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I've been offered a 6 week run doing magic with a green or ecological theme. I E. Save the planet, fair trade, biodiversity etc.
The only problem is I haven't a clue where to start looking, or what routines are out there.
Any ideas anyone?

I love the theme, great idea! What sort of magic do you do now, I wouldn't have thought that it's take much to put a green twist on most things.

How about something to do with recycling? A torn & restored theme perhaps?

Water usage management. Using the water in a newspaper trick.

I always seem to arrive at these threads when I'm on the train and lacking imagination!

Get a brick of green bikes in?

Use a change bag to restore torn up waste paper into something useful, a carrier bag, new paper and envelopes etc.

Double check with Mark Stevens @ Steven's Magic here in the U.S. they had an environmental show script & kit some years ago If I recall correctly. There was also a couple of guys producing simple chemical magic routines that had an Awesome variation to the old Water to Ink in which full gallon sized milk jugs were used. . . it was amazingly visual and really delivered a punch to the story about clean water.

I know there's other material out there but my mind draws a blank presently. But check with old timers like Micky Hades in Vancuver, B.C. or Eddie Burke, I bet they'd know of some nifty stuff along those lines.

so far Im thinking "cup and ball" with tin foil to show how a little rubbish mounts up
4 paper drawings of stuff like a phone charger plugged in with no phone, taps left running, driving short distances etc into a change bag, pulling out global warming
torn and restored paper for recycle
I'm hopeing theres some eco minded tricks/routines out there on the market (if not then theres a big hole in the market)

6 card repeat to show sustainability.
Everytime we chop down [discard] a tree we plant more trees, so we always have 6 trees in the forest.

Six card repeat was my first thought.

To build upon mandrakes suggestion, lots of recycled items can be bought from Shared Earth, things like coasters made from drinks cans and carrier bags made from crisp packets. Lob a few items in a change bag (looking like a bin liner?) and bring out your usable recycled product.

A chop cup idea could be using screwed up litter and making it vanish, patter being "out of sight out of mind is not a solution" the litter is still there, just buried (a vanish, with your litter appearing under the cup) and your final load can be a whole bunch of litter tipped out your cup as it all mounts up in landfills.

Do you do rope magic? I don't personally but I saw a good rope act in the Liverpool club which seems it could lend itself to your theme. Rope guys would be better suited to advice but torn and restored is quite obvious but there was a move that spring to mind where you apparently fuse the rope into one long piece and run it in a circle through your hand. The endless cycle of re-use and repair

Have a look at the November issue of Magic magazine, their theme was Green/Eco magic.

Craig Browning wrote: I know there's other material out there but my mind draws a blank presently. But check with old timers like Micky Hades in Vancuver, B.C. or Eddie Burke, I bet they'd know of some nifty stuff along those lines.

Strangely I have just acquired four excellent booklets published by Mickey Hades. These were written by C.V Musson & are called Weird & psychic effects & sure enough there are a few tricks that look interesting..
All these tricks are deigned to imitate the tricks of the early spiritualists & One that could easily fit the recycling/ green requirement is
If a chicken bone is soaked in vinegar for at least 24 hours it goes soft, pliable & elastic. A simple palming allows one normal bone to be examined & then swapped for a soft version, that can be kept & examined by the subject...This could be offered as a environmental alternative to wasting cutlery by bending it, or as a way recycling lunch waste into a toy.

I have just noticed a second effect that may fit your requirement..How about recycling paper???? Say you have some paper that removes writing from paper...Get someone to write on a piece of paper with a fountain pen. Blot the paper ASAP & the writing disappears never to return..The trick is in the blotting paper, you dip the paper in a solution of Oxalic Acid, let it dry & repeat several times. If you immediately blot with this paper before the ink dries, it disappears into the blotter.
Oxalic Acid is currently sold as a wood bleach & it removes stains such as ink with ease & it's not exspensive.
You could prove it's not the ink by getting them to write on a second piece of paper & keep it, to show it's your special blatting paper than cleans paper.

My first thought was turn and restored paper but to demonstrate recycling vanish the ink to produce blank paper that can be reused

If you're vanishing ink from paper, you could do it with a bill switch / torn restored method with folding and unfolding, but before unfolding, wring out the folded paper whilst squeezing a small quantity of 'ink' (doesn't have to be ink, any dark liquid would cut it) from a small plastic bulb concealed in the palm. If you want the trick to be completely recycled from waste the plastic bulb could one of those little disposable soy sauce fishes you get in supermarket sushi meals.

If the 'ink' is edible you could make a gag of it by squeezing it into a cup and drinking it as cover for ditching the still folded scrawled paper in a pocket with a turn to the side as you knock it back.

-Stacy

I was just reading some notes about doing themed shows. The notes were written mainly about children's shows, but the basics hold true for anything.

The author's method was:

First, do a brainstorm about the theme itself. Make a list or an outline or a mind map, or however you want to go about it, thinking of all the various aspects of the theme. So for "green/eco" you can start with recycling, pollution, endangered species, ecosystems, energy generation, resource depletion, etc. and then add subheadings under the big headings (so recycling -> paper, metal, glass, plastic, household sorting, rubbish collection...). Keep going until you've put down everything you can think of about the subject. If you can't think of very much, do some research to spark more. Don't worry about magic for the moment, just note down as many aspects as you can.

Now that you've got all these aspects of the theme, you can begin thinking about your repertoire and matching some of the theme topics to the effects you can do. For instance, an oil-and-water routine could fit with "cleaning up oil spills" or "sorting the recycling".