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Given that environmentalism has become so deeply important to us for completely legitimate reasons (oil spill anyone?) and the desire of designers to try something–anything–new, it’s not surprising how many products and projects are constantly popping up using and re-using basic materials. These days, you can plant your shipping boxes, and with recycled and upcycled newspaper projects like these, you can even live, build, and garden with stacks of old newspapers. Finally, being a newspaper hoarder might actually pay off.

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Artist Sumer Erek’s Newspaper House, featured on Treehugger, was constructed out of rolled newspapers that anyone could bring in to add to the house as part of a public art project, designed to raise awareness of waste. The artist points out that “Newspapers pile up in our houses, lie on the streets and on public transport. […] We are urged to consume without thinking about how to discard. The first step is inviting people to think about and value the material itself, and to consider the issue of ‘waste’.” He sounds a little like a therapist–”knowing is the first step”–though I’m pretty sure he’s about $150 per hour cheaper.

Threading the Needle

At the other end of the size spectrum, Greetie van Tiem spins 20 yards of paper yarn from a single sheet of newspaper. Green Upgrader claims this yarn is almost as strong as regular yarn and can be woven into almost anything when spun tightly and woven. And while you only need three things to do it in seven steps, one of those things is a spindle, which means, against all logic, that newspaper house might be a simpler project.

Seed-Stage Investing

Probably a bit more practical for the everyday newspaper reader and the everyday homeowner, the paper pot maker, available from Seed and Garden, is a simple tool that lets you turn your old newspapers into seed starting pots. The wood tool presses strips of newspaper into 3″ paper pots with a twist of the tool. Because the pots are just paper, you can drop them right into your garden.

I may aspire to newspaper houses and spinning yarn, but this I–and anyone–can actually do. And I hear knowing is the first step–now we all know what we can do.