Made from the corpse of a 1997 BMW 528i salvaged from a junkyard and other recycled parts, this DIY electric car beats the Tesla Model S P100D’s mile range at a tiny fraction of the cost. The Tesla boasts a range of 335 miles per charge, while the ‘Phoenix’ by Eric Lundgren gets 380 miles. Lundgren and his team built the Phoenix in 35 days for just $13,000, and hopes the attention his trash car is getting will encourage carmakers with more cash to do more material recycling.

Founder and CEO of information technology organization ITAP, Lundgren bought the 20-year-old E39 generation BMW 528i and removed most of the interior – including the rear seats, dashboard, center console and trim – in order to save weight (yes, that’s the catch.) He added a 130kWh battery pack that uses cells from EV and laptop batteries to power the car, which takes up most of the space where the backseat would normally be.

To test his creation, Lundgren pitted it against three popular electric vehicles: the Tesla, a Chevy Bolt and a Nissan Leaf. All four competed in a trip across Southern California to see which one would last the longest. The Leaf ran out of juice first after 81 miles, followed by the Model S at 238 miles. The Bolt managed to squeak out 271. The BMW never ran out of range at all – instead, it blew a fuse after 340 miles with 32 percent of its charge left on its battery pack. In a second test, the Phoenix ran directly against the Tesla, getting 382 miles to the 100D’s 315.

Clearly, the fact that so much of its weight has been removed while the Tesla is loaded down with luxury options makes a difference in the result, but so should the fact that Tesla is working with top-quality, brand-new parts. For Lundgren, that’s not really the point.

“Re-use is the purest form of recycling. It creates zero carbon footprint. Re-using parts/components within broken/obsolete electroncis is called ‘hybrid recycling.’ This is a much-needed and often missing part of the recycling ecosystem.”

Using scraps from start to finish, this shrink-wrap approach to furniture is not only greener but faster and leaner, requiring less by way of specialized skills or tools and allowing people to build easier do-it-yourself objects. A project of Micaella Pedros for the Royal College of Art, the Joining Bottles project uses heat to shrink plastic around wood joints, collected from around London, locking them together.

“The idea is about taking a plastic bottle, cutting it, and then putting it around two pieces of wood., Pedros explains. “Then I heat it so it shrinks and creates a joint.” The key part of the process is the notching of the wood, which gives the plastic a way to grip the disparate pieces and lock them firmly into place.

Traditionally, joinery is the most complex, time-consuming and often high-tech part of the furniture-making process, making this innovative approach a welcome alternative for those without the time and resources to spend months building custom pieces.

On the flip side, cutting and notching tools are commonplace and able to be improvised, meaning: a would-be Joining Bottles-type builder would not need access to a sophisticated wood shop. Scissors, a hair dryer or other heating element and simple carving tools will suffice. They key is in making the connections follow common sense: flat-to-flat helps, and complex angles may fail.

This is not about marketing a new line of garbage chic furniture, but about sharing knowledge about easier ways for ordinary people to upcycle everyday trash. “The core idea of the project is not to sell the products I’m building but more about sharing the principle and sharing the technique.” She is running workshops to show people how to follow her lead, enabling them to walk in with junk and walk out with furniture.

The idea hinges on the global similarity of plastic bottles amid a sea of different types of wood. Basically, anyone in any place can find the same plastics and use them to connect whatever woods are locally available. The aesthetic results are up to the end user (or maker): there are many ways one could refine the look and feel of this general design approach.

A collection of unlikely (often discarded) objects coupled with a light source can create amazing city scenes, landscapes, portraits and more in the hands of this artist.

Rashad Alakbarov hails from Azerbaijan and experiments with different materials and setups to turn three-dimensional trash into rich two-dimension displays of all shapes and sizes.

Some of these, including the top installation featured here, were on display last year at the Fly to Baku Contemporary Art Exhibition at the De Pury Gallery in London, UK.

A few pieces contain custom built-to-purpose shapes, like plastic versions of paper airplanes in the top example, while others simply draw on urban junk or everyday objects.

There is something playful and informal about his approach. Alakbarov takes inspiration from items at hand to start crafting skylines or other scenes that unfold partly from his imagination, but also in part from the nature of the materials in each case.

These chaotic and random collections of objects placed on pedestals don’t seem gallery-worthy on first glance, but shine a light upon them in just the right way, and something magical occurs. These bits of broken glass, disassembled furniture and household objects created by Diet Wiegman transform into Michelangelo’s David, the Venus de Milo, hovering chairs or Michael Jackson.

While Wiegman is not the only artist producing light and shadow art of this kind, he seems to have been the first; most of these works were created in the 1980s. In addition to these light and shadow sculptures, Wiegman is known for ceramics that mimic broken and rusted junkyard finds, from crumpled tin cans to pieces of old gears.

Wiegman has a gift for seeing beauty in the most unexpected places, whether in these surprising sculptures or in his still-life photography of his own art juxtaposed with trash and a cast of a human head. See his entire portfolio at his Tumblr.