Reusable bamboo facial pads to reduce waste and plastic use

EverEco reusable bamboo facial pads (photo J May)

These soft, reusable bamboo facial pads by EverEco can be washed in the bag provided. Having these reduces the waste of throwaway pads and the use of plastic packaging. In addition, bamboo is an easily replaced fibre as it is a very fast growing plant.

EverEco has many different sustainable products which can be viewed here and ordered online: https://evereco.com.au/.

“Carpet made from fishing nets and recycled plastic”

Source: Wikipedia

A foresighted carpet manufacturer, ege®, from Herning, Denmark, has since 1938 kept up with time, constantly improving production and sustainability practices.  It is now able to produce a 100 per cent recycled carpet. 

The backing layer of the carpet is made from recycled plastic. Water bottles made of PET plastic is broken down into flakes and then fibres used for creating the felt backings ensuring a long-lasting product. The upper layer of the carpet is made from regenerated fishing nets, which can be a hazard to marine wildlife if left abandoned. 

The company aims to foster a sustainable outcome from almost all of its production practices. 2 million litres of residual dye are recycled along with 7,000 kilograms of chemicals, 1,572 MWh recirculated heat from production facilities, 81 per cent recycled cardboard equivalent to 183,000 kilograms of packaging for carpet tiles for example and much more. 

Read more: 

- Carpet made from fishing nets and recycled plastic. State of Green, accessed June 4, 2020. 

- ege carpets: https://www.egecarpets.com/

Can’t buy enough sanitary pads – try reusable MyPads

Reusable MyPads (Source: MyPads)

MyPads are reusable menstrual and incontinence pads made from cotton and/or hemp. They are Australian-made and come from bushfire affected South Coast NSW. You can order them online from www.mypads.com.au and an introductory pack is available. 

Benefits of cloth pads: 
- they are cheaper over time than disposable tampons and pads, 
- they save sending single-use, plastic, synthetic pads to waste, 
- they are breathable and gentle on the skin, 
- the hemp inserts are more absorbent than disposable pads, 
- they are convenient as you never need to run out of pads again, 
- they are comfortable to wear. 

Why Hemp? 
- hemp requires no chemicals to grow so is kinder to the land and to your skin, 
- hemp fabric is antibacterial and anti-fungal, 
- hemp is ten times more stronger than cotton and thus more durable, 
- hemp is more absorbent than cotton so the inserts are thinner and less bulky. 

Read more at: 
- MyPads: www.mypads.com.au
 - MyPads – How Do They Work?: www.mypads.com.au/how-do-they-work/

Biodegradable drinking straws made from rye grain stalks left after harvest

Rye drinking straws made from the stalks left over after rye grain harvest. (ABC News)

There is a growing demand for biodegradable or reusable straws as some governments around the world legislate to reduce single-use plastics including plastic drinking straws.

Straws made from the hollow stems of wheat, rice and bamboo are already available in Australia, but are imported from overseas. Marion Vigot and Alexis Branlard aim to supply Australian biodegradable straws made from the strong, hollow stems of rye for the Australian market. They hope to produce 1 million straws from the first harvest and have formed the start-up company called Mister Rye based in Adelaide. South Australia is to ban single-use plastics next year and they are hoping to offer these rye straws as one of the alternatives.

One hectare of rye can produce 300,000 straws, so they only need a few hectares to make a million. They have formed arrangements with two organic rye farmers to do this. After harvesting the rye grain, the rye stalks are gently harvested and rolled into small bales by a vintage 1950’s hay baler. Then the straws are selected from between the nodes and hand cut by a team of workers. Marion and Alexis are hoping to mechanise this latter process. The straws are available online from Mister Rye at: https://www.misterrye.com/ 

For more information: 

- “Recycled rye straws an option to help environment and farmers in war on single-use plastics.” ABC News, October 11, 2019. 

– Also featured on Landline, 08/03/20, and available on iView for awhile: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/landline/series/0/video/RF1904Q006S00

Finland is aiming for a circular system for waste by 2025

Street recycling bins, Finland (Source: Sitra: https://www.sitra.fi/)

Finland does not have many natural resources and no fossil fuels. This means the country has to think hard about how to run its economy. Now it is aiming for a circular system where everything is reused and landfill is rarely needed.

In a linear economy we buy items and send waste and unused items straight to landfill. But in Helsinki, for example, the recyclables go to the Ammassuo Waste Treatment Centre and only 1% of that ends up in landfill, the goal is to get that to zero. The majority of the recycled waste is reused or reprocessed. Glass, paper, plastics, metals and cartons are sent to recycling facilities elsewhere. Organic materials are fermented to create methane, which feeds a gas-fired power plant. The leftover organic waste is made into compost.

