31 August 2016
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August has brought with it a host of new, innovative recycling projects, including building LEGO houses from discarded plastic (Ed Sheeran would be proud...)
Building a LEGO House - $5,000 Homes from Recycled Plastic Blocks
A company in Colombia is recycling plastic for the most incredible reason - to build real-life LEGO houses.
Conceptos Plasticos is tackling both plastic waste issues and lack of affordable housing with a single solution: interlocking LEGO-like bricks that can be used to build houses for a few thousand dollars per structure.
The recycled plastic blocks are easy to use and require no construction experience, making them perfect for families with the time but not financial means or materials to construct their own dwellings. They are durable, fire- and earthquake-resistant and much cheaper than other available materials. The company estimates the lifespan of the blocks at 500 years, meaning the house will last for many generations of Colombian families.
The aim of the project is to help build sustainable housing for the growing number of poor families in Colombia, working with locals to source plastic and create all kinds of spaces, including emergency shelters, community and educational buildings.
#RecycledBeats - from junk to funk
New provisional figures show recycling in Wales continues to increase and is at its highest ever recorded level, finding the average combined reuse, recycling and composting rate across Wales’ 22 local authorities was 60%, an increase of 4 percentage points on last year’s figure. Recycling everyday items, such as deodorant cans and shampoo bottles, helps to save energy. producing new materials from scratch requires much more energy than recycling and uses precious resources such as oil. In many places in Wales and the UK, food waste such as banana peels, when recycled, are taken to a special processing plant and turned into energy to power our homes, local communities... AND our music. Because of this, Recycle for Wales teamed up with the fabulous Green Man Festival to reveal how the things that you recycle could be transformed into energy to power your favourite music. For example, did you know that it takes just half a recycled banana peel to produce enough energy to fully charge an iPod? AND, 60 recycled banana peels could produce enough energy to watch your favourite band on a big screen for a whole hour. That's some Banana Power...BLUE JEANS GO GREEN™
It’s time to get rid of that old pair of jeans you’ve been holding onto. We know it’s hard but what if we told you that instead of throwing them into the trash, you could recycle them to help build a home or even a community?
With the Blue Jeans Go Green™ program, denim waste is being transformed into denim insulation, not only diverting it from landfills but also helping with building efforts for communities across the US.
Over the last 10 years, over 1.4 million pieces of denim have been collected, 600+ tons of denim has been diverted from landfills and 2+ million square feet of denim insulation has been generated. Since the launch of the Madewell x Blue Jeans Go Green partnership in 2014, Madewell has collected over 70,000 pairs of jeans that have been upcycled into housing insulation. That’s a whole lot of denim making a difference!
