Tracing the benefits—and limitations—of repurposing aluminum. Besides being the right thing to do for Mother Earth, recycling can also make money—particularly when it comes to upcycling, a zero waste practice where discarded materials are fashioned into goods of greater economic or cultural value. In Upcycling Aluminum, Carl A. Zimring explores how the metal’s abundance after World War II—coupled with the significant economic and environmental costs of smelting it from bauxite ore—led to the industrial production of valuable durable goods from salvaged aluminum. Beginning in 1886 with the discovery of how to mass produce aluminum, the book examines the essential part the metal played in early aviation and the world wars, as well as the troubling expansion of aluminum as a material of mass disposal. Recognizing that scrap aluminum was as good as virgin material and much more affordable than newly engineered metal, designers in the postwar era used aluminum to manufacture highly prized artifacts. Zimring takes us on a tour of post-1940s design, examining the use of aluminum in cars, trucks, airplanes, furniture, and musical instruments from 1945 to 2015. By viewing upcycling through the lens of one material, Zimring deepens our understanding of the history of recycling in industrial society. He also provides a historical perspective on contemporary sustainable design practices. Along the way, he challenges common assumptions about upcycling’s merits and adds a new dimension to recycling as a form of environmental absolution for the waste-related sins of the modern world. Raising fascinating questions of consumption, environment, and desire, Upcycling Aluminum is for anyone interested in industrial and environmental history, discard studies, engineering, product design, music history, or antiques.

Artists have always been recyclers. This gallery of work made from repurposed materials is both a visual delight and "a source of ideas for crafters" (Library Journal). Artists and crafters have always been recyclers at heart, but in recent decades, it's become not only a thrifty choice but a moral imperative for many. 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse contains a cutting-edge collection of the most inventive work being made with reused, upcycled, and already existing materials. Exciting and inspiring, the work in this book ranges from clever and humble personal accessories to unique and important large-scale works of art, including paper art, fashion, jewelry, housewares, interiors, and installations.

When you look at the world through the lens of upfront carbon, everything changes Think that buying an electric car or switching to a heat pump is going to save the planet? Think again. We must cut carbon emissions to mitigate climate change. But emissions are not produced just by driving your car or heating your home. “Upfront carbon” refers to all emissions involved in making your car, your home, or any other item. As we seek to incorporate more renewables and less fossil fuels into our energy supply, upfront carbon becomes increasingly dominant compared to operating emissions, yet they are often ignored. This is why the pursuit of sufficiency, or making and buying just what we need, has become a powerful strategy for tackling climate change. By focusing on consumption rather than production, The Story of Upfront Carbon: Demystifies the complex web of cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessments, demonstrating that the accepted concept of “embodied carbon” is just one part of the carbon accounting equation Establishes the compelling rationale for carbon minimalism, arguing that only through frugality, simplicity, and materiality can we address global inequality and avoid climate catastrophe Shows how big-picture thinking and a broad, systemic approach to determining a product’s ecological footprint is indispensable to help guide the transition to degrowth and a zero-carbon society. Packed with concrete strategies for minimizing the upfront carbon produced by transportation, agriculture, consumer goods, the built environment, and more, this highly readable and accessible guide is required reading for a world on the brink.

Responding to increasing levels of planetary pollution, waste generation, carbon dioxide emission and environmental collapse, Ecologies of Inception re-thinks potentiality—an object’s ability to change—in architecture and design. The book problematizes the still-prevailing modern paradigm of design practice: the technical tabula rasa, a tendency to begin from scratch and use raw, amorphous, and obedient materials that can be easily and effectively manipulated, facilitating a seamless and faithful embodiment of intentions. Instead, the philosophy of design developed in the text prompts—through a variety of case studies, thinkers, and disciplines—a collective reconsideration of value, dissociating it from the projects and signatures of any one author or generation. Whereas the merits of up-cycling and circular design are canonically defined vis-à-vis status-quo economic and socio-cultural orthodoxies, this project unpacks the theoretical assumptions that underpin these practices, showing that they perpetuate the same biases and exclusions that generate waste in the first place. As an alternative, the book introduces a nodal and exaptive paradigm for design: a conceptual and methodological toolset for engaging the durational and anthropocenic materiality of the third millennium, and for radically prioritizing practices of maintenance, reuse, care, and co-option. This approach, which is inspired by (and builds upon) evolutionary biology, technological disobedience, queer use, adaptive reuse, experimental preservation, and improvisational practices such as collage, adhocism, bricolage, and kit-bashing, refuses to reduce pre-existing material substrates to abstract lists of properties or featureless lumps, encountering them on their own terms—as situated individuals and co-authors. Ecologies of Inception will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, educators, and professional architects and designers interested in sustainable design and seeking to develop conceptual and design tools commensurate with the magnitude and urgency of the climate emergency.

Stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking about sufficiency Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, identifying where we can make big reductions, while not sweating the small stuff. The international scientific consensus is that we have less than a decade to drastically slash our collective carbon emissions to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees and avert catastrophe. This means that many of us have to cut our individual carbon footprints by over 80% to 2.5 tonnes per person per year by 2030. But where to start? Drawing on Lloyd Alter's journey to track his daily carbon emissions and live the 1.5 degree lifestyle, coverage includes: What it looks like to live a rich and truly green life From take-out food, to bikes and cars, to your internet usage – finding the big wins, ignoring the trivial, and spotting marketing ploys The invisible embodied carbon baked into everything we own and why electric cars aren't the answer How to start thinking about sufficiency rather than efficiency The roles of individuals versus governments and corporations. Grounded in meticulous research and yet accessible to all, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle is a journey toward a life of quality over quantity, and sufficiency over efficiency, as we race to save our only home from catastrophic heating.

This book presents the proceedings of the first International Upcycling Symposium 2020, held on 4th September 2020 at De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, UK (online), as a joint effort between DMU, Lund University, Nottingham Trent University and Newcastle University. This book presents state of the art of research and practice in “upcycling” at the international level. The subject of this book, upcycling, is a term to describe the processes of creating or modifying a product from used or waste materials, components and products, which is of equal or higher quality or value than the compositional elements. This book describes new theories, approaches and scientific research findings related to upcycling and presents examples of upcycling practice, across multiple sectors, scales and contexts. Bringing together research from over 35 multidisciplinary experts, the book discusses state-of-the-art knowledge and practices on upcycling in different geographical, economic, socio-cultural and technological contexts at an international level. Readers will gain fundamental understanding of upcycling with its varied definitions and forms across sectors and scales, and to be informed of the latest upcycling research and practices including valuable ideas, theories, projects, experiences and insights by global experts.

This how-to book provides readers with information they need to get started on a career in metalworking. Included are the history and cultural significance of metalworking, metalworking tools and techniques, metalworking career paths, and highlights of successful metalworkers. Step-by-step projects help readers practice metalworking skills, and idea spreads inspire ways to apply what they've learned. Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo & Daughters is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

What makes this book unique is a specific focus on aluminum recovery, rather than just recycling in general. It also offers an integrated discussion of scrap recovery and re-melting operations and includes economic as well as technical elements of recycling. Important topics include a discussion of the scrap aluminum marketplace and how secondary aluminum is collected and sorted, the design and operation of furnaces for melting scrap, the refining of molten aluminum, and the recovery and processing of dross from re-melting operations. This second edition features more information on aluminum scrap pricing and the economics of recycling, the analysis of dross processing methods currently in use by the industry, and drosses produced. The book has been updated throughout to include the most up-to-date information.

Written for students and practitioners in the fields of architecture and interior design, our new Architecture Brief Sustainable Design provides a concise overview of all the techniques available for reducing the energy footprint of structures and spaces. With clear, simple language and a practical "can-do" approach, author David Bergman covers everything from the profession's ethical responsibility, to design structures and spaces that sustain our natural resources, to specific considerations such as rainwater harvesting, graywater recycling, passive heating techniques, solar orientation, green roofs, wind energy, daylighting, indoor air quality, material evaluation and specification, and how to work with green building certification programs.

The Culture of Nature in the History of Design confronts the dilemma caused by design’s pertinent yet precarious position in environmental discourse through interdisciplinary conversations about the design of nature and the nature of design. Demonstrating that the deep entanglements of design and nature have a deeper and broader history than contemporary discourse on sustainable design and ecological design might imply, this book presents case studies ranging from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from Singapore to Mexico. It gathers scholarship on a broad range of fields/practices, from urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture, to engineering design, industrial design, furniture design and graphic design. From adobe architecture to the atomic bomb, from the bonsai tree to Biosphere 2, from pesticides to photovoltaics, from rust to recycling – the culture of nature permeates the history of design. As an activity and a profession always operating in the borderlands between human and non-human environments, design has always been part of the environmental problem, whilst also being an indispensable part of the solution. The book ventures into domains as diverse as design theory, research, pedagogy, politics, activism, organizations, exhibitions, and fiction and trade literature to explore how design is constantly making and unmaking the environment and, conversely, how the environment is both making and unmaking design. This book will be of great interest to a range of scholarly fields, from design education and design history to environmental policy and environmental history.