环保几年国内外的热门话题，热别是奥运以来，北京加快实施了一系列绿色行动。

Environmental topics have certainly been in the spotlight this year both internationally and in China. Particularly since the Olympics, Beijing has taken an accelerated focus on the environment with green efforts including recycling projects, air quality emissions reductions and water quality control.

One Beijing non profit group is using creative artistic expression as a platform to promote awareness and create unique green events that bring the community together in a good cause.

"Greening the Beige" was founded by Carissa Welton, an American from Anne Arbor Michigan with a zeal for art and a newly boosted spirit of community participation after a plastic bag collection for a music festival in 2007.

Proving their later motto, "One Person's Trash Is Another Person's Art Project," they were able to collect 2000 bags, melt them down into decorative plastic leaves and take them to the "Burning Man Festival" in Nevada to "refoliate" trees made from recycled material.

Since Greening the Beige's official formation, they have planned music events and art exhibits, green themed movie festivals and other interesting projects.

One eccentric way to unite people has been to throw a "trashion Show." The first one was in 2007; using the plastic bags collected for the Burning Man Festival, a local Chinese designer created a dress that was melted out of 250 bags from Beijing's streets.

This month, literally 'embodying' the slogan, "Eco=chic, Gorgeous-n-Green," designers are competing by wearing everything from simple neckties made out of old flyers to full dresses constructed of bubble wrap.

Futhermore, Carissa tries to involve local students.

"Since the beginning, we've partnered with Raffles Design Institute for our fashion shows, so every year, we've been fortunate to feature at least one fashion design student from Raffles because their students will often do this as a project with old materials old clothing and refashion them into something new for their fashion show. We usually go and pick some of their students' designs."

In addition, Greening the Beige has set up other activities for like-minded "green" people to mingle.

On Saturday, March 27, Greening the Beige takes "Earth Hour" a step further, proving that you can be social and have fun while caring about the environment.

"It's a campaign worldwide calling on people to turn off their lights for one hour to save energy and also raise awareness about energy conservation and practices. We're focusing on living a low carbon lifestyle and joining together with the Hutong School and also Roots and Shoots to start with an English Chinese exchange event. Basically this is to help people who are studying Chinese and also locals that are learning English to focus on environmental topics. "

Greening the Beige relies on the support of locals and the cooperation of other groups like the China Youth Climate Action Network and Global Villages Beijing.

Global Villages Beijing is the environmental activist group that lobbied and petitioned for the cessation of free plastic bags in stores. The lobbying was successful and in 2008, a law was passed banning free plastic bags in the capital, thus curbing "white pollution."

At Beijing's Modern Sky Music Festival 2009, in coordination with the Green Student Forum, Greening the Beige worked with "The Carbon Cube Project" , in which festival attendees painted on large cubes representing the volume of carbon emissions the average Chinese person produces in 11 hours.

They also teamed up with Acupuncture music label to host this month's "trashion show" at Lantern, the label's own club in Sanlitun's 3.3 Mall to support their "dian huan bao wallets" sold at NLGX.

"Because Acupuncture, of course, is an event production company as well, they have a lot of posters and flyers and what happens after the event with all this stuff, does it just go in the garbage? It's a problem in Beijing, since two out of its thirteen landfills are full. It's hard to recycle this type of flyer paper. So what Acupuncture is doing, is designing wallets to start out with, then there will be adding to the accessory line before the year is up."

Additionally, local clothing store NGLX has launched its own line of purses and bags made from laminated newspapers, proving that reusing items can make "fashionable" sense.

The most important aspect in "Greening the Beige" is that people get involved in the effort and Welton says she has noticed improvements since she first arrived in 2004, but she points out that there is still lots to be done.

"I think this really is a project that could last and serve the community here and it does need more of a home based input so we're still working on that and looking for more involvement."

From the looks of it, however, the future is getting greener.