TwilightTree: Earth Day and Wedding Decorations

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Earth Day and Wedding Decorations

There's an idea I've been mulling over for a while and Earth Day is as good a time as any to bring it up. I have a big problem with waste, and I'm always looking for ways to transform used material not into something interesting and pretty, but into something useful (okay, maybe useful AND pretty)—something that people would want or need even if it wasn't made with recycled materials.

Side rant: Nothing irritates me more than people gushing over the "greenness" of taking a very recyclable material like aluminum or cardboard and buying non-sustainable craft products to "recycle" it into something useless that will one day be thrown out. Also, when did "recycle" become the most important R? If we reduced in the first place, we wouldn't have so much waste to deal with.

End of rant.

So I'm always looking for ways to make things instead of buying them, and since several of my friends are engaged or recently married, I've had decorations on my mind. Of course plenty of people make their decorations, but their materials often come from the craft store. I'm imagining an Etsy shop full of decorations (wedding or otherwise) made entirely of waste materials, except for essentials like thread and glue. And when I say waste materials, I mean it—these are things that would be going in the garbage if they weren't going in my craft bin.

What do you think? Would you patronize/support/appreciate a business like that?

Here are some samples of paper goods I would sell, though of course I'd also work with fabric.

Garland sewn from an out-of-date almanac