Lampshades, fruit bowls and other decorative objects made of butane gas canisters complete the decoration of Tyranny of Distance, a coffeehouse located in Melbourne, Australia.
The decoration of the coffeehouse was devised by designer Marcos Davidson, who embraced a recycling philosophy. There, the bar becomes an accidental gallery where several recycled pieces and craft objects are on display.
To draw attention to the relationship between humans and the incredible amount of waste we produce every day, the guys from the Salzig Design studio in Holland built this temple using 100 tons of recycled plastic bottles.
The Temple of Trash is a temporary structure, and was built in Rotterdam, Holland for the 2007 Follydock Festival. The Temple is 25 meters long, 10 meters wide and 7 meters tall.
What would researchers of the future say if they came across this temple while conducting their excavations?
via Salzig Design, Core77, Inhabitat
As the saying goes “A stitch in time saves nine.” So, people, get ready. It is not enough to take our own fabric bag when we go shopping at the drugstore or the supermarket. ThaĂs Horta, educator and coordinator of the A3P program in the city of Sao Paulo, said recently during a lecture that she refuses to drink coffee or water in plastic cups. The solution? She always carries a mug and a squeeze bottle in her purse.
If somebody offers her a drink in a plastic cup, Horta uses her super ceramic mug. The squeeze bottle, adopted by many people, is “used” to drink water. What does it have to do with the plastic container in the title? A-ha. When she goes to the bakery to buy cold meats, she takes her own plastic container! By doing this, she avoids using plastic and paper that would end up in the garbage.
Girls, she gave a suggestion for our shower. Rinsing off hair conditioner requires a lot of water—especially if you have long hair, like myself. So… Horta chooses leave-in hair products. She said that this gives movement to her hair—and she sure had shining hair.
What is A3P
The Public Administration Environmental Agenda (A3P) is a program that seeks to implement good practices in public institutions in order to preserve the environment. Their actions range from implementing the use of recycled paper to checking the building’s pipes. Horta told us that Edificio Martinelli, a historical building located in downtown Sao Paulo, used to spend, per day, an amount of water that could fill 10 olympic-size swimming pools. After the remodeling, the building is saving R$100,000 Brazilian reals in their water bill. Another example of the A3P work: an amount equivalent to 10% of the Brazilian GDP is spent on government purchases. The government program stimulates the purchase of “green” products—less harmful to the nature. To find out more about the program, click here.
Note: I’ve just spotted, from my bedroom window, a flock of migratory birds flying towards the coast. How cute!
This piece of news published by Setor Reciclagem called my attention. The battery industry hasn’t organized a collection system yet. What do you mean, Bial? I searched for more information on this and, as always, found some great material on How Stuff Works (and terrible links that took me nowhere). Straight from the source.
Every year, 1.2 billion batteries and 400 million cell phone batteries are sold in Brazil, says the data from the Brazilian Electrical and Electronics Industry Association (Abinee). This gigantic amount of batteries that goes to the market also has a limited lifetime and usually ends up in the regular garbage. Since 2000, all batteries produced in Brazil have very low or near zero levels of heavy and pollutant metals such as cadmium, mercury and zinc, as establishes directive number 257 issued in 1999 by the National Council of Environment (Conama). Because of this law, the heavy metals present in batteries and cell phone batteries offer a low risk of pollution, which could lead people to agree with the industry executives’ claims that their batteries can be disposed into the garbage.
The point is that the Brazilian reality doesn’t help. The disposal of ordinary batteries as regular garbage requires a good sanitary landfill management system, found only in 10% of the Brazilian landfills, according to estimates by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Natural Renewable Resources (Ibama). Also, not every battery in the market meets the standard—there are “illegal batteries.”
Incipient in Brazil, the level of recycling or reuse of batteries is very low. Suzaquim is the only company that does it, recycling approximately 6 million batteries per year—less than 1% of what is sold. Manufacturers of cell phone batteries, for instance, collect and ship them to recyclers outside Brazil.