[N.B. Conversely, organic waste that goes to landfill is buried and in this environment without O₂ it forms methane gas, which then makes it way into the atmosphere. Methane is 21 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO₂ so it is best that it is captured, burnt and used for power. Organic waste can also go to a well aerated garden composting system.]

The waste treatment centre is supported by Helsinki’s excellent recycling system. Householders are given containers for glass, metal, paper, cartons, plastics and biodegradables, what is left goes into general waste. There are incentives to sort, such that householders pay for their waste to be collected and those that sort more pay less.

As reported in 2018, not all householders were cooperating by sorting their waste and a lot of recyclables were still going to general waste. This mixed waste, at 50% of all waste, ends up at a new power station at Vantaa, which burns it to make electricity and heat. Some of this waste is plastics which are made from fossil fuels, so not at all circular.

This reluctance to sort appears to be a worldwide human problem, so it remains to be seen how well Finland educates its people to be more cooperative so it can achieve its goal of a circular waste economy by 2025. If successful, we will need to follow their example!

Reference: Towards a world without landfill. New Scientist, No. 3203, November 10, 2018, p 8.
Read more:
- Circular Economy Breakthroughs in Schools - Business Village Students Learn Circular Economy by Doing It! (in Finnish so translate page) Sitra, August 8, 2019.
- Waste management and recycling. Info Finland.

Plastic bottle tops recycled into near pure reusable plastic

Un-recycled plastic tops in this artwork by Mary Ellen Croteau (The Fifth Estate)

“The humble plastic bottle cap – scourge of waterways and a constant puzzle in terms of the recycling bin (must we take it off? Does it go in the same bin? Does it really get recycled?) is an example of the potential growth, jobs and profits waiting to be generated by the new economy.

Consumer goods giant Proctor & Gamble has invented a process for recycling the polypropylene caps into near virgin-quality reusable plastic. The technology has been made open source to enable global take-up, and a new company, PureCycle Technologies founded to put the process into practice in the USA.” …… From The Fifth Estate.

Continue reading: Bottle caps launch a green bond. The Fifth Estate, June 13 2019.

Using high-tech renewable wood to make just about everything

Source: New Scientist

This has to be the most exciting New Scientist article I have read in awhile! In material science labs around the world, people are working on an entire civilisation built on wood. The aim is to replace steel, concrete, plastics and some electronics with high-tech wood.

It is not the wood as we know it but processed wood. Some products planned to be made from this high-tech wood include: most car parts; skyscrapers; windows (wood can be processed into a strong, transparent material); aeroplanes; batteries; clothing and mobile phones. For example, Japanese engineers are due to unveil a wooden concept car at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

So far buildings, including skyscrapers, have been and are planned to be built from cross-laminated timber (CLT) which is very strong and can be processed off-site. Made to measure large flat sheets of CLT can make building construction easier and faster. Some examples of existing buildings are given in the New Scientist article cited below.

Wood is a complex mixture of organic chemicals. The most prominent is nanocellulose (40%) which is composed of long, strong fibres with excellent mechanical properties. Lignin comprises 30% of wood and the rest is a starch-like substance called hemicellulose. These three compounds can be extracted and processed into many valuable compounds.

Nanocellulose is already used as a petrochemical substitute in paints, glues, cosmetics, nappies, packaging and electronics. It has been proposed for thousands of other products, e.g. the car industry is exploring it as a replacement for glass fibres in bodywork.

Lignin is the coming revolution. It is a waste product from wood pulp and paper processing. Work is being done by chemical companies to use it to replace different petroleum-based products. The best developments so far are in coatings, adhesives and resins.

The laggard is hemicellulose which is difficult to process but the ultimate aim is to use it to replace plastic. Some examples of success here are to be found in the New Scientist article cited below.

Reference:
- Paper copy: “Welcome to the age of wood” by Graham Lawton, New Scientist, 16 March 2019, No3221, pp 33-37.
- Digital copy introduction: Our wooden future: making cars, skyscrapers and even lasers from wood.
- Individual issues of New Scientist can be purchased online from the New Scientist app for A$7.99.

Recycled plastic, glass and toner being used to make roads

The recycled additive being applied to a street in Craigieburn, Melbourne (Source: ABC News)

In Victoria and Tasmania, some town and city councils are using a mixture of recycled single use plastic bags; crushed recycled glass and recycled printer toner to make roads. Currently it is more expensive but the roads are expected to last longer and the councils are moving towards meeting their requirements to deal with waste.

