What’s old is new again: reusing with style in the visitors’ center

Feb 2016

 

An old bathtub, a metal barrel, a cooking pot and gas range grates: they’ve all received a new lease on life in our Outlook visitors’ center. Cleaned, cut, painted and reworked by the JUNKTION design studio, they’ve now beautiful and surprisingly comfortable furniture for our guests.

 

Reuse is one of the most effective ways of reducing the quantity of refuse sent to landfills — a high priority item among the range of challenges facing countries around the world — especially small countries like Israel. Reuse means finding more uses for products after they’ve finished serving their original purpose, but it shouldn’t be confused with recycling.

 

Recycling means turning refuse into raw materials to create new products, while reuse means extending the life of the original product by exploiting its characteristics to serve an identical or similar purpose. Reuse isn’t a new idea: hand-me-down clothing is one example familiar to all of us.

 

In Israel reuse is the second-most important means for reducing refuse, ranked behind the reduction of material use at the source (which eliminates the creation of refuse in the first place) and just ahead of recycling and energy creation from waste materials.

 

In addition to furniture gracing the visitors’ center, you can find many other repurposed articles in the Outlook gift shop – useful, everyday items for environmentally-conscious consumers, carefully chosen for their environmental and/or social value. Made by social-responsible businesses and businesses employing people with disabilities, these multiple-use products – made from reused or recycled materials — help reduce resource use. They include reusable bottles and baskets, solar chargers, wallets and baskets made from old trucks tires, cushions made from obsolete army tents, stools made from discarded metal and wood scrap, bulletin boards composed of reused wine corks (made by a factory employing at-risk girls), earrings made from espresso machine capsules,
trash cans made from outdoor signage, decorative bowls and lampshades made from recycled plastic bottle tops, and more and more.

 

Stop in, check out the selection and start reusing!!