After a fantastic book making workshop with Pet Starr, I was inspired to get creative and produce an artists book based on my poster and printed designs.

I’m specifically developing a “Flag Book” design, an intricate diecut piece (it will be printed and produced by hand), that will showcase some of the various designs I came up with this past year. I’ve gotten good feedback about the prototype, and also had some additional ideas thrown out:

• Produce an e-book, to distribute information and let the consumer decide if they should print it;
• Produce a floor sized book, that could be an interactive piece;
• Produce a grassroots, mainstream book, to be distributed;
• Produce a mockup of a grocery store flier, detailing the issues with bottled water;
• Produce a performance piece, with people entering the grocery store to buy things, and returning bottled water.

So for this spring, I went back to all of my original notes, and started thinking about my original audience: mainstream USA. If I was going to appeal to the mainstream public, I’d have to hit them where it hurts: their wallets.

I started experimenting with the labels themselves – scanning a HUGE number of them from literally, all over the world (continental USA, Bahamas, Saudi Arabia, England, Jamaica, Hawaii, Ireland, Scottland, etc.). I wanted to use these labels in different ways, and pair them with the idea that bottled water is costing the average citizen of the world more than they realize.

Pure Waste and Collage

I kept on with the idea of PureWaste – this could be taken in many ways, but in general, the target was the consumer and the amount of money they were wasting. I think this one, for the first attempt, is interesting. One of my committee members pointed out that the PureWaste logo was more readable (and easier to mistake as “PureWater” as I had intended) when it was in 2 color. So that’s one of the revisions I’ll be working on. Although I like the boldness of the design, I’ll probably experiment with simplifying this – maybe in the form of the bottle.

Pure Waste – Paste-Up Style

I started looking at the typography on the labels and how different it was, from vendor to vendor. It was interesting to me, how certain “local” companies would try to incorporate some local lore, or cultural aspect into the typography and name. I started experimenting with the PureWaste idea, but in the old style paste-up (think ransom letter). I liked it, and ran with it for some of the other designs.

These variations play with the idea that bottled water and money are directly related. I liked the overlapping nature of the PureWaste idea with other images. Again, I think refining and simplifying the design will help.

Halftone Poster Design

Probably the least developed, this design investigates the “promises” made on various labels. It amazed me the promises listed on some of these labels – health, vitality, youth. The tacky printing and design was another thing that really struck me. Many of the labels were printed poorly and you could easily see the halftone moiree patterns on the printed labels. I’ll probably explore this more, once I get more of a grip on where I’m going with it.

Keen – a very cool, environmentally conscious shoe company – recently held a contest. I entered my work, and although I didn’t win (sad day), my work is featured along with all of the other entries

Click here to see my entry >>

Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

In all seriousness, there are some really amazing people doing work in the field. I enjoyed just seeing the entries from other candidates.

ECO-SPUN CLOTHING (now Eco-fi)

http://www.eartheasy.com/wear_ecospun.htm

Eco-spun is a synthetic polyester fiber that is used to create fleece fabrics used in many high end clothing products made by companies such as Patagonia, Sierra Club, Blue Lotus, etc.

The clothing is actually quite hard to find, in the mainstream stores. I’ve been able to find it online as well as in specialty shops. It’s a bit more expensive, but its marketed to the outdoorsman, due to it’s soft texture, and warm, durable, waterproof features. The price is probably comparable to other high end hiking or workout clothing.

I found A02 socks online that were about $15 per pair – equivalent to what I would pay for higher end, waterproof running socks in the past. They also had hybrid socks, with a combination of products, including Ecospun.