A 300-metre stretch of road, on Rayfield Avenue in Craigieburn, Victoria, uses an additive that's made up of 530,000 plastic bags, more than 12,000 recycled printer cartridges and 168,000 glass bottles. The same mix was used in Tasmania to seal one kilometre of road in Snug, a town south of Hobart. In both states, the additive is developed by the recycling company Close The Loop.

The single use plastic bags are from the REDcycle soft plastic recycling that is collected outside participating supermarkets.

Read more:
Rubbish is being transformed into roads, thanks to one Melbourne company. ABC News, May 29, 2018.
Plastics, glass and printer toner recycled into road in Tasmania. ABC News, December 11, 2018.

Recycled soft plastics are reprocessed in Australia to make useful products

Soft plastics can only be recycled in drop bins outside participating stores (Source: REDcycle)

In Australia, we can recycle most hard plastics in our recycling bins. But our bins do NOT take soft plastics. We can recycle clean soft plastics at participating supermarkets. You can find the recycling bins (pictured above) near the front of these supermarkets (mostly Woolworths and Coles).

This soft plastic recycling is called REDcycle, see: http://www.redcycle.net.au/ for details of what is (and is not) recyclable in this way. Please note biodegradable plastics are not recyclable.

The recycled soft plastic goes to an Australian company, Repas. The company produces a range of over 200 recycled plastic products in Australia using state-of-the-art machinery and robotics. The range includes bollards, signage, outdoor furniture (including school furniture), fitness equipment and Enduroplank™/Decking as well as products suitable for traffic control, parks and gardens and the utilities industry.

For more information see:

- REDcycle: http://www.redcycle.net.au/

- Repas: http://www.replas.com.au/

Commercialising the production of compostable plastics from seafood waste

Tiger prawns Source: Sea-Ex

A team of post-graduate students from the University of Sydney comprising of a chemist, plant pathologist and business student are looking to launch a pilot study to make biodegradable strawberry packaging from waste crustacean shells and other all-natural ingredients. The students co-founded the company, Carapac, and are seeking funding for the pilot study.

A range of plastics can be made from crustacean shells, which do not biodegrade on the shelf but do when they reach soil which contains bacteria that break down the plastic. The students claim the compostable plastic improves the overall quality of the soil by releasing nutrients plus acting as a slow release nitrogen fertiliser.

Such sustainable, biodegradable plastics have huge potential to replace current single use plastics, particularly food packaging and plastic bags.

Reference: Idea for new plastics falls on fertile ground. The Weekend Australian, September 1-2, 2018 : https://www.theaustralian.com.au › business

Can we replace plastic or steel with bamboo products?

A bamboo tray at the Eden Project, Cornwall, UK. (photo Julie May)

There are over a thousand species of bamboo (Gigantocholoa), a primitive grass growing in a variety of forms from tiny dwarfs to towering tropical giants. The tropical giant bamboo (Dendrocalamus asper) is the fastest growing plant on the planet, recorded growing 1.2m skywards in 24 hours! Not only does bamboo grow fast, it begins growing again immediately after harvesting. A sustainable product easily replaced.

Gigantocholoa is a tropical to subtropical plant. The distribution of bamboo in general ranges from 50°N of Sakhalin in north Japan to 47°S in Chile. It occurs in altitudes up to 4,000m, from the warm humid tropics to the cold areas of northern Japan.

Common Uses:

• Bamboo is one of the most versatile plants on earth, useful for its lightweight strength, which comes from its hollow stems, for its ease of working and for its simple beauty.
• It is used by half the world’s people in thousands of products from huge skyscraper scaffolding to tiny gramophone needles and from slide rules to skins of aeroplanes. It can be used to start a cooking fire in a wet rainforest and its ashes can be used to polish jewels and manufacture electric batteries. It has made bicycles, windmills, musical instruments, kitchen utensils, paper, clothing, scales and walls strong enough to resist flood and tide, and bridges up to 260m long in China.
• Bamboo is suited to low-technology processing, as well as industrial manufacturing techniques. It is an ideal building material for low-cost, low-impact, earthquake-resistant housing projects.
• Within its stem walls short, tough fibres sit in a resilient softer matrix providing nature’s version of fibreglass. It has great tensile strength, splits straight and is very hard. You can grow your own house from bamboo every five years.
• The young shoots of Gigantocholoa are eaten as a vegetable.

Read more: Bamboo. The Eden Project: https://www.edenproject.com/learn/for-everyone/plant-profiles/bamboo

Paper straws in the UK: we can turn back the clock!

Black and white paper straw (Julie May)

The rejection of some plastics is happening quickly with single-use plastic items being banned in many places. In the UK recently, I found two examples of paper straws being used instead of plastic ones.

