The Bottle Bank Arcade is a recycling bin that encourages a higher rate of returns by rewarding bottle recyclers with musical notes and tons of fun. It’s one of several kooky and kinetic entries in The Fun Theory competition, which will award £2500 ($4185) for the best idea that proves “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior … be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different.” Registration is currently open and the Contest closes Dec. 15, so enter your project today!
San Francisco already diverts over 72% of its waste from landfills thanks to rigorous recycling efforts, and now the city is set to cut down on trash even more with the country’s first mandatory composting law, which took effect yesterday. Residents and businesses now have six weeks to start composting food waste, plant trimmings, and other items. Needless to say we’re thrilled by this initiative, and we invite everyone to join us as we chat with Mayor Gavin Newsom about it next Wednesday in our final Green Talks webcast!
In the wake of the United State’s recently terminated Car Allowance Rebate System, Russia has announced that it will be implementing a “Cash for Clunkers” program of its own early next year. The plan aims to encourage domestic vehicle sales while emphasizing the environmental benefits of purchasing more energy-efficient vehicles by offering 50,000 rubles (approximately $1,500) for the trade-in of vehicles that are more than 10-years-old towards the purchase of a Russian-made car.
Would seeing exactly where our trash goes change our consumer habits? That’s what a team of MIT researchers set to find out with Project Trash Track. The innovative system uses special electronic tags to track different types of waste in New York and Seattle as it journeys to its final resting place. The ultimate goal of the project will be to monitor the cost and patterns of urban disposal while creating awareness about the impact of trash on the environment.
5 Cheap and Easy Last Minute Ways to Green Your Fourth of July
Maybe you simply didn’t have enough time this year to think about it. Or maybe you’ve already gotten so many biodegradable plates, composting bins and other eco-hookups for your Fourth of July shindig that you feel you can’t possibly get any greener. Wait! Here are a few super simple and practically free ways to make your BBQ, beach bash or rooftop gathering more about celebrating and less about waste. Uncle Sam would be proud!
Aveda is Saving Oceans & Marine Life One Plastic Cap at a Time
Wondering how to turn all of those plastic bottle caps running rampant in your household into a green, planet saving endeavor? Well, lucky for you, and for marine life everywhere, Aveda has come up with an alternative solution for all of the un-recyclable rigid plastic caps that invade your medicine cabinets, refrigerators and kitchen drawers. The very same ubiquitous bottle-toppers pose a dangerous threat to oceans, birds and marine life when they are improperly disposed of and wind up in landfills or sent down storm drains. Aveda’s Caps Recycling Program will re-purpose these toxic plastics as a base for new packaging, in an effort to eliminate them from our oceans before it’s too late.
San Francisco Signs Mandatory Recycling & Composting Laws
Just yesterday On June 23rd, the City of San Francisco signed into effect the nation’s first law mandating that all residents and businesses separate their recycling and compost material from normal trash. While many other cities in the US require recycling, no other city requires separation of food scraps and foot material to be composted. The measure, which will take effect this fall, is intended to help increase landfill diversion rates to 75% by 2010 as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Art Student Creates Invisible Car
What to do if you are a creative young artist with a defunct Skoda Fabia? Why, you make it disappear of course! When University of Central Lancashire art student Sara Watson found herself in possession of an old junker from a local recycling company, she decided to turn it into an incredible piece of environmental art. By painting the vehicle to match the parking lot in front of her art studio’s entrance she created a wonderful and mind-bending optical illusion that acts as a call to recycle.
HOW TO: Recycle Your Holiday Wrapping Paper
Happy Holidays everyone! Now that Christmas has come and gone, we trust that many of you are relaxing and tidying up all those boxes, ribbons and bits of wrapping paper from yesterday’s gift exchanges. Despite many of our best intentions in our gift wrapping …
Thai Temple Built From One Million Recycled Bottles
The Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple has found a way to bottle-up Nirvana, literally. The temple, which sits in Thailand’s Sisaket province, roughly 370 miles northeast of Bangkok is made of more than a million recycled glass bottles. True to its nickname, “Wat Lan Kuad” or “Temple of Million Bottles” features glass bottles throughout the premises of the temple, including the crematorium, surrounding shelters, and yes – even the toilets. There’s an estimated 1.5 million recycled bottles built into the temple, and as you might have guessed, they are committed to recycling more. After all, the more bottles they get, the more buildings they are able to construct.
IS IT GREEN?: HP Printers
HP has rolled out a system that identifies eco-friendly features of its products to customers. It’s called the Eco Highlights label, and it provides quick facts about the product that may or may not convince the customer that it’s environmentally friendly. But as a company inextricably tied to the paper industry, how can HP promote sustainable consumption? We caught up with Michelle Price, HP’s worldwide environmental strategic marketing manager, to ask her a few questions about HP’s latest green initiatives.
