recycling Archives

Tag: recycling

Nothing wasted: Industry as an ecosystem

By Trevor Decker Cohen, Shareable

When we learn from the way nutrients are constantly broken down and repurposed in natural systems, we find opportunities for a circular economy everywhere.

What a Waste

By Richard Heinberg, Resilience.org

Why not make the economy circular, with waste from one process feeding into other production processes, thus dramatically reducing the need both for resource extraction and for the dumping of rubbish? We should mimic nature: it’s a central ideal of the ecology movement, with roots in indigenous wisdom worldwide.

What Will we Do with all those Solar Panels when their Useful Life is Over?

By Nate Berg, Ensia

But the solar panels generating that power don’t last forever. The industry standard life span is about 25 to 30 years, and that means that some of the panels installed at the early end of the current boom aren’t long from being retired.

Paaduks: Shoes with Soul

By Manisha SG, Vikalp Sangam

What does it take to upcycle any waste material into a product that is beautiful, serves a basic function and will prevent that material from ending up in a landfill for a few more years?

New Lives for Old Objects

By Barnabé Binctin, Future Perfect

In Montreuil, the Collecterie resource center is fighting waste by recycling trash—and generating jobs.

Recycling in the Anthropocene

By Bill Sheehan, Upstream

Individualized recycling is a start but it is not doing nearly enough.

Talkin’ trash: Are we literally throwing away energy?

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

In Germany only about 1 percent of all municipal waste goes into landfills. This compares with about 68 percent in the United States. The U.S. could recycle more and turn much more of the residual waste into energy.

Leading San Francisco’s Quest To Recycle All Trash by 2020

By Cheryl Katz, Yale Environment 360

San Francisco, the first urban area in the nation to mandate recycling and composting and begin outlawing items like Styrofoam food containers, aims to completely eliminate the trash it sends to landfills by 2020.

The Aztecs of Mexico: A Zero Waste Society

By Martin Medina, OurWorld

While technological innovation is often seen as the answer to modern waste problems, what can we learn from the historical methods used by great ancient societies such as the Aztecs of Mexico?

The Age of Diminishing Returns

By Ugo Bardi, Shay Totten, Resilience.org

A Q&A with Ugo Bardi, author of Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet

Zero Waste: Closer than You Think

By Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, Dissident Voice

The Zero Waste Solution: Untrashing the Planet One Community at a Time by Paul Connett (Chelsea Green 2013) is about 100% waste recovery and reuse, the new gold standard in recycling.