Waste or interesting products: depends on your perspective!
At a recent environmental film festival I watched a documentary called ‘garbage moghuls’. It was about the trenton, nj based company terracycle. They are no doubt doing good work by making green from green. They take semi-garbage (mostly from landfills) and make useful products out of it. So chips ahoy packaging, lays packing, seat belts, hoarding materials etc all are transformed into notebooks, napkin holders, photo frames etc. I did check out their website but so far they take limited no. of items and we still have the problem of what to do with the ever increasing real trash? The kind that looks, feels and smells bad!! Wouldn’t it be great to be able to eliminate that or do something about it..
On a happier note, here are some other cool products made of trash..
1. empty plastic bottles are chopped, melted and extruded as fine polyester fiber to create backpacks! The mountain phoenix backpack uses 72 bottles saving landfills an estimated 2.5 million of them over 3 years.
2. Nike’s reuse a shoe program grinds old shoes into 3 categories: outside rubber, midsole foam, and upper fabric-then outsources the raw materials to its partners. Materials are sometimes used to create athletic fields! 75,000 pairs of shoes creates running tracks and 2,500 pairs creates a playground.
source: ngm/adventure
#sustainableproducts,#nikesustainability, #terracycle, #sustainability