The Self Powered iPod Recycling Speaker

Did you ever wonder what you could use those pesky plastic cases for rather than just tossing them in the trash? Well Bird Electron has come up with a novel idea that turns the plastic packaging of the iPod Nano (1st & 2nd gen) and Shuffle (2nd & 3rd gen) into a portable speaker system.

The Recycling speaker system does not require any additional power source; all that’s required is to place the speaker on top of the plastic package, plug in and play. It is an elegantly simple device that can even be tailored to custom designs using water bottles or other small containers for speakers.

The Bird-Electron Recycling Speaker retails for $40 and can be found at AudioCubes.com.

via: One Digital Life

Low Cost Housing Made from Loofahs

If you think the humble loofah should only be used in the shower you’d be sorely mistaken. The current iteration of the loofah is actually derived from a cucumber-like vegetable (of the same name) that is dried to yield a scratchy sponge for cleaning. This seemingly simple crop is destined for more than the shower or sink and is now poised to greatly help poor communities across Paraguay. Thanks to the efforts of social activist Elsa Zaldívar, the loofah is transforming impoverished areas throughout Paraguay. Elsa discovered that the Loofah is an ideal cash crop and formed a collective of women to grow, harvest and sell the vegetable. Paraguay’s organically grown and harvested loofahs now boast an environmental and competitive advantage over many plantation-grown loofahs from China and other countries and provide a necessary source of income and opportunity to the people of Paraguay.

Not only has the loofah been able to bring in money for those that grow it, the loofah is now helping to address Paraguay’s housing problem as well. Working with industrial engineers, Elsa Zaldivar has combined readily available waste from the loofah with plastic waste to form strong, lightweight building panels. The panels can be used to create furniture and construct houses, insulating occupants from temperature and noise. This innovation addresses a real need in Paraguay, as around 300,000 Paraguayan families lack adequate housing. When the panels break or fall apart they can easily be broken down and recycled back into new panels, greatly easing the demand for wood in Paraguay’s over-harvested forests. Because of Elsa’s inspiring work she was awarded a Rolex Award for the creation of a low cost housing material. Rolex is now partially funding her effort and Elsa hopes to provide her sustainable and low cost housing throughout all of Paraguay.

To find out more click here

Design Students Want YOU To Recycle

This year, the Glass Packaging Institute conducted their first ever Recycle Glass Day YouTube video competition. Over 80 students from six universities participated in the battle for $5,000 by creating videos encouraging folks to recycle. The videos were judged based on originality and creativity (50%); communicating the “glass message” (30%); and production technique and value (20%).

The winner was a group of Michigan State University students who created a stop-motion animated video, cleverly preaching: “glass can’t recycle itself”. As a highly renewable natural material, glass’s diversity has played an important role in sustainable design. It only makes sense that design students where amongst the major participants in this competition.

To find out more about the competition and to further your knowledge in how glass is recycled, please visit the Packaging Digest

OttiMat Gives New Meaning to “Petro-head”

In case the previous blog entry about sitting on hair doesn’t do it for you, here is another solution for what to do with the 60 million tons of human hair that get dumped into landfills each year. OttiMat™ has taken the natural oil adsorbing properties of human hair to help clean up large oil spills in the oceans. Adsorbing, as opposed to “absorbing”, means the hair holds on to the oil without soaking it in making it easy to squeeze out the oil and immediately ready for reuse. It was successfully used in the last year’s oil spill in the San Francisco Bay area as pictured above. Although it seems like a daunting task, the hair mats made it possible for volunteers to quickly and effectively pick up blobs of oil that were washing up on shore without creating more hazardous waste.This product was developed by hair stylist Phil McCory in Huntsville, Alabama. He got the idea during the time of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill in 1989, after seeing how otter fur was retaining the oil. He realized that human hair had the same properties and conducted a test in his back yard with leftover hair from his salon and his wife’s stockings. This method proved to be so successful that NASA soon conducted their own test by pouring 300 pounds of oil and water mixture from a fuel oil spill through the hair filter. After one pass, the water showed 17 parts per million of oil were in the water, just 2 PPM above the EPA standard.

