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Here’s the thing about recycling: It’s a lot like voting, in that its effectiveness depends on its scale. Millions of people recycling can make a huge difference, as can millions of people voting. Unfortunately, the majority of the world’s waste is not recycled. Let’s look at the United States: According to the EPA, Americans generated [...]
Here’s an intriguing proposition from toymaker Arvind Gupta: Could we use trash to build inexpensive learning tools for children? In this video from Ted.com, Gupta demonstrates how several of his toys are built. His passion is as impressive as his inventiveness. Seriously: This man is the MacGyver of toys. With nothing more than a few [...]
A different way to build a house #61 – Building a house for $3,500
by Marshall Brain | December 8, 2010
This video describes a very interesting project – it is a house built for less than $3,500. Obviously such a house will be relatively small (128 square feet). Not so obviously it is built on a trailer frame so it can legally be that small. And a great deal of the material used to build [...]
I recycled while living in my last two apartments, but the recycling options offered at my current apartment complex are kind of crummy, so I got out of the habit. That started making me feel guilty a few months back — especially since I was writing articles about topics like global food crises and what a moneyless world would look like — so I decided to make an effort to get better about it…
When watching this video, it seems like one of those too-good-to-be-true schemes. A simple machine takes discarded plastic and easily turns it into usable oil:…
It looks a little like one of those scam videos that say, “power your HDTV with an orange” or “make a glow stick from Mountain Dew”.
But apparently it is real…
Asphalt is one of those things, like water and electricity, that no American could live without. Most American roads (96%) are paved in asphalt, meaning that our commutes and our shopping trips depend on the stuff. Everything we buy at the store comes in via truck on those same roads, so without asphalt there would be nothing to buy. Millions of tons of asphalt are made and laid every year in the U.S. Yet we tend take asphalt completely for granted. Let’s take a look at how this essential material works…
Is it possible to make clothes out of recycled plastics?
by Marshall Brain | July 21, 2010
You Asked:
Is it possible to make clothes out of recycled plastics? — Christy, Texarkana, Texas
Marshall Brain Answers…
The idea behind recycling is to take trash, break it back down into raw materials and then reuse those raw materials to make new things.
The idea behind upcycling is to take trash itself as a raw material and use it to make new things. The trash directly becomes part of the new object. If you think about it, quilting is a very old example of upcycling.
Here is an example of modern upcycling. In the following video, plastic shopping bags are fused together to make a fabric that is then used to make a messenger bag…
This video contains several amazing, startling facts about the use of disposable coffee cups (like the kind you get at Starbucks) in the United States…
It’s fairly easy for us to pursue avenues toward sustainability in the developed West. We’ve made a ton of cash from operating all the machinery that’s prematurely unleashed the massive amounts of carbon into the carbon cycle from burning fossil fuels. We’re pretty flush, so we can do things like divert a quarter of the 33 million metric tons of corn the U.S. produced in 2007 into cellulosic ethanol production.
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