As building standards continue to push towards a more sustainable and energy efficient environment, lighting holds abundant promise to meet these challenges. Exciting developments in green lighting technology yields increasingly high performance light bulbs with good color renditions. On another front, designers are forging ahead to create sustainable lighting from recycled materials. Below are some eco-friendly fixtures that meet one or both criteria. Just to liven things up, I’ve included some innovative products that inherently emit light, even though they aren’t light fixtures in the traditional sense. Enjoy!
Go Green Stoplight hanging lamp from Greenlight Concepts is available in 3 traffic light colors and 2 sizes. As more cities switch to LED traffic lighting, cast glass lenses from the mounting pile of discarded traffic signals can be upcycled into these retro-cool lamps.
French designer Gilles Eichenbaum transforms old kitchenware such as kettles, colanders and broken toasters into lighting fixtures that are veritable works of art.
Winner of the Phillips Bright Ideas competition, this organic looking lamp can be made from any translucent bottle that allows for clean perforations.
Renowned Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake created the ‘IN-EI’ – Japanese for ‘shadow, shadiness, nuance’ – collection in collaboration with Artemide. Amazingly the fixtures are each made from a single piece of fabric. Folds in the lamp shade causes the play of light and shadow through layering.
The eco-friendly shade material is recycled from PET bottles using a technology that reduces both energy consumption and CO2 emissions up to 40% compared to new production. The fabric, with a special surface treatment, allows the shades to keep their shape without an internal frame and can be re-shaped as needed.
Another lighting fixture made from the humble coat hanger. These shoulder-shaped velvet hangers, which are stacked in a neat spiral, casts a delicate tracery of light on the surrounding walls.
Molo portable products come in ‘wall’ or ‘block’ form and can be compressed, expanded or rearranged as required. The flexible structure modulates ambient lighting through the interplay between the LED lighting strips, white (translucent) and black (opaque) partitions.
Floor lamp with a twist. Made from cardboard boxes and treated with a non-toxic fire retardant the Stellar scraplight by Graypants takes its inspiration from the stars, warping the familiar 5-point shape into a tubular abstraction.
Re-sink by architect Bruno Bondanelli redefines the bathroom experience by turning the sink into a lighting fixture. It’s available with dimmable, static LED or programmable color changing RGB LED strips. The basins are hand cast in Italy using environmentally safe pigments and resins.
Dutch Architect Anja Verdonk created this attractive Booklight. The paper lampshade can be upcycled from any type of printed matter, be it recycled comic strips, sheet music, or literary novels.