The possibilities for the use of this excess hair that most of us find disturbing goes beyond oil spills. It’s also been found that these mats can be used to fertilize crops and increase plant growth and are available for sale through SmartGrow.

The Chair Made from Hair

Renewable, biodegradable, strong and lightweight are all qualities that make a material great, and the material behind the “Stiletto Chair” is all that and more. What is this new material you ask? The source is none other than real human hair. The chair is the brainchild of ex-hairstylist to the stars, Ronald Thomson and according to Thomson, the hair-based composite can be molded into almost any shape and mixed with any matrix.

It took 4.5 lbs. of human hair to produce the $15,000 chair. That would require nearly 46 years for the average person to grow the 4.5 lbs. of hair but thankfully Thomson collected the free waste hair from barbershops and hairdressers all around London. Once processed, the material has similar properties to fiberglass, and Thomson hopes to see it used in further products such as shoes, building materials and even clothing.

There is no doubt about the great environmental attributes of Thomson’s creation, but the gross factor is rather high and many might be turned off by sitting on a chair made from human hair. I don’t foresee barbershops becoming the new material plants of the future, but this kind of out of the box thinking might just give fiberglass a run for its money.

Via: Trendhunter

The Footprint Chronicles

It’s hard to point fingers at a company when they are already pointing things out for themselves. The Footprint Chronicles allows Patagonia to share the reality behind some of their most popular products and easily explains the ideas behind a true Life Cycle Analysis. Each article of clothing has a long life before and after you purchase it and wear it. Understanding how much energy is consumed, CO2 emitted, and waste produced from the drawing board to the landfill (or hopefully the recycle bin). It’s a big concept to get one’s head around and there’s more number crunching than most of us can easily digest.

This interactive website adds a simple way to click through the steps in producing a product and shows you images and videos to help explain the environmental impact at each point. For example, the simple Vitaliti Strappy Dress travels 16,350 miles, produces 46 times it’s weight in CO2 , 1.5 times it’s weight in waste, and 125 megajoules of energy. By making this information public, they are aware of the problem and have positioned themselves as a company actively looking for the best solution and lets the consumer make the final, and informed, choice. This process has also led them to be pioneers in new practices in the clothing industries such as their extensive Common Threads Recycling Program.

Get thee Building Materials to a Reclamation Center!

Construction sites are infamous producers of debris and landfill destined waste and there almost always is a full dumpster of the stuff just waiting to be hauled away. Instead of carting the waste to a landfill, Building Material Reuse Centers have been established to reclaim the waste from building sites and are excellent resources for contractors to pick up cheap and readily available materials. Much like a local recycling program, these centers are present in all 50 states and are even popping up in Canada and the UK.

The organization behind these centers is the Building Material Reuse Association (BMRA). The BMRA is a non-profit educational and research organization whose mission is to facilitate building deconstruction and the reuse / recycling of recovered building materials. The BMRA helps to reduce the consumption of new resources and is an extremely cost effective way of achieving environmental savings and cutting carbon emissions. Whether you’re a contractor or weekend warrior, the BMRA is an invaluable tool to not only cut costs, but also help stem the flow of waste to landfills.

Source: The BMRA via Tree Hugger

Chilewich Textiles Earns CRI Green Label Plus Certification

Chilewich flooring’s highly eclectic and modern collection of durable, U.S.-made fabrics has just been awarded the Carpet and Rug Institute’s (CRI) Green Label plus. For all those that don’t know, yes there is an institute solely devoted to Carpets and Rugs and yes they even have their own green certification. The CRI label is awarded to carpets, rugs, and even vacuum cleaners that meet or exceed stringent criteria for low chemical emissions and help improve indoor air quality.

Chilewich’s modern commercial-grade woven vinyl wall-to-wall flooring, floor tiles, custom floor mats, wall coverings, and upholstery fabrics now meet or exceed industry standards for VOC emissions and can help improve indoor air quality. Depending on location Chilewich fibers can also help earn LEED points during construction.

Although Chilewich does not consider its flooring completely green, the CRI certification is a step in the right direction and its refreshing to see a company that’s aware of its environmental impact but has made a commitment to continually improve and seek out post-consumer fillers and sustainable polymers for its future products.

Chilewich Website

CRI Website