Growing Green At A Manhattan Public School

PS 166, an elementary school on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is making conscious efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and is teaching its students about the values of going green. It has recently signed up for the fourth annual Green Cup Challenge, an inter-school energy reduction competition, sponsored by the non-profit Green Schools Alliance. PS 166 will be one of 109 public and private schools in 22 states participating.

The Challenge, which takes place in New York from January 15th through February 12th, during peak (winter) energy use, asks participating schools to measure and reduce their electricity usage with a view to combating global warming. Top performing schools have achieved 18% energy reductions, saving thousands of dollars in utility costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, the Challenge helped 120 schools to reduce aggregate carbon emissions by 2.5 million pounds, the equivalent of taking 220 cars off the road for one year.

The Challenge not only contributes to national carbon reduction but teaches children valuable lessons about lifestyle choices and energy conservation. Children are being encouraged to make signs reminding everyone to “turn off lights,” and “power down computers” while other students are being made “Climate Captains” to ensure that energy-saving practices are being implemented. Additionally, the program has created a Green Team of 5th grade students to make sure the school is meeting its goals. By putting such responsibility in the children’s hands, the Challenge teaches conscious living to preserve the environment as well as enhances their math and science skills as they compare weekly meter readings.

Growing green as certainly become a trend for PS 166. This is not the first green initiative the school has undertaken. Starting in November, it is now participating in a pilot Styrofoam tray recycling program funded by the Department of Sanitation, that will allow it to divert about 100,000 styrofoam trays each year from landfills to a designated recycling center. Additionally, the PTA is providing its classrooms with green cleaning supplies to reduce environmental and health impact. With some 132,600 schools in the U.S., one can quickly envision the positive impact that a national greening campaign could have on our youth.

For more information on PS 166’s green initiatives, visit the school’s website. To learn more about the Green Cup Challenge, click here.

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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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Advances in Plastic Recycling

Most of us fail to recognize many of the environmentally unfriendly consequences of recycling. Some may argue that recycling actually does more bad than good to the environment due to the amount of energy it takes to transform it into something new. SABIC Innovative Plastics has recently developed a resin in which the manufacturing process gives a 50-80% lower carbon footprint. The resin, known as Valox iQ is made from roughly 65% post-consumer waste and has earned the company a Silver tier Cradle to Cradle certificate from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC. Application uses include furniture, consumer electronics, automotive components, and more!
To learn more about Valox iQ, please visit Plastemart- News from the Plastics industry.

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Recycling E-waste in the Bay Area.

GreenCitizen serves the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas. They help individuals and organizations recycle electronics responsibly. They do this by providing convenient, affordable and responsible solutions, making it effortless for anyone and everyone to help save the environment from harmful electronic waste.

Prior to GreenCitizen, de-manufacturing processes and their environmental soundness were difficult to track and verify. Many other e-recycling companies were able to validate what electronics they have recycled, what processes they have used and where toxic materials have ended up. GreenCitizen has a proprietary checks and balance program called, Total Accountability Management System (GTAMS). According to GreenCitizen, this system “uniquely tracks recycled items from pickup in a developed country through to the shipping and de-manufacturing process in a GreenCitizen facility located in a developing country. The system enables complete accountability of all items in the de-manufacturing process worldwide.”

They are developing one of the first e-waste recycling systems in the world, designed to keep all parties responsible. Through the standard, everyone involved in the process must provide documentation and actual contributions to proper electronics recycling. GreenCitizen is working day and night to set a new, global standard in the technology of e-recycling. All research and development efforts are being conducted through what is being called, their Sustainable Technology Applied Research, or STAR Lab.

For more information visit greencitizen.com

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Cassette Tape Furniture

With the advance of technology, significant changes in ways we value our possessions has become an inspiration for designers like Patrick Schuur to create a furniture piece built entirely out of 918 old cassette tapes, wooden frames and aluminum. Originally made to serve as a space divider and storage device, the cassette tapes are individually screwed onto the wooden frames which then provides access to the storage space.

Schuur explains that the reasoning behind using old cassette tapes was not only because its aesthetics, but to remind people of how good the technology used to look in the old days.

For more information, please visit creativebarn.nl.

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Thai Monks Take Bottle Recycling to a Higher Level

Although Buddhist monks usually refrain from drinking alcohol, monks in Thailands Si Saket province have come up with an ingenious way of reusing local beer bottle waste by building an entire temple complex out of them.

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple, also referred to as “Wat Lan Kuad” or “Temple of Million Bottles” is located about 370 miles Northeast of Bangkok and is said to be made from over 1.5 million beer bottles. The bottles were used in just about everything from the temple crematorium, the living quarters, a water tower and even in the toilets.

The bottles are primarily green Heineken beer bottles and brown glass Thai Chang bottles, but the temple also has large intricately crafted mosaics made entirely from the left over bottle caps.

The temple is becoming an increasingly popular tourist attraction and its easy to see why with such unique structures built with completely reclaimed materials.

To learn more, read the Inhabitat article here.

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Would You Ever Sit on a Sony Playstation?

Pli Design Ltd, a sustainable furniture firm based in London, U.K., has come up with a practical solution to the increasingly common question of what to do with plastics from discarded consumer products.  With the Reee Chair, comes the first chair back and seat made entirely of recycled plastic from a single source – nine old SONY PlayStation®2 cases go into each chair, in addition to the frame and legs made of powdercoated steel.  Founder Christopher Pett, notes that each chair prevents 2.4 kg of plastic from being landfilled, the design accommodates ease-of-disassembly for maintenance and recycling, and all parts are locally sourced, within the U.K.  In an example of what American companies could do with a similar initiative in place in the U.S., the PS cases are acquired and reprocessed under the guidelines of the European Commision’s Waste, Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, which states that all electronics manufacturers must take responsibility for retrieving their products at end-of-life.  The Reee Chair is ultimately the result of a discussion among Pli Design’s staff at the Eden Project suppliers conference in Cornwall, England, about how to effectively use high quality recycled plastic from discarded electronics.  Upon determining old SONY PlayStation®2 consoles as their material source, Pli partnered with Sprout Design, a sustainable design consultancy, to develop the chair.

Pli Design Ltd

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The Eden Project

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How to Lay Some Misconceptions About Mattress Recycling to Rest in 1 1/2 Minutes

With increasing concern over our throw-away culture, many have asked what happens to those old mattresses seen left on the street, and if there is any way to keep them from being landfilled or incinerated with toxic consequences.   According to Greg Conigliaro, founder of Conigliaro Industries, a versatile recycling company in Framingham, Massachusetts, a mattress is one of the most difficult products to recycle due to its complex multi-material structure.  In spite of this, in 2002, the company became the first commercial mattress recycler in the country, and won a $10,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for their solution.  The minute-and-a-half process involves feeding a mattress through a large-scale “shredder”, which breaks it apart and allows it to be magnetically separated into its individual parts, (foam, cotton, wood, and steel) for resale as raw materials.  Conigliaro’s website claims that they annually process over 3000 tons of such material, “enough mattresses to fill 900 tractor trailers.”

(Image courtesy of Conigliaro Industries)

Please visit Conigliaro Industries for more information.

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