The black and white paper straw, above, comes from the cafe at the Tate Modern in London. It seems that some, if not all, UK National Trust cafes also use paper straws.

It was pleasing to see this sustainable and biodegradable product return. It takes me back some years when these straws were once common.

Adidas is using ocean plastic to make sneakers

Source: Green Matters

Adidas sold 1 Million pairs of sneakers made from ocean plastic in 2017 and are moving the initiative to apparel. Within the next six years, Adidas wants all of their products to be created from plastic that would otherwise have been put into the ocean.

To create its recycled plastic products, Adidas works with Parley for the Oceans, an organisation that gathers plastic waste from beaches and the sea, cleans it, chips it down, and turns it into yarn for use in consumer products. Products are now packaged in paper instead of plastic bags and microbeads were eliminated from the manufacturing process.

Adidas hasn’t been the only shoe company exploring sustainable options. Nike has turned to Flyleather material, which is created from cowhide waste mixed in with synthetic fibers. It’s led to a decrease in leather being thrown away and 95 percent of the water used in manufacturing is recycled. Nike notes that the product still feels like premium leather despite using recycled material.

Further reading:
Adidas sold 1 Million pairs of sneakers made from ocean plastic in 2017. Green Matters, March 2018.
Adidas: Sustainability Materials: https://www.adidas-group.com/en/sustainability/products/materials/

See also:

Some good developments with plastic recycling, production and cleanup.

Turning prawn shells into plastic.

Some good developments with plastic recycling, production and cleanup

Seat made from recycled soft plastic

We all know what damage plastic waste is doing to the land and sea environment. However, the move away from environmentally damaging plastic has begun. Below are a few of the many developments.

1. In Australia, we can recycle most hard plastics in our recycling bins. As well as that, we can recycle clean soft plastics at participating supermarkets. You can find the recycling bins in discrete areas that are away from rubbish bins. This soft plastic is used to make seats like the one pictured above, school furniture and other useful items. It is called REDcycle, see: http://www.redcycle.net.au/ for details of what is (and is not) recyclable this way. N.B. biodegradable plastic are not recyclable. The recycled soft plastic goes to an Australian company, Repas, which is making Australian products.

Plant-based compostable plastic bags are sold at supermarkets.

2. In some Australian stores and supermarkets, you can now buy compostable plastic bags that are made from plant material, as shown above. The bags shown are only compostable in a commercial compost facility (Australian Standard 4736-2006) whereas those bags labelled home compostable (AS 5810-2010) are suitable to compost at home.

3. In Amsterdam, The Netherlands, there is supermarket chain that plans to have totally plastic-free aisles. In their first supermarket, the aisle has a range of biodegradable plastics made from plants, including hard plastic food containers. The other, non-plastic containers are the traditional ones of glass, metal and cardboard. See: Amsterdam now has the world’s first plastic-free supermarket aisle. Interesting Engineering, March 2, 2018.

4. Lego, in Denmark, is planning to make its plastic pieces from more sustainable materials. For a start, the toys will be made with a polyethylene produced with ethanol made from sugarcane. The polyethylene pieces will make up just 1% to 2% of the total amount of plastic elements produced by Lego but plans are afoot to improve that percentage. See: Lego goes green with sugarcane-based plastic. BBC News, March 2, 2018.

5. By choosing not to use plastic as much as possible and to recycle it, we can make a difference. See: Plastic bans worldwide will dent oil demand growth, says BP. The Guardian, February 21, 2018.

6. Meanwhile, waste plastic makes its way into rivers, lakes and the oceans. There have been several inventions to clean up plastic from waterways, such as:
This genius bucket sucks trash and oil right out of the sea. Huffington Post, May 13, 2016.
And The Ocean Cleanup with their North Sea prototype.

See also:
Turning prawn shells into plastic
Adidas is using ocean plastic to make sneakers

Turning prawn shells into plastic

Angelina Arora with her plastic made from prawn shells (photo by L. Kennerley)

Having already worked with degradable plastics, chemistry student Angelina Arora from Sydney Girls High School, Australia, experimented with discarded seafood wastes she collected from a fish and chip shop. She came up with a strong, light, biodegradable plastic.

This is using a plentiful, renewable source of waste organic material to make biodegradable plastic, instead of using fossil fuels. The plastic could be a sustainable form of shopping bags and possibly other plastics that may not harm the environment by hopefully being totally biodegradable.

Source: Turning prawns into plastic: schoolgirl Angelina Arora fights science stereotypes. By Liam Mannix, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 Dec 2017.
Postscript: Indian-origin student wins Australia's top Science and Engineering Award. SBS Your Language, March 8, 2018.