Blogs & Ecology

Garbage is America's #1 export and possibly the biggest raw material source we have. But what is waste? And why do we make it?

In nature, waste does not exist - if it did we would not be here today since the creation of a material that another life form cannot use is not sustainable and would lead to the destruction of our eco-system. One way to look at waste is that it is a commodity with negative value. That is, it's a commodity that we are willing to pay to get rid of. It is a liability that has to be transported quickly and efficiently to a landfill.

Pikachu is full of helium, which the New York Times describes as "a finite and increasingly scarce resource, produced extremely slowly by decaying uranium and thorium." Like anything else, (gas prices anyone?) when it gets scarce and expensive, people start thinking about using it more carefully.

So this year, instead of just releasing it into the air, the are going to try and recover it.

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Source: TreeHugger

Martino Gamper is surely the king of chair recycling with innovative projects such as 100 Chairs in 100 Days, that recently won a Brit Insurance Design of The Year Award. Last month at the Frieze art fair in London Gamper displayed his latest adventure in chair recycling, this time teaming up with the celebrated Italian architect Carlo Mollino, albeit posthumously....click through to find out how....

Rome based designer Marco Capellini has become a well-known name in the Latin ecodesign movement.

Creator of the organization Remade, which promotes design with recycled materials in seven countries; and Matrec, an online resource for recycled materials, Capellini was in Buenos Aires for a conference organized by the city’s Metropolitan Design Center.

Photo: AFP from Guardian

John recently noted that the recycling business is in the toilet in the US; Jaymi wrote that the same thing is happening in Britain; now they are drowning in paper that used to be shipped to China but that nobody wants now. The Confederation of Paper industries says in the Guardian:

In just months we went from common thieves stealing power cables and iron fences to a market that couldn't care less for reclaimed materials. The price for scrap anything is in the toilet, and likely to stay there for a few years. No more green washing about recyclable water bottles - please.

Lets call recycling what it is- a fraud, a sham, a scam perpetrated by big business on the citizens and municipalities of America. Look who sponsors the National Recycling Coalition: behind America Recycles Day: Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Owens-Illinois, International Bottled Water Association, the same people who brought you that other fraud, Keep America Beautiful.

Recycling is simply the transfer of producer responsibility for what they produce to the taxpayer who has to pick it up and take it away.

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You can't do much with a jack'o lantern after Halloween; some people try to cook the pumpkin but they are really bred for size rather than flavour. In Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood they have a tradition: bring them to Sorauren Park and have a pumpkin party.

Photographer/blogger Joseph writes in BlogTO:

Sometimes it is hard to know whether a new product is an actual innovation or just an obvious idea trying to look good.

Such is Green Garmento - a reusable dry cleaning bag - it switches from duffel bag to haul laundry to suit bag to bring home the garments. But will dry cleaners comply? And - do we need more plastic (though it is 100 percent recycled polypropylene) at $10 a bag in order to bring our dry cleaning back and forth? Well, purists will say we should just stop conventional dry cleaning altogether - which isn't remotely green. ...

Image source: Getty Images

Printing a nice message on a piece of plastic wrap and putting it in the bin does not make it green, nor does it do much for the environment, but it does make one feel better about using it and probably sells some extra plastic. Much of recycling is like that- a feel-good way of shifting producer responsibility for their own waste to the taxpayer, who pays to have it picked up and recycled.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Are you willing to pay more for a greener magazine? A Heart Magazines survey found that 43 percent of respondents said they would pay more for a rag printed on recycled paper, while 39 percent said they would pay more for a magazine committed to eco-friendly practices.

Meanwhile, 43 percent of respondents said they would stop buying a product they regularly use if they learned that it was bad for the environment. ...

Italian Grayhound, At Earthwatch Tree Planting Project, "Roxbury", Boston, USA

By: Jeanine Pfeiffer

We all have choices. As we fill our lives with things or creatures or experiences, we have an astonishing array of options. Bling or plain? Doberman or Chihuahua? Whale watching or poolside tanning? Paper or plastic or bring your own gosh-darn bag?

We consumers are demi-gods of the Universal Supermarket of Life, setting off a cascade of repercussions with our choices, all the way up and back down the production-consumption-disposal chain. Do we recognize our extraordinary collective power?

P...