundation is actively looking for funding (check out their website), they are also clear in that they do not used funding for the sugar palm production as this is a commercial activity. At the moment not profitable, but at a larger scale it could be.

At Grazzhopprz, we can only admire the dedication, amount of energy put in, the creativity and innovation and of course the transparency of this initiative. And we are great supporters of and believers in financing true sustainble initiatives through commercial activites. Which makes a spoon full of sugar so much more enjoyable if it comes with a story like that of Masarang’s Sugar Palm!

You can read the full story about Sugar Palm on the Masarang website.

Today we want to share a few images that we’ve stumbled upon on Pinterest to give you a few ideas to get the styling going.

Isn’t this table made of wood  just lovely?  Image via Mr Wonderful’s pinboard.

And what about this bench? The bench designed by Fredrik Karlsson was part of the “Greenhouse project” at the Stockholm’s Furniture Fair 2013. Image via Design Milk.

Simple is sometimes the most beautiful, isn’t it? Image via Pinterest.

Another type of lamp, this time instead of wood, using old cameras.

This is again a very simple but very decorative idea to do by yourself, so save the lightbulbs.

If you want to get some more ideas and inspiration you might want to read our previous posts as well  “Recycle and home decoration and ”5 eco deco ideas” to get that home styling going. Again, if you have pictures of your own creations, email them to us and we would be more than happy to blog about them.

Have a lovely day!

The text is Jörn Wilting’s, the  driving spirit behind the Hemp documentary. Grazzhopprz got to ask him a couple of questions:

1. What made you choose hemp?

The reason why I chose to make something about hemp is simply that I am convinced about its capacity and its necessity for the future. The basic idea for the film came during a conversation with a friend. Afterwards I started to research and I was stunned what is possible with hemp today. But what puzzled me even more was the fact that I’d never heard of it before and most people around me hadn’t either. So I thought making a film about it can change the wide knowledge of the topic. And furthermore, I personally think that it is about time to change the way we live today because it’s not only killing our planet but also us. And hemp is one of the options to help us change.

2. Which hemp products do you have yourself?

Unfortunately, I do not own any hemp products yet. My first contact with hemp was when a family friend got diagnosed with lung cancer. During his time being sick he got some THC liquid to ease his pain.
But I already tasted some hemp food. And I already ordered myself some hemp oil and nuts and I am looking for some hemp cosmetics as well as some clothes. So I can say I am trying to use more hemp products because they are simply better.

3. Why would you recommend hemp to all of us?

Well, I would recommend hemp to people because I think it is time to change our way of living. When you look around and see what we are doing to our planet, although there are many other possibilities (not only hemp) you have to admit that we’ve already gone way too far. We have to focus on living in a more eco-friendly and sustainable way. And fast. Now, hemp products are still more expensive. But if we start buying it more, the market will have to react and the prices will be slowly going down and more farmers will grow hemp indefinitely.

To help financing the film, Jörn Wilting and his crew has started a crowdfunding campaign. If you are as intrigued by this plant as Jörn and his group, you can find more details here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hemp-the-unknown-plant

At Grazzhopprz we LIKE this initiative and gladly spread the word! You too? Click & like: Hemp – the unknown plant.

Now, let’s be clear on this one, we’re not gonna tell you crisps/chips whatever you like to call them, are healthy. There are lots of healthy snack alternatives (my mother used to recommend a glass of water. WATER! Yes, she’s regularly reminded of this hardship I was put through in my youth), but as we said, once in a while you just want a good, unhealthy snack. Crisps. Chips. Whatever.

Let’s say you could still add some sort of feel-good to this sin…you’d still enjoy it just as much, only you’d be eating a better, if not healthier, product. Here’s an interesting option for you: organic Tra’fo chips (see all pics).

Produced in a traditional way, a small family business, all organic (both potatoes and sunflower oil) and fresh: production is fit to demand so the chips are fresh!

Not bad!

Here it is:

Limited edition, and not from seats this time, but from old uniforms, ladies’ uniforms to be precise. A couple of years ago, KLM got new uniforms, kilometers of new fabric was produced and turned into the outfits the personnel wears today. But that also meant saying goodbye to the old uniforms, in total also kilometers of fabric. Designer Omar Munie turned this into a top-end design product, available in KLM’s webshop.

Isn’t it just great how large companies realize the products they can no longer use are great for other materials? We’ve now seen train and airline – what’s next? Let us know if you come across one of these initiatives!

Yesterday I was biking in the city and looked at my hands, or rather, my alpaca gloves. I started thinking back, how long did I already have these gloves? Some ten years! And I’ve worn them every cold season, not been careful, and amazingly enough, this doesn’t show at all! I’ve never experienced anything like it, gloves that just last and last…

I decided to look up alpaca, and came up with some supporting reasons to LIKE alpaca:

- alpaca is indeed a material that lasts ‘a lifetime’ according to some sources, but according to all sources I found it at least lasts longer than competing material (think wool for instance).

- alpaca is sustainable in that it doesn’t need harsh treatment before used; no dying is needed as the natural colours exist in shades from white to black so patterns are easy to get by using only original colours.

- alpaca is warm, alpaca live on high altitudes and need to stay warm. Which they do thanks to their fur.

I have great resepect for this material, quite amazing really, and will continue to enjoy my gloves, hopefully for many seasons to come!

Our latest one is a cool and trendy design company from Finland, Globe Hope. The company has set itself three values to live by: aesthetics, ecology and ethics. Sustainable design, in other words. Produced locally, in Finland and Estonia, using recycled and discarded materials. And really cool design, as are the materials used. Check this out:

Laptop bag made from an army utility sack 

A little purse made of recycled sail

Seatbelt & vintage:  the handles and the bottom of the bag are made of recycled seatbelt

Great design, unusual materials that give a no-nonsense feel to it, which just goes to prove that ethical fashion isn’t soft, it’s cool!