Students Display The Colorful Side Of Reusing Materials

More photos found at designboom.

Students from the German school, Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart (Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences) displayed their innovatively artistic side at the most recent home interiors exhibition of imm cologne 2010.

Their installation’s focus was on reusing thousands of discarded and collected bottle caps, utilizing them to create a colorful and eye-catching backdrop to their miniature furniture models. On top of their immense bottle-cap creation, the Stuttgart students also placed beanbag seats filled with even more bottle caps. While the comfort level is questionable, the creativity and eco-insight is greatly appreciated.

Via designboom.

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Greener, Cleaner Dishes… Without Detergent

Dr. Youngblood at work. Via Treehugger.

A water-favoring, anti-oily treated surface. Via Discovery News.

Imagine the possibility of grease and grime being lifted from your dishes with just water. Jeffrey P. Youngblood, an associate professor at Purdue University, and his colleagues are currently in the process of formulating a coating for dinnerware that will eliminate the need for polluting dishwater soap.

This coating, made up of long chains of polymers, is based on perfluorinated end-cap polyethylene glycol amphiphilic macromers that had been polymerised with a variety of comonomer. This eco-friendly alternative to the harsh chemicals of traditional phosphorous soap contains a Teflon-like molecule that repels oil while allowing water to filter through and rinse off surfaces.

Youngblood and team have engineered the polymer chains to have different properties, leading to different cleaning solutions. One causes oil to gather into easier-to-clean beads, and, like other potential methods, simply has the oil “remove itself.”

One may argue that the coating material itself is not very eco-friendly due to the usage of the Teflon-like molecule, but Youngblood states that the elimination of soaps and detergents streaming into our waterways will be more than a good tradeoff for the minimal polymer coating that will run off from treated products.

The next step for Youngblood and his team of researchers is working with plastic substrates, anti-fog products, as well as easy to clean paints.

Via Treehugger. Read on at Discovery News + Chemistry World. Read more on the harmful effects of phosphorous soap at Treehugger.

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Wearing Your Batteries On Your Sleeve

A new research break-through at Stanford University is bringing us one step closer to wearable electronics and conductive fabrics. Beginning their investigation into how carbon nanotubes can be used to create thin, flexible batteries with plastic and paper, the team has now discovered that fabric such as cotton and polyester might be a better alternative.

The team has developed single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) ink that allows them to turn paper and fabric into highly conductive batteries with a remarkably low resistance. In their paper experiments they found that, “The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries.” The use of fabric allows for increased flexibility and durability over paper.

BBC reports, “The interwoven fibres of fabrics, like those of paper, are particularly suited to absorbing the nanotube ink, maintaining an electrical connection across the whole area of a garment. Cloth is simply dipped into a batch of nanotube dye, and is then pressed, to thin and even out the coating. The fabric maintains its properties even as it is stretched or folded. Even rinsing the samples in water and wringing them out does not change their electronic properties.”

There is still a lot of research needed in this area, such as how the fabric can be applied to more useful batteries, the safety factors of having carbon nanotubes in fabric that could be worn against human skin, exactly how much more efficient this is over current battery technology, how long the storage capacity will last, and many other important elements. However, the researchers feel that this could be a next step for wearable solar cells, giving our clothing the ability to charge – or become – our gadgets.

Via Treehugger (Nanotechnology Turning Your Cotton T-Shirt and Polyester Pants Into Batteries and Breakthrough? Ordinary Paper + Ink + Nanotubes = Battery)

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Polyethylene 9x More Efficient To Source From Sugar Cane Over Corn.

Tetra Pak is to pilot the use of renewable polyethylene as a raw material in the manufacture of its plastic caps and closures within the next two years. The carton manufacturer has signed an agreement with Brazilian company Braskem, a thermoplastic resin producer, to buy limited volumes of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) from a renewable feedstock.

According to TreeHugger.com:

“Brazilian plastic company Braskem SA reports that, using ethanol feedstock, their polyethylene process, scheduled to operate commercially in 2011, will make product with exactly the same characteristics as polyethylene derived from petroleum. Environmental- and cost-efficiency of the process hangs on feedstock choice. It will be “nine times as efficient to derive ethanol from sugarcane as from corn, and four-and-a-half times as efficient compared to ethanol derived from sugar beets.” Even more strikingly, a spokesman for Braskem reported, manufacture of one pound of petroleum-based polyethylene “releases 2.5 kg of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,…whereas the same amount of sugarcane-based PE captures that same amount of the gas.”

Read more at packagingnews.co.uk and TreeHugger.com.

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KeepCup, An Alternative To Disposable Cups

Designed and manufactured in Australia, KeepCup is an alternative to all those disposable coffee cups that result in an enormous amount of trash. Most disposable paper cups are plastic coated and often impregnated with toxic dyes, all this makes them not recyclable.

KeepCup is made out of recyclable Polypropylene #5 (the safest food grade plastic), and some of the environmental features include: a modular lid (that fits three different cup sizes), low embodied energy, reusable, practically unbreakable and durable (estimated life span of 4 years).

KeepCup was created by Abigail and Jaime Forsyth, owners of a coffee and catering outlet chain in Melbourne who decided to do something to reduce the waste problems associated with disposable coffee cups.

> Read more here.

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Recycled Beverage Containers

Image from iF Material Award 2009

For those of us who are always on the go and cannot live without a cup of coffee every morning, check out these tumblers made of yogurt and ice cream containers! According to Aladdin’s research, it’s difficult to use recycled polypropylene (PP) for direct food contact surfaces but these tumblers passed both FDA and EU safety regulations. You can throw these in the dishwasher and the microwave. The material, eCycle® is engineered for Aladdin’s SUSTAIN® Collecion and featured in iF Material Award 2009.

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The Reusable Bag Debate

Image: Apartment Therapy

According to a study conducted by the Environment and Plastics Industry Council (EPIC) in Canada, there are health risks with using reusable bags. Cathy Cirko, the Vice President of EPIC, stated that “reusables are a breeding ground for bacteria and pose public health risks – food poisoning, skin infections such as bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections.”

Naturally, reusable-bag-lovers have dismissed the study as the plastics industry’s attempt to slow the growing movement towards plastic reduction. That may be true, but consumers should rather take the news as a reminder that a little dose of common sense goes a long way. There are a few things that can be done to ensure that reusable bags do not backfire as an environment friendly option while posing health risks. For multipurpose uses, separate bags should be used to carry different items, such as grocery and gym equipment. Even for grocery, meat, dairy products, and vegetables should be carried in separate bags. In the case that bags are carrying food, the they can and should be washed regularly and carefully.

Many reusable bags are washable; although the ones made from recycled bottles can be cleaned, bags made of organic or recycled cotton may be easier since they can be thrown in with the rest of laundry and dried in a conventional washer (or line dried to save energy).

Click here to view EPIC’s study

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Shedding Light On A Growing Issue In The Seas.

The issue of plastic contamination in the ocean is rapidly gaining a lot of attention. As a designer, distributor, or manufacturer, thinking of the infrastructure used to transport plastics for production and recycle them at the end of their life can have a much bigger impact than you might imagine!The reprocussions are first and foremost affcting the ocean’s eco-system. Beyond that, plastics function as a magnet for chemicals such as PCB’s in water. Fish which swallow both the small and large bits of plastic, ingest the chemicals, and in-turn are ingested by humans. Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation was the first to discover the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an endless floating waste of plastic trash. At the TED conference, he recently drew attention to growing problem of plastic debris in our water.Watch the video and let us know what you think!

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