Green Daily

It's true you can turn your shower liner into a tarp, and your tea tins into q-tip receptacles. You can even turn your bath mat into a chamois for your car and replace it with a mat of green moss. But can you turn a used fire hose into a back pack?

Not without some training and an industrial sewing machine. The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena has made sustainability a focus of its entire school. Every program focuses on creating and processing sustainable, frequently recycled products. And the gear is already making its way to market.

Take for example Spencer Nikosey's designer messenger bags and totes. The student has designed ruggedly chic bags from surplus army tarps and discarded fire hoses. He has already found an unnamed company to produce the bags along with numbered dog tags.

Radhika Bhalla has designed multipurpose bicycle carts that women in India can build easily out of common materials. The project would reduce back breaking labor on the women's part and use sustainable materials to build something useful.

Leslie Evans designed the "Vespera Hairdryer," a hair dryer that is easy to disassemble, repair and recycle. Hair dryers are known to be unfriendly to both. And Joseph Choi designed a single-serving tea set that saves energy usually spent heating more water than needed. That's a big deal in countries like India and England.

The school has embraced the concept as a challenge. Designers have long thought of eco-friendliness as an afterthought or an impediment to attractive, smartly designed products. Classes in sustainability are required, and the goal, and so far the achievement, is to create smarter, more effective and attractive stuff sustainably.

[via LA Times]