Today is World Refugee Day. Some good news for a change: Refutrees is a new non-profit that’s turning the traditional aid-centric model of development on its head. These self-described “creativity agents” place particular focus on people displaced over the long-term. They’re currently working on projects for Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Lebanon.
“This is not a romance story,” Daniella told me during a recent interview. I met the petite woman at her home on Lamu Island in northern Kenya to speak with her husband, Ali Lamu, whose name is synonymous with a brand of upcycled dhow sails or tangas that are now distributed throughout the world. Daniella […]
Laurie recycles a Jordanian political poster into a handbag. Here’s how she does it. Voting is underway for Jordan’s Parliament. I’m not running, but I have this one in the bag! Hundreds of posters are hanging along Amman roadways; a somber assemblage of Middle Eastern manhood, mostly mustachioed. No wonder there’s tension in the lead-up […]
If you are in Cairo, don’t miss these fun and fabulous recycling and upcycling workshops at Darb 1718 Following what looks like a very successful Recycling Art festival at the end of August, Darb 1718 are hosting a set of four recycling workshops this month. With sessions on the 9, 10, 16 and 17 of […]
Now that the kids are back at school, time to go green and continue the celebrations with this back-to-school tutorial. Parents will need to help with this one. This time of year with kids returning to school, many go on shopping spree spending lots of money on branded notebooks, agendas, and bags. But why not […]
This Green Prophet tours Turkey and sees a mosaic of eco-sensibility. Little Eid, a Muslim holiday, is a great time for a getaway. So I reeled in my family from disparate zip codes for a week spent touring someplace new. Years back, plump thighs on my enormous babies tagged the kids as “turkey legs”. It feels […]
While away the long, hot hours of fasting with these fun and festive crafting ideas for Ramadan In times of stress, I turn to sewing and crafting. Colouring in and cutting out shapes, gluing, stitching and sticking things together is just so much fun that I can’t believe entire nations aren’t hooked on it. For […]
I used to be a wine barrel… and now I’m a chess board. Wine companies worldwide may be trying to ‘go green’ by producing organic wines (the wineries of the Middle East being no exception), but even so there is non eco-friendly waste associated with making vino. A winery in the Israeli Negev desert has […]
April 2012 saw Tel Aviv’s first Bridal Fashion Week, featuring fifty up and coming Israeli designers. Israel’s lucrative bridal fashion business is on the rise. And now it appears that Natalie Portman’s eco-friendly engagement ring or vegan shoes are not the only green, Israeli trendsetter snagging headlines. Israeli designer Liraz Rubbin uses natural materials and prides herself on […]
Could you ever imagine patios like this one built with composite materials? If you’ve been thinking about building a hanging garden on your urban Middle East deck, patio, or porch, spring is the perfect time to start planting your seeds. While people living in crazy and compact Middle East cities like Beirut, Tel Aviv, Cairo […]
Poo paper produced by Applied Clean Tech. Tafline likes toilet talk, products and innovation that comes from human waste. See her round up on 5 innovations that turn the toilet into power. Following this article she picked up on the great new story of Applied Clean Tech, an Israeli company that is developing recycled […]
Handmade and packaged in recycled boxes generally used for fast food or take-away, Deda Design’s kitchen products look delicious. Fast food usually gets a bad rep: it’s fatty, bad for you, and wastes a lot of packaging and resources. But what if fast food style packaging was put to more sustainable use? Packaging has been […]
Recycled furniture by Israeli designer Naama Futerman. She gives disposed objects a second life. If all the products that we ever used or came into contact with only had a “Chapter One”, our landfills would be overflowing. Thankfully there are people out there, such as Tel Aviv-based designer Naama Futerman, who help give discarded objects […]
Long live the queen, if she can manage to sit on Niloufar Afnan’s recycled ‘Royal Stool’. At this year’s New Designers Exhibition in London, Lebanese-born designer Niloufar Afnan decided to poke a little fun at the royal family and demonstrate the possibilities of upcycled furniture. She exhibited Royal Stool (pictured above) and 46 (shown after […]
These plastic window shutters by Kulla Industrial Design can still be used to sit on. Finding new uses for old wooden window shutters has been a standard upcycling move among sustainable designers for years (check out the wooden shutter chairs made by Tel Aviv’s Junktion Studio). Wooden shutters have been turned into tables, doors, and […]