Use Less Paper This Earth Day

The amount of brochures and flyers I have received since coming to this country hurts my heart. It seems to me that we can do without all of the paper we waste every day. It pains me to throw a portion of it away, because let's face it, I'd drown in it if I didn't. And recycling is not always available.

Or is it? It is in the very spirit of origami to reuse paper when you are done with it. In ancient Japan, paper was not as cheap as it is today, so people made pretty things out of used paper so as not to waste it. 

So this Earth Day, try to use less paper, and instead of your expensive patterned origami paper, why not try reusing some old flyers you have lying around? All those extra sheets and leaflets you've accumulated would be perfect for making a kusudama or other modular origami that requires several pieces of paper. Check out my Earth Day kusudama from last year.

You can also use it to make your 1000 paper cranes. Honestly, who has the money to buy special paper for a project like that? Or simply try these nice Earth Day-appropriate models!

Lizard

Origami jumping frog by Toshikazu Kawasaki

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day 2013

We are nearing the end of April, and it's still cold and rainy here in Lebanon. Some people in Canada are still  snowed in, and winter just does not seem to want to leave. It makes me think, today especially, how bad we must have been to our Earth to make it so confused. 

It is no tragedy when thousands of people die in an earthquake, hurricane or flood; it's just nature fighting back. The real tragedy is how we turn a deaf ear to her desperate cries for help. Winter in the middle of spring, and summers which stretch out well into autumn should be a sign that something is terribly wrong. Or is it just me?

To put my conscience at ease, I decided to make today's origami out of reused paper.

This frog looks nothing like the original design.

There is always used paper lying around, so why not make something out of it? That is after all the idea behind origami, and this blog for that matter.

I made my very first kusudama following this tutorial. Kusudama often require a lot of paper. This model for instance uses 30 units (no wonder I'd never had the courage to make one before), so try putting all that paper you were going to toss out to good use and make something decorative and neat (those of you who have read this blog before know that when I say neat, I mean "cool", "cute", "interesting", not the other thing, which my models very seldom are.)

 


And if you don't have anyone to impress, or if you've already snazzed-up your living quarters enough (seriously, are your parents/roommates starting to complain?) you can make something useful out of scraps of paper.

We use these little boxes around the office sometimes. Pages from magazines and flyers printed on glossy paper work best and are often colorful. For instructions on how to make this origami box, visit this older blog post.

As a child, I wanted to be an environmentalist/conservationist/zoologist. I later realized that it was a lost cause, and that Mother Nature was beyond help. Maybe if I had gone through with my dream, the Earth would have been saved by now. The thought will forever haunt me!