Researchers turn single-use plastics into kayaks and canoes
Today the world produces over 300 million tons of plastics every year. That’s almost equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. The vast majority of this is single-use and not designed to be recycled, ending up in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as Read More...
Check out this handy guide on plastic recycling. Thanks NPR!
The recycle step of “reduce, reuse, recycle” is not always as easy as it seems. With categories and policies varying based on city and disposal company, it is not always easy to know what can be recycled where. Luckily, NPR has created an easy to use guide to help the average consumer navigate Read More...
Meat from Plants, Milk from Oats, and Leather from Mushrooms!
Leather has been worn for centuries and remains an iconic material for fashion today. But leather is not perfect. It requires livestock which requires many resources and the foul treatment of animals and produces millions of tons of waste per year. The word “leather” is quickly becoming Read More...
Food giant Nestle unveils bio-degradable wrapper for its newest snack bar
After numerous criticism from environmental activists, food and beverage giant Nestle is finally proving its commitment to tackle the plastic menace caused by its single-use plastics. The company has recently unveiled an eco-friendly wrapper for its newest snack bar range, that it claims will Read More...
Novel technologies could increase UK’s recycling rates tenfold
When we throw something in the recycling bin, we like to think that plastic waste will be reincarnated into something else. Sadly enough, the reality is that most of the plastic being produced today is non-recyclable and winds up in the landfill. To deal with all that non-recyclable plastic, a host Read More...
Argentina’s wild bees are choosing a strange material to build nests: plastic
The ways that bees adapt to problems created by humans is both brilliant and saddening. Just look to Argentina where researchers have discovered bees constructing nests entirely made of the flimsy plastic packaging material left on farms. From 2017 to 2018, researchers at Argentina's National Read More...
Cleaning and personal care products use lots of plastic. Here’s a solution
When you stop to think about it, much of the cleaning products or personal care products that we’re shipping around the world is water with ingredients mixed in to clean, moisturize, or do whatever you need. Now imagine if we could remove the water and only ship the additive. It could come in Read More...
Kids in Indian town pay their tuition fees with plastic waste instead of money
Used plastic is usually seen as a waste product, but for the students of a school in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, it is no less than a means to acquire free education. As a way to make school more accessible and help clean up their local community, the primary school of Akshar began to Read More...
Next-generation plastic can be recycled over and over again into new materials
Plastic is useful and ubiquitous – but that's not always a good combination. The vast majority of plastic waste can't be recycled, meaning it ends up in landfills at best or the ocean at worst. To help curb the problem, researchers at Berkeley Lab have designed a recyclable plastic – called Read More...
Maine becomes first state in the US to ban environmentally-harmful Styrofoam
Like all plastics, Styrofoam, or polystyrene, stays around in the environment for hundreds of years. But it's particularly noxious because its light weight makes it liable to be carried by wind and water into the ocean, where it breaks down into micro-plastics that eventually make their way into Read More...