Flytipped Furniture by Alexena Cayless
Alexena Cayless of British design collective Farm Designs recently exhibited her wonderful fly-tipped furniture collection at Eco Age and Beyond the Valley in London. Alexena scours the streets for unloved and discarded furnishings and then gives them a brand new lease of life. These white-washed pieces serves as blank canvases for Alexana, who is interested in the interaction of human memory and furniture.
Energy Seed Lamp Powered by Recycled Batteries
Although consumer electronics are tending towards rechargeable batteries these days, those ubiquitous alkaline disposables continue to present an environmental problem. Now Sungwoo Park and Sunhee Kim have designed the Energy Seed, an illuminating way to encourage battery recycling. The street lamp is powered by the residual energy left in spent batteries, establishing an immediate visual connection with the act of recycling. Simply deposit your dead batteries in the cylindrical storage compartment and their energy is pooled to power a luminescent LED halo.
London Design Festival: Designers Visit Recycling Center
Early on a sunlit mid-September morning, on the banks of The Grand Union Canal in London, 25 designers, writers and academics from London Design Festival’s Greengaged hub, took residence on the Beauchamp ‘Electric Barge’ to take a trip to Powerday waste recycling plant in west London. Docked at Little Venice in Paddington, the Beauchamp is a silently-running and environmentally-sound answer to canal travel. Inhabitat writer Kate Andrews was on the trip and shares her insights from the experience.
Los Angeles Bans Plastic Bags!
Welcome Los Angeles to the growing list of countries and municipalities that are taking a stand against plastic bags. Following in the footsteps of Australia, China, Israel, Melbourne, San Francisco and others, the City of Los Angeles has jumped on the plastic bag ban bandwagon to stop the persistent environmental hazards from entering the LA waste stream by 2010.
SECONDHAND PEPE: Following Textile Recycling in Haiti
In the 1960’s US foreign aid to Haiti trickled in in the form of used clothing and the flow hasn’t stopped since. Secondhand Pepe, a documentary film by Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozzi, follows the long journey of discarded garments from the ragyards in Miami, to the archives in London and onto the Pepe markets in Port-au-Prince where they are re-tailored and re-sold to fit the styles and peoples of Haiti.
Recycled Plastic Environmental Art Installation by MSLK
We are always hunting high and low for innovative ways to reduce and reuse the plethora of plastic bags in our midst. The New York-based design firm, MSLK, is currently proposing an innovative and creative way for Inhabitat readers and concerned citizens to link together “2,663 bags” – the alarming amount of bags consumed every second in America – by having folks donate their unwanted plastic sacs to the 2.663 Urban Tumbleweed Project. The jetsam and flotsam of modern life can now be used to visualize just how crucial it is to curb our consumption and laissez-faire attitudes towards the ubiquitous shopping bag.
Read on for details on how you can participate and put household plastic bags to good use for this collaborative crusade>>
GOONJ PROJECT: Textile Recycling Initiative in New Delhi
Turning one person’s waste into another person’s resource, the magnificent GOONJ project is setting a truly sustainable mindset in the heart of the Indian capital New Delhi. Taking the idea of recycling would be waste to a whole new level, the GOONJ project has become well established as a distribution network able to reach the poorest areas of India.
Promising New Service Tackles e-waste in Mumbai
Half a million tons of e-waste is generated annually in India and is a serious threat to people’s health and the environment. The flourishing Indian IT sector contributes a large part of it. The disposal of this waste is a big problem and the waste leaves a huge carbon footprint. E-waste in India is dismantled and recycled manually in a hazardous, unorganized and unsafe manner. However, a new service launched in Mumbai could soon change the face of e-waste recycling and disposal in India.
SUSTAINABLE STYLE: Brazilian-Chic Sin Sandals by Melissa
We love our sustainable sandals here at Inhabitat, so we were psyched to come upon more styles of cute Melissa shoes to help us glide into the sizzling summer months. Melissa’s Brazilian-made Sin Sandal is undeniably hot on the style circuit while also being coolly constructed out of totally recyclable, hypoallergenic thermoplastic. A slip on does not get any more comfortable than this, as the Sin Sandal custom molds to one’s feet for a comfy leather and rubber free alternative to flip-flop shuffling. We loved Melissa’s sexy red kitten heels from earlier in the season, and now the company has created another way for us be environmentally responsible while also living in total Sin!
WEARABLE COLLECTIONS: Recycled Clothing Initiative
Wearable Collections, a non-profit charity initiative, is leading the crusade to reduce textile waste in a city traditionally known for disposable, seasonal styles. The organization is placing recycling bins in designated buildings throughout New York City for the collection of unwanted garments and clothing. With Mercedes Benz New York Fashion Week having just come and gone here in NYC, we wanted to take a closer look at how one non-profit is aiding New Yorkers to have a cleaner, greener closet while helping others along the way.
LOTS MORE GREAT GREEN DESIGN STORIES HERE... KEEP READING!