“We do have the appropriate technology to handle used batteries in the Brazil; what we don’t have is enough raw material [used batteries],” said Professor Marcelo Mansur, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (DEMET), Federal University of Minas Gerais (on the article reproduced by Setor Reciclagem). To sum up: by throwing our batteries into the regular garbage we are turning their recycling into something unfeasible. This is exactly what the industry is doing: hindering a process that could generate profits and eliminate risks to our health. These companies should do as TetraPak, who invented the Recycling Route just to help in the collection of their packages. Morons!
The leading battery brands—Duracell (click on disposal; watch out, the website is poorly organized), Rayovac and Panasonic—include this message in their labels: dispose of as regular garbage. Note: together, these brands account for over 50% of the battery market. Although it is not illegal to dispose of batteries as household waste when they are in compliance with the maximum levels of heavy metals—cadmium, zinc, lead, manganese and mercury—the fact remains that only 35% of the approximately 5,000 cities in Brazil have sanitary landfills. Most of the cities still use open landfills with poor environmental quality control.
Also, it is estimated that 40% of the batteries found in the market are smuggled into the country and do not meet the environmental safety standards. These batteries are usually manufactured in Asia, especially in China, and have high concentration of cadmium and lead, sometimes in levels 10 times above those established by the Conama directive number 257/1998. Meanwhile, their zinc and manganese levels—active elements in batteries—are lower than the minimum threshold established by said directive, which decreases the lifetime of the product and therefore increases the amount of disposed of products and also the level of pollution.
The website of the Ministry of Environment has a list of collection stations hidden somewhere there. I tried every kind of search and didn’t find it! I went to the main page, but didn’t find any useful information there.
One of the answers of the oracle: contact your local Secretariat of Environment. I went to the portal of the Government of the City of Sao Paulo, which is very good. One piece of news: Cantinho Ecológico protects the environment in the Sao Mateus area. Surely, there are some banks (Real, for example) and cell phone companies (unwillingly, by the way) that are doing their part. In a country where not even the street garbage bins manage to survive the population’s actions, what else can we expect?
Just wait because I’m going to approach this issue again.
In time: some Posts for Volunteer Waste Collection (PEV) do have a container for batteries and cell phone batteries. Remember to sort them out…
Photo: Old Batteries, Eva The Weaver, at Flickr under CC
I like some (some) of the Boticario’s products. I’ve known the Boticario Foundation since its creation—they have some nice conservation projects in Paraná and have grown a lot. But the nicest initiative I saw today, during my visit to their store on Augusta Street. A small basket, used to collect cosmetic packages for recycling.
You know those product boxes? Mine never made it home with me. I brought only the make-up remover bottle, with the expiration date, batch number, and usage instructions clearly printed on it. The product box didn’t leave the store. As for the shopping bag, you know that I never accept it, right? In addition to this initiative, I’m going to act as an eco-zealot: since those boxes can and should be recycled, why don’t they take two steps back and come up with a way of marketing their products without them? Nature is even more grateful when we simply reduce, isn’t it? 
This creation by artist Yuken Teruya gave us an idea for what to do with the cardboard toilet paper cylinders that Juliana and I have been saving for the past few months. We have already saved 30 cardboard cylinders that will be used to decorate our home, just as in Yuken’s project. Another cool suggestion, made by our friend Denise Rangel, is to reuse the rolls as wire holders.
Rodrigo Barba
There I was—happy, cheerful and content—driving back from the Sao Paulo countryside after the Carnaval holiday when I suddenly saw a sign: “Ecological rubber tire asphalt.” I smiled from cheek to cheek. How nice!
There are several kinds of asphalt. If I’m not mistaken, all of them use some oil in their composition. The difference is that 20% of eco-asphalt is made up of old, ground up tires, according to the Setor Reciclagem website.
According to a company called Greca Asfaltos, 54.5 million tires were manufactured in 2006. In 1999, it was estimated that more than 10 million tires had been disposed of. Note. Midas ElastĂ´meros do Brasil, a company that turns tires into rubber ground, says that their technology is Brazilian.
And more. Besides the obvious advantage of using something which could otherwise pollute the environment, the eco-asphalt is 40% more resistant than conventional asphalt—some researchers say that it can last up to 5.5 times longer too, see source here.
So, here’s the question that everybody wants to ask. If this alternative is more efficient and ecologically correct, why don’t all of the cities and road operating companies opt for rubber asphalt?
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