Midsummer often prompts many of us to shear our locks and don cooler hairstyles to help us survive the heat. As I recently had my own coif chopped up and saw the heaps of hair collecting around the chair, I began to wonder if there aren’t some ways to reuse this particular resource. Here’s what I dug up…
If you’re anything like me, the sheer amount of packaging most products come excessively sealed away in is an endless source of frustration. Even if the packaging is in some way recyclable, not all facilities accept all forms of plastic and consumers often fail to meticulously separate out all of their trash. Thankfully, some companies are looking to make more creative loops and links in the supply chain to minimize waste. Preserve is one of these up and coming innovative industries.
Preserve makes personal hygiene products, such as toothbrushes and razors, and some table and kitchen ware, out of recycled yogurt cups and other grade 5 plastics. In addition to just designing with recycled material, they make it easier to recycle their products when you’re done using them. The Preserve toothbrush is packaged in a slim pouch with a business reply label and prepaid postage. You can mail in your old toothbrush when you’re done using it and the plastic handle will be recycled into other Preserve products (nylon bristles are always new). You can even sign up on their website for a toothbrush subscription and schedule for Preserve to send you a new brush on a regular schedule.
At $2.99 you can only feel good about turning a typically disposable personal product into a cycle of reuse. Not to mention a chance to reinstate the interesting producer-customer back and forth relationship that many companies have given up in favor of expansion and disposability.
Look, I want an electric car as much as the next guy. My commute is inside of 25 miles, like 99% of us, so distance isn’t an issue. Neither is recharging, I live in a very progressive state with a row of electric-car charging stations at my favorite grocery store. I just can’t swallow the price tag of a new car. Here is one solution I found that may just be how I spend my next few weekends.
Ingredients:
1 Geo Metro
1 Electric forklift
1 Electric motor
a dash of spare parts
a smidge of random batteries
Bake for a few weekends of hard work, and voila! The result is a medium speed, medium range, cheap-as-heck electric commuter car. This one was built by 2 DIY’ers in Toronto to get them from point A to point B for little cash, no pollution, no noise.
EarthTalk® is a weekly environmental column made available to our readers from the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
Dear EarthTalk: I work for an office equipment company selling copiers, fax machines, computers and printers. Each year new models come out making old ones obsolete. As a result, we have loads of trade-ins with nowhere to go. What can we do with this old equipment? – Jeff P., Worcester, MA
Electronic waste, or “e-waste” as it’s called, is a growing problem in the United States and abroad, as obsolete or broken computers and other electronic equipment are taking up increasingly precious amounts of landfill space and potentially leaking hazardous substances into surrounding ecosystems.
