recycling
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Amazon announces recycling and green energy initiatives in US and UK
Amazon has announced two new green initiatives in the US and the UK aimed at reducing waste and its carbon footprint. In the US, the company shared plans to invest $10 million in Closed Loop Fund, which supports recycling infrastructure throughout the US. Amazon's investment will bring curbside recycling to three million additional homes and could keep as much as one million tons of recyclable material out of landfills by 2028.
BMW will give EV batteries new life with recycling program
BMW is leading a consortium of companies with the goal of giving electric vehicle batteries new life after they've kicked the bucket as a car power source. The partnership with Belgian recycling firm Umicore and Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt will repurpose EV battery cells, using them for energy storage before stripping them of raw materials that can be reused in other products.
A project to remove 88,000 tons of plastic from the Pacific has begun
An ambitious project to clean up the 88,000 tons of plastic floating in the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has begun. On Sunday, the Ocean Cleanup Project started towing its "Ocean Cleanup System 001" from San Francisco to a trial site some 240 nautical miles (260 miles) away. Once it arrives, the wind and waves will push System 001 into a U-shape and it will slowly drift along on its own. A 10-foot long skirt hanging below will collect pieces of plastic as small as a millimeter in size, and smaller boats will later scoop them up and take them to shore for recycling.
A tech entrepreneur prepares for prison
In two weeks, he'd be sitting in a federal prison in Oregon. On the first day of June, the magnitude clearly hadn't hit e-waste entrepreneur Eric Lundgren. "You're just being dropped in a new culture," he said from across the dining table of his childhood home in Lynden, Washington. He wore a white T-shirt with the words "strength," "freedom" and "nobility" printed alongside 20 stars. "I love extreme experiences. I honestly think there's going to be something about prison that's going to be really interesting to me. Anywhere that I go, I'm going to learn, and this is a place where I can learn a whole new type of life."
Apple unveils its newest recycling robot ahead of Earth Day
Looks like Liam, Apple's phone-dismembering robot, now has a little sister. Just ahead of Earth Day, the Cupertino-based company revealed the newest member of its robo-recycling team: Daisy.
Scientists accidentally produce an enzyme that devours plastic
There are research teams around the world dedicated to finding a remedy for the growing plastic pollution crisis, but now it seems that one group of scientists have found a feasible answer -- and they stumbled upon it by accident. Researchers studying a newly-discovered bacterium found that with a few tweaks, the bug can be turned into a mutant enzyme that starts eating plastic in a matter of days, compared to the centuries it takes for plastic to break down in the ocean.
Cigarette butts could be reborn as green energy storage
It's no secret that smoking is seriously bad news for your health, but the impact of the habit on the planet's health is pretty bleak, too. Every year nearly six trillion cigarettes are smoked around the world, generating more than 800,000 metric tons of cigarette butts. Something has to be done with them all, and they usually end up in landfill (or leaching into waterways). But now, scientists have discovered they may have a hidden potential: hydrogen storage.
Spider silk and stem-cell leather are the future of fashion
On Sunday, there were no cars in Paris as the city clamped down on soaring pollution and tried to honor the climate accord that bears its name. With Paris Fashion Week here too, garment makers must face their own part in the planet's despoilment. An incubator called Fashion Tech Labs (FTL) is trying to break the textile pollution cycle with new tech like stem-cell leather, recycled fabrics and ultra-strong spider-silk-based fibers. At Google's Paris Arts & Culture Center, I had a look at some of the tech and talked with FTL and the event's esteemed host, sustainable designer and fashion icon Stella McCartney.
AI recycle bins could know what you’re throwing away
Is that coffee cup recyclable or compostable? It can be tough to tell, for sure, but a new recycling system from Cambridge Consultants aims to help using image recognition and machine learning. With low recycle rates in the US and UK, possibly due to consumer confusion over what's possible to recycle, this new retail-focused recycle point could help us all know what to recycle and what to trash. The company envisions a future where you'll even be rewarded via a phone app with points or a donation to charity when you recycle this way.
Samsung will sell refurbished Galaxy Note 7s... somewhere
Last month, a report claiming that Samsung would refurbish and sell the many Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that were returned following a global recall. In case you forgot, the Galaxy Note 7 had a battery problem that was causing the device to overheat and catch on fire. Now that Samsung finished its investigation into the root cause of the problem, the company is detailing how it plans to deal with the millions of returned phones. Refurbishment and resale is at the top of that list: Samsung says it'll consider if devices are in suitable condition to be sold or used as rental devices.
Tokyo's Olympic medals will be crafted from old gadgets
Tokyo's olympic planning committee has a novel idea for crafting new medals: old technology. Instead of relying on mining companies for new gold, silver and bronze, it's turning to the public and its swathes of unwanted, forgotten gadgets. You might not realize it, but your smartphone and household appliances contain small amounts of these precious materials. Starting in April, public offices and more than 2,400 NTT Docomo stores will offer collection boxes in Japan. The initial target is eight tons of metal, which will be whittled down to two tons and then, hopefully, used to produce 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic medals.
