recycling Archives - The Red Ferret JournalThe Red Ferret Journal

Eco Friendly April 4, 2023 posted by Nigel

Quick-Release Binder – Recycling Lithium Ion Batteries Just Got Super Easy

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered an ingenious new way to recycle Lithium Ion batteries, and it’s so simple that even your mum could do it. Maybe. The problem with battery recycling has always been that it’s rather cumbersome. Traditional methods involve breaking down batteries into their constituent parts, then extracting the valuable materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. The process works, but it’s not exactly what you’d call efficient, and it can be quite costly.

Eco Friendly October 5, 2022 posted by Nigel

Ascend Elements – Atomic Upcycling Promises Infinite EV Battery Recycling

Most people will agree that while electric cars and renewable technology is great, a big problem is the huge amount of ugly unsustainable mining that’s needed for the humble battery. Digging the material out of the ground is very carbon intensive, dirty and sometimes downright toxic. So anything that promises to provide a decent recycling route gets our vote. Now a clever company based out of the US has come up with a new recycling technology they claim can recover…

Eco Friendly August 31, 2022 posted by Nigel

Olefy – quantum leap in plastic recycling promises to save the oceans and our landfills

The world is literally swimming in waste plastic. We produce around 300 million tons of the stuff a year, of which a mere 9% gets recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, oceans and inside poor creatures who mistake it for food (and usually die). So what to do? Well there may be a real hope on the horizon. A Finnish company called Olefy Technology claims that after 40 years of development and testing it can now recycle almost any…

Eco Friendly April 21, 2021 posted by Nigel

PDK – new kind of plastic can be recycled for ever, at a price

Scientists have come up with a new form of plastic which can be recycled back to a pristine state for resuse a huge number of times. This makes it a big contender to help stop the mountain of plastic trash we waste every day. The new material, PDK – which stands for polydiketoenamines – come with a penalty though. It’s very expensive to make. Something to do with one particular chemical component which costs a lot. However once PDK is…

Eco Friendly March 22, 2021 posted by Nigel

Evanesto – from plastic pots to compost lots

There’s just too much plastic in the world. We’re drowning in it. But an enterprising French company hopes to change all that with the invention of a compound called Evanesto. The enzyme based material is added to conventional PLA plastic at the manufacturing stage, which then turns it into something which can be composted in less than 200 days. Proper compost. The company, called Carbiolice, claim that the enzymes can be used for all forms of plastic packaging, tableware or…

Eco Friendly March 5, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Plastic That Breaks Down In The Ocean Can Happen – but there’s a catch

Making plastic that degrade in the ocean isn’t impossible, it’s VERY doable in a number of different ways in fact! But it turns out that implementing such things in a cost effective manner is a bit beyond us at this time so lets not ignore immediate benefits of the Three R’s, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

Eco Friendly March 4, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Cooking Oil to 3D Printing – new research develops a way to recycle oil

If you cook you’ve probably got a jar of used oil sitting somewhere near your stove. Hopefully you’re not dumping it down the drain. Most people put it out with the trash but what if you could recycle it? Researchers from the University of Toronto have devised a way to turn used oil from McDonald’s into 3D printing resin that is biodegradable.

Eco Friendly February 28, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Manufacturers To Be Charged for Their Packaging – money to support recycling

Recycling in the US is often times a nice idea in theory but in practice, is more trouble than some counties are finding it’s worth which has led to many places ending their recycling pick up. To keep this from happening, some think that the onus for the bill should be on the producers of the plastic.

Eco Friendly February 17, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Plastic Guide – check out this info-graphic on plastic

Plastic is in everything. It’s in EVERYTHING. Look around you, just thinking about how much plastic surrounds you, how much you’re literally holding if you’re reading this on a mobile device. We can all agree that it’s not great but it’s all not created equal. Here’s a handy chart of each of the major plastic types.

Eco Friendly January 23, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Plastic Recycling Isn’t What You Think – most ends up in landfills

It’s time to get a reality check about recycling. There’s nothing wrong about it but it’s not the cure all to the plastic problem and in fact, most plastic ends up in landfills or burnt, not made into new products. In 2020, people should strive to purchase less plastic rather than counting on recycling to fix everything.

Eco Friendly January 7, 2020 posted by Donyae Coles

Recycle or Trash? – check out this guide to the blue bin

Recycling won’t solve every pollution issue we have but it will help in some cases. Not everything we use can be recycled and there are even more things that we think can be, but really shouldn’t go into the blue bin. Here’s a quick list of some common items that should just be thrown in the trash.

Eco Friendly December 30, 2019 posted by Donyae Coles

Give Back Box – do some charity with your old shipping boxes

It’s boxing week and if you’ve been accumulating boxes from all your deliveries or have a bunch of empties sitting around from gift giving, don’t just put them out for the recycling to pick up. Check out Give Back Box and help some folks in need.

Eco Friendly December 12, 2019 posted by Donyae Coles

We Need To Think About Stuff – and buy less of it

All the stuff we have in our lives has to go somewhere. Eventually, no matter how sturdy and well made it is, it will end up in the trash and given that cold hard reality, we need think more about our stuff. The second thing we need to realize is, nobody wants your stuff and these are the big ideas behind Secondhand by Adam Minter.

Eco Friendly September 20, 2019 posted by Donyae Coles

Do Personal Acts Matter – if everyone does a little, we can do a lot

Do personal choices affect climate change outcomes? That’s one of the big questions for the climate crisis. We know that the major factors come from industry and obviously, a private person forgoing air travel or cutting meat from their menu won’t change that. But, even so, making personal changes can have an impact, just not exactly in the way we think.

Eco Friendly September 16, 2019 posted by Donyae Coles

Plastic Roads – from bags to blacktop

There’s a lot of plastic in the world and most of it ends up in landfills and the environment, not in a recycling center. This is a very bad thing. One solution is to just take some of that plastic and make roads out of it.

Posts by tag: recycling