It seems as though some folks upgrade their cell phone every six months. For them, and for people who want to do the right thing with their genuinely worn out phone but don’t have a lot of time, CNET reports there is now the EcoATM.
Just deposit your device in the free-standing machine and it will use cameras and other metrics to examine its condition. It then offers the customer a gift card or in-store credit toward a new phone. If the phone is broken or just hopelessly obsolete, it will offer customers the option of recycling it responsibly. They may even be rewarded for their eco-responsibility with a free cell phone case and the promise that EcoATM will plant a tree in that person’s name.
Suppose you wanted to build a house made of plastic. You could go showy and build the structure out of Legos as a stunt, or you could do something practical and develop a method to repurpose granulated plastic as an aggregate in cement.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Masters of Architecture graduate Henry Miller chose the latter. As reported by inhabitat.com, the resulting material is as strong as concrete made with mined aggregate. Moreover, it creates a compelling new market for used plastic as the material simply needs to be ground up, circumventing the expensive and energy-intensive recycling process. For his efforts, Miller was awarded first place in the Component Category of the second annual Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World competition.
The PBS program “Curious George” featured a segment in which children were given a tour of Casella Waste Systems‘ recently renovated Zero-Sort recycling center in Charlestown, Mass. The clip highlights a now well-established waste industry fact: Kids are fascinated by single-stream sorting technology.
Hey ladies: Perhaps you consider yourself environmentally savvy. You use canteens and reusable shopping bags. You’ve been recycling since the ’70s. You compost every scrap in your kitchen. But if you live in Japan, you could be doing more!
Earlier this year, Wacoal, Japan’s largest undergarment manufacturer, began collecting used bras for recycling. The company distributed recycling bags, asking customers to fill them with worn out lingerie and send them back. So far, the company has collected 350 bags containing about 36,000 old bras. Ultimately, the 3.59 tons of busted brassieres will be processed and used as solid fuel.
Dolly Parton, eager to do her part, has requested several freight shipping containers from the company.
In case you hadn’t heard, it snows in Colorado — A LOT. And according to meteorologists, with an El Nino weather pattern in effect, Colorado is due to get even more snow than usual this winter. So how to convey the potential destructive force of all that snow when it accumulates on the roof of an average home? Why, throw a garbage truck up there, of course!
The Do It Yourself Network show “Disaster House” demonstrates the effects of various natural and manmade disasters that might befall a home and, subsequently, what it takes to repair that damage. To simulate how a heavy snowfall can collapse a pitched roof, the show’s producers used a crane to lower a 19-foot rear-loader onto an (presumably unoccupied) Englewood, Colo. home, with predictably spectacular results.
Good luck finding the clause in your homeowner’s policy that covers this particular eventuality.
The Glass Packaging Institute (GPI) will kick off Recycle Glass Week, Sept. 21 – 27, 2009. To raise recycling awareness and help launch the event, the organization has released a public service announcement featuring “Little Bottle,” the event’s mascot. Little Bottle is one of the stars of Saint-Gobain Containers’ 15-minute animated feature, “The Adventures of Captain Cullet and The Little Gob o’ Glass: A Story of Hope and Recycling,” (I swear I did not make that title up) created last year for use in schools with third and fourth grade school-age children.
Throughout Recycle Glass Week, GPI and its member companies will hold over 50 events and activities to promote recycling awareness in 22 states across the country. Visit www.gpi.org to locate a nearby event. Activities will be added daily as Recycle Glass Week approaches.
A very engaging story in the New York Times profiles Dan Phillips of Huntsville, Texas, who builds whimsical homes using reclaimed construction and demolition debris, discarded wine corks, bottle butts, cow skeletons, and anything else that comes to hand. The results are cheap, energy efficient homes of considerable charm that stand as monuments to the power of recycling.
Phillips’ construction company, Phoenix Commotion, develops the projects as low-income housing, often requiring the potential homeowner to participate in the build, ala Habitat for Humanity. “I think mobile homes are a blight on the planet,” Phillips tells the Times. “Attractive, affordable housing is possible and I’m out to prove it.”
What ever would we do without our favorite cultural provocateurs, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)? The organization has received a great deal of press for its recent spate of advertisements (and rejected advertisements) that overtly use sex to promote a vegetarian lifestyle. Now, they want to slap that steamy message on a garbage truck. Because, if I’m being honest, the two things that usually spring to mind when I gaze upon a trash-filled rear-loader is 1) “H-O-T!” and 2) “I should really give up meat.”
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, the group petitioned Topeka, Kan. Mayor Bill Bunten with a $6,000 offer to adorn one of the city’s recycling collection trucks with an image of a pert blonde in a lettuce-leaf bikini and the admonition “Vegetarians Do It to Save the Planet!” The move came after the city accepted $3,000 from KFC to fill potholes in the city’s roads and topped them with advertisements for the fast food establishment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bunten declined PETA’s offer.
So you gave into peer pressure and nabbed yourself that ubiquitous geek totem, an iPhone. Well now you can cleanse your sin of conspicuous consumption by cladding that sleek device in a dowdy or bizarre but very environmentally friendly case made of recycled or repurposed material. I give you not one but TWO lists of eco-friendly iPhone cases as provided by Greenlist and elephantjournal.com.
It seems as though some folks upgrade their cell phone every six months. For them, and for people who want to do the right thing with their genuinely worn out phone but don’t have a lot of time, CNET reports there is now the EcoATM.