The Galaxy Note 7's death creates an environmental mess
Samsung's decision to discontinue the Galaxy Note 7 and recover remaining units isn't just a blow to smartphone fans... it's not so hot for the environment, either. Experts speaking to Motherboard point out that phone recycling is still a very young field, and that many of the rare earth elements (such as cobalt and indium) won't be recycled at all. There's going to be a significant amount of e-waste when all is said and done, in other words. And while the waste from about 2.5 million barely-used Note 7s isn't going to trigger an ecological disaster, it's considerably worse than refurbishing those phones.
Adidas gets creative with shoes made from recycled ocean plastic
There's a strong momentum behind the Adidas brand right now. That's largely due to the increasing popularity of the company's running and lifestyle products, with Kanye West's Yeezy line being chief among them. Still, amid its flourishing business, Adidas is spending resources on experimental designs that probably won't have mass-market appeal. Case in point: the sneaker collaboration with Parley, which was done in honor of World Oceans Day last month.
Human-robot teams take the drudgery out of sorting trash
Think about all the sticky, slimy vile stuff you throw away in a given week. Now multiply that level of gross by everybody in your town. Would you want to have to rummage through all that disgusting detritus to pick out valuable recyclables? Because that's what garbage collection companies have to do every single day, often by hand. Which is why software developer Jodone has developed a robotic surrogate for today's professional trash pickers.
Apple's recycling efforts are saving it a fortune
Apple's agenda to be more kind to the planet isn't just about getting Friends of the Earth off its back, it's also about saving bucketloads of cash. The company published its environmental responsibility report for last year that reveals that recovering precious metals from old iPhones is worth plenty of money. The firm pulled 61,357,800 pounds of raw materials out of discarded devices, including 2,204 pounds worth of gold. Cult of Mac consulted the day's metal prices and found that the gold alone was worth $40 million. In addition, the company pulled out 3 million pounds of copper (worth $6.4 million) and 4.5 million pounds of aluminum ($3.2 million).
Energizer intros rechargeable batteries made from recycled cells
Energizer broke fresh ground when it made the first disposable batteries from recycled cells, but that immediately raised a question: where are the rechargeable versions? As of today, they're here. The company has introduced new Recharge AA and AAA cells that are the first to be made using old batteries. About 4 percent of their material comes from used power packs, including those from hybrid cars -- yes, the leftovers from your Prius could one day power a kid's toy.
Epson wants to put a paper recycling machine in your office
If Seiko Epson has its way, your office paper recycling bin could soon become obsolete. The company's PaperLab, an 8.5-foot-wide device that turns used paper into clean white sheets, is set to go on sale next year. The machine strips paper into fibers before using additives to bind fibers back together, remove colors and calibrate the white appearance for the final result. PaperLab works at a rate of 14 sheets per minute or around 6,720 sheets in an 8-hour workday. In addition to convenience, the PaperLab should also reduce the environmental impact from transporting paper waste and new recycled sheets back and forth. Epson isn't discussing pricing specifics just yet, but expect the requisite investment to be quite substantial.
Mealworms convert Styrofoam waste into usable soil
Researchers have found a scourge for the 33 million tons of plastic dumped each year in the US: mealworms. A team from Stanford and China's Beihang University found that the beetle larvae stay perfectly healthy eating just Styrofoam, which is normally considered non-biodegradable. Better still, the worms convert the plastic to CO2 and waste that's safe to use as soil for crops. The scientists were as surprised by the discovery as you might be. "There's a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places," said Stanford professor Craig Criddle. "This is a shock."
Volvo wants robots to help collect your garbage
To call garbage collection an inglorious job would be an understatement -- it typically involves early mornings, monotony and (of course) lots of smelly trash. It's the perfect sort of job for a robot, don't you think? Volvo agrees. It's partnering with both universities and waste management firm Renova on ROAR (Robot-based Autonomous Refuse handling), a project that has robots pick up your trash while a human oversees everything from the relative comfort of the garbage truck. It's still early going (the odds are that the end product will look nothing like what you see above), but the hope is that it'll eliminate most of the drudgery and noise of scooping up waste. You should see the first tests in June 2016, although it could be a while longer before you see automatons in front of your house -- ROAR won't be practical unless the robots can reliably empty cans and bins in real-world conditions.
Europe doesn't properly recycle most of its electronic waste
You probably know that you should recycle your old tech when you're done with it, but getting other people to do the same? That's quite hard, apparently. The United Nations and INTERPOL have found that only 35 percent of the European Union's electronic waste in 2012, about 3.2 million imperial tons, was recycled properly. The rest (6.1 million tons) was either exported, recycled improperly or trashed. And that's a problem beyond just the expected environmental issues, such as toxins making their way into landfills. Many crooks take advantage of this lapse by scavenging and smuggling e-waste -- that old laptop you chucked out might be a gold mine for a bootlegger hoping to sell its parts or raw metals.