It presents some interesting information about the process that recycles the bottles and creates the fiber. Wellman, the manufacturer, makes this claim:

“ Wellman has the capacity to keep almost 3 billion plastic PET soda bottles out of the world’s landfills each year, saving over 1/2 million barrels of oil and eliminating 400,000 tons of harmful air emissions which contribute to acid rain, global warming and smog. The amount of petroleum saved by using post-consumer bottles instead of virgin materials in the manufacturing process annually is enough to supply power to a city the size of Atlanta for an entire year!“

FOSS MANUFACTURING: Eco-Fi

Another company producing fabric from recycled bottles, Foss produces Eco-Fi. This synthetic fiber is created from 100% recycled plastic PET bottles, and is used in clothing, blankets, carpets, auto interiors and more. “AN EASY GUIDE: 10 bottles = 1 pound of fiber“

Foss has gotten quite a bit of press from various news outlets, but again, their products are hard to find and don’t seem to be widely advertised in the mainstream. They offer interesting statistics, as well as the lifecycle of how the fabric is made:

Facts

• Two million plastic bottles are used in the U.S. every ten minutes and 51 billion plastic bottles go into landfills annually.
• The 51 billion plastic bottles in U.S. landfills end-to-end would wrap around the earth 5 times.
• It will take 700 years before plastic bottles in landfills start to decompose.
• Less than 30% of plastic bottles in the U.S. are actually recycled.
• Currently only 11 U.S. states have direct deposit.

Lifecycle of Eco-fi:
Plastic PET containers are picked up at curbside and community recycling centers, and then sorted by type and color. They are stripped of their labels and caps, washed, and crushed, then chopped into flake. These tiny pieces are melted and extruded to create fiber. The fiber produced is crimped, cut, drawn and stretched into desired length for strength, then baled. The baled fiber can be processed into fabric for a variety of textile product end uses.

OZITE TEXTILES: Carpets

Ozite uses 100% Eco-spun in their products, which are mostly indoor/outdoor carpets (used outside in patios and garages, or in basements). They offer more information on their website, and seem to be more accessible. They don’t sell directly to the public, but their products are available in mainstream stores like Home Depot.

They seem to be popular with the racing and auto industries because of their durability, and steadfastness.

I found this interesting – again, not necessarily directly related to the bottled water crisis, but relevant in many ways.

Home-Front Ecology >>

“ The World War II home front was the most important and broadly participatory green experiment in U.S. history. Is it a model we should use today? “

Not directly related to the bottled water issue, but along the same lines. In general it means being a more aware consumer.

25 Ways to Save Water

BottlesandCans.com

The California Conservation Department runs the Bottles and Cans website which gives California residents the skinny on how, what and where they can recycle not only bottles, but cans and glass.

The Consumer Recycling Calculator lets consumers see how much money they could make by recycling. Considering one of the biggest problems with bottled water happens to be the fact that consumers are – on average – not recycling, this seems to be a valuable resource.

Michael Niman is a professor at Buffalo State College who reflects on the issues of bottled water. He spotlights Fiji Water as one example, but points out the resounding issues with bottled water in itself.

Bottled Insanity, originally published in ArtVoice

He coins the term “designer water” and uses Fiji Water and their artesian water as an example. He points out that the positives with the bottled water craze in that it means people are drinking less sugar-laden soda – one contributing factor to the obesity crisis in the US.

But he points out the irony of the situation at hand: that oftentimes we are living in areas with some of the best and cleanest tap water in the world (like the Great Lakes, in his example), and yet we buy water that is transported from half way around the world.

In addition, we have people living in places like Fiji, where there are often critical water shortages. And a huge plant sits in the middle of it, with hundreds of thousands of filled water bottles.

“Currently it takes about 63 million gallons of oil per year to manufacture disposable water bottles for US consumption.”

Fossil fuels are burned in order to produce, box, transport and ship bottled water. He points out that this energy-intensive process ends 85% of the time in a landfill, where PET bottles are incinerated and release toxins, and can take 1000 years to degrade.

Runaway Train

Tick, Tick, Tick

These ads were taken from the Fight Global Warming website. The runaway train ad, personally, to me is the most powerful. It really conveys the idea that our actions will affect our future – regardless of whether it’s your child, your niece, or the kid down the block.

This blog will be a repository for the online research I’ve done on information about the multi-billion dollar bottled water industry.

Specifically, I will document information regarding the environmental ramifications of unrecycled bottles, as well as the advertising practices and design trends that the general public finds themselves exposed to.

And, I’ll post some of my evolving work here