In the future we might paint our homes with dead Christmas trees
Lots of folks celebrate Christmas by stashing their presents under the same reusable plastic and aluminum wire Christmas tree every winter: it's a thoughtful, cost-efficient way to cut down on the...
View ArticleIndia's e-waste recycling "markets" are toxic nightmares filled with child...
Millions of tons of e-waste -- much of it from rich countries like Australia -- are recycled in India, in "markets" with terrible, dangerous working conditions and equally awful environmental...
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Inside an incredible "prop library" of vintage electronics and obsolete...
Brooklyn's LES Ecology Center maintains an incredible library of vintage consumer electronics cherry-picked from the relentless flow of e-waste streaming through their facility. From hulking...
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Coffee cups made from coffee grounds
Back in 2011, I bought a new countertop made from "Curface," a composite material made from a mix of melted down used coffee cups and coffee grounds; we still have it and it's wearing beautifully --...
View ArticleRecycling center recovers $23,000 in cash that man accidentally tossed
An Ashland, Oregon man dropped an old shoebox into his recycling bin, somehow forgetting that he had stashed $23,000 in the box. He contacted the Recology recycling center in California where the haul...
View ArticleMan ordered to retrieve the refrigerator he threw down a cliff
A man in Almeria, Spain, disposed of an old fridge by throwing it down a steep incline. Thinking it amusing, he had video recorded of the act and posted to social media. It went viral, the authorities...
View ArticleApple's extension of "Activation Locks" to laptops will turn refurbishable...
"Activation Lock" is a tool that uses Apple's trusted computing hardware to render systems inoperable if you don't have a login/password; nominally, this is used for theft-deterrence, but when Apple...
View ArticleAthletes at the Tokyo Olympics will sleep on cardboard beds
The 10,000+ athletes at the Tokyo Olympics will sleep on bed frames made of strong cardboard. According to the Athletes Village manager Takashi Kitajima, the frames can hold up to 200 kilograms (440...
View ArticleWatch this ridiculous and wonderful low-budget remake of Alien, by the...
It's been five years since the recycling auteurs at Cardboard Movie Co. released "Jurassic Park: Low-budget Remake." Now they are back with the xenomorphtastic "Alien: Low-budget Remake." Were you...
View ArticleBig Oil has been lying about plastic recycling since at least 1974
NPR's Planet Money has a harrowing new story about the plastic recycling industry — specifically, that the entire thing is built on a lie that the oil industry perpetuated for decades, despite knowing...
View ArticlePolice confiscate 345,000 used condoms destined for resale
Police in Vietnam broke up a criminal ring that collected used condoms, rinsed them, and resold them, reports Reuters. The owner of the warehouse said they had received a "monthly input of used condoms...
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The overlooked environmental impacts of the music industry
Over at The New Yorker, Alex Ross has a great review of Kyle Devine's new book Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. Here's the book's official blurb: Music is seen as the most immaterial of the...
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How China ended the lie of recyclable plastic
The plastics industry did a great job of convincing everyone that their product was easily recyclable, but China finally put an end to that pleasant fiction in 2017. A 2017 memo sent by China to the...
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Creating a UV curing oven for resin using grocery bags
If you get Amazon Fresh or similar food deliveries, you are likely familiar with the silver-foil insulated freezer bags that frozen foods come in. These quickly multiply in Tribbles-like numbers. I'm...
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The US exports its plastic waste. But now other countries are rejecting it.
When it comes to plastic, recycling has almost always been a lie. But that guilt-free plastic consumption is so built into our infrastructure and way of life that we keep insisting on living that lie...
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Watch: animation shows how much "recycled" plastic Britain dumps abroad
This animation from Greenpeace UK offers an amusing impression of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson sputtering platitudes about recycling while plastic bottles, boxes and other trash falls like rain and...
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New York City recycling facilities receive 1,200 bowling balls each year
Sims Municipal Recycling in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood is the country's largest recycling facility. And as Curbed recently explained, they've been overwhelmed by unrecyclable bowling balls for...
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Watch: Vegan leather made out of mangoes
A company in the Netherlands is utilizing what would otherwise be wasted food to create vegan leather. Fruitleather receives free leftover mangoes from the quality control sector of a Dutch fruit...
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Norway tells military to return their undies and bras after service so new...
In Norway, there's nothing new about men and women in the military returning their uniforms after serving 12 to 19 months so that new conscripts can wear them. But now they must also return their...
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"Pacific Magazine Billing" sent me a bill for a magazine I don't subscribe to
I don't subscribe to any magazines. The only paper magazine I've purchased in the last few years is an issue of Monocle I bought two months ago and haven't read yet. So I was surprised to receive an...
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This factory in India makes teddy bears stuffed with used cigarette butts
Naman Gupta of Noida, India, started a business making teddy bears stuff with used cigarette butts. He pays ragpickers to collect butts in the street. Then Gupta's employees carefully separate the...
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Chopsticks are a massive waste problem. This company recycles them.
Across the globe, we humans throw away more than 80 billion pairs of chopsticks every year. AtlasObscura explains: For more than 5,000 years, chopsticks have been the preferred dining utensil of a...
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In Belgium, you can recycle your hair
An NGO in Belgium is collecting human hair from salons to recycle it into big squares that act as sponges for water pollutants. Project Co-founder Patrick Janssen, explaining that 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs)...
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1000 aluminum cans transformed into a beautiful electric guitar
How does one turn 1000 aluminum cans into an electric guitar? Burl's Art shows us his process from start to finish. He collected soda cans for over a year from camping trips and BBQs. Next, he spent 3...
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Sewage to be recycled into drinking water, as California battles drought
One of the many strategies California has been planning to help manage its limited water resources is coming to fruition. After a decade of work, the draft plans for using highly purified sewage as...
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Lego gives up on making bricks with recycled plastic, for now
Lego developed high-quality bricks made of recycled plastic, but producing them uses so much energy the carbon footprint is even worse. It's giving up on its plan to introduce them for sale, for now....
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Plastic bag recycling project gives up the ghost
A key national plastic bag recycling project is shutting down following a recent ABC News exposé. The operators cite industry indifference, lack of funding and credibility problems such as those...
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A brief history of the recycling lies told by the plastics industry
Watch as the plastics industry is called out for decades of fake recycling claims. Turns out trash isn't the only thing they're full of. Recycling has been a story fed to consumers to make us believe...
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NASA offering $3 million for lunar recycling ideas
The plan for NASA's Artemis program includes multiple moon missions, with the ultimate goal of establishing Artemis Base Camp, the first permanent outpost on the moon. While it's not the most glamorous...
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Black plastic take-out containers may be toxic
You may want to throw out your black plastic cooking utensils and swap your food out of that takeout container while you are at it. A recent study in the journal Chemosphere found toxic flame...
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