Transform plastic junk into jewellery – or a high-rise greenhouse

A clip on the BBC News page has just alerted me to the fact that Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, had an exciting exhibition showing what can be done with waste plastic:
“Repair” constituted the focal point at this year's Ars Electronica Festival, September 2-11, 2010, chiefly held at Tabakfabrik Linz.
What grabbed my imagination most strongly was a few seconds of window farming. For more on this, go to
http://www.windowfarms.org/

Making Oil Out Of Plastic

Hi there

Does anyone out there know how far we have come in adopting processes of making energy out of our mountains of plastic waste?

Here's a video clip (from 2007) demonstrating how a company called Blest transforms waste plastic into fuel (sadly, something goes wrong with the sound about two thirds into the clip):


And here's another clip (from 2008) demonstrating pellets made from recycled plastic, cooking oil, wood chips and other materials. The product is designed to insulate the industry from volatile fossil fuel prices. The company (repla) claims that their PWF pellets can supply almost the same energy yield at half the going rate:


See also http://article.wn.com/view/WNAT2083CAEE60FA53F650758E687938BB1D/

Throwaway decline – last year ten percent fewer plastic bags were used in the UK

Your blogger hopes that the Guardian will have no objections to her quoting their snippet of fairly good news. However, let's also focus on the fact that, according to the item, we still use (= waste) 6.1 billion – six-point-one billion – plastic carrier bags each year. 

There IS a better way to get our shopping home: re-using bags, using wicker baskets, jute bags, or cotton bags sewn from leftover material (see Morsbags on how to do that). 

Use your imagination, don't use a plastic bag!

Here's the Guardian snippet:

"Throwaway decline
"Future archaeologists will no doubt shake their heads at the vast numbers of plastic carrier bags we use and then chuck away to rot, very very slowly, on landfill tips. But we are getting better: over the past four years we have cut our use of the wretched things by 43%.
"Last year alone we used 10% fewer bags. The bad news is that we are still filling up 6.1bn a year. The campaign group Waste Watch says if the switch to reusable bags slows down, it will call for a bag tax.
Carrier bags are a favourite target for anti-waste activists, but they have even bigger, more polluting, targets in their sights. The latest include throwaway razors and single-use picnic plates and cutlery."


Oh yes: anything made of plastic needs to disappear from the shelves in our shops and supermarkets that is designed to be used just the once. Your blogger is radical in this regard, and reuses and recycles fruit and vegetable punnets to grow seeds in or to carry harvests of brambles about to share with friends. She even carefully washes out plastic goblets to reuse on another occasion.

PS:
Waste Watch are "a practical charity inspiring and helping individuals, communities and organisations to waste less.
Working together, [WW] aim to change the way we live and the way we produce, buy, use and dispose of things."

An urban myth: bottled water hazard, heated plastic releases dioxin

Hi there

Have you recently received a message warning you not to drink water from a plastic bottle that has been "cooked" in your car? Because Sheryl Crow is reported to have said on the Ellen Show that she contracted breast cancer from drinking such water.

Well, no matter how often this claim is repeated, it doesn't get any truer. Chemically, PE bottles cannot possibly create dioxin, because there is no way polyethylene combined with heat and fat can result in dioxin. And freezing water in a plastic bottle will not release harmful chemicals into the water, quite the opposite.

Please take the time to download the magazine (for free) published by the American Council on Science and Health in this link: http://www.acsh.org/news/newsID.1669/news_detail.asp
You will see that it was first published on 14th January 2008 (!)

Here's the comment by Dr. Michael Kamrin:
"While it is true that some chemicals may leach out of plastics in very tiny amounts, these chemicals have been carefully studied and do not cause cancer even when animals are exposed to them in very large amounts. This conclusion is supported by scientists around the world and is reflected in the confidence that regulatory agencies have in the safety of using plastics in containers and wraps for food and drink. — Dr. Kamrin"

If you feel the American Council on Science and Health may be infiltrated by the food or plastics industry, or that testing methods just aren't good enough yet, see what Snopes.com has to say on the same subject. This is an excellent source of all kinds of knowledge, usually great debunkers of urban myths: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cookplastic.asp
Incidentally, this link will tell you the long and sorry history of this particular urban myth. Have fun!

The long and the short of this all is: there are indeed different kinds of plastic; don't use the wrong kind for the wrong purpose. In other words, it may be wise not to drink water from a plastic bottle that has been rolling around and lying around in a car left to "cook" in the hot sun for hours, not least because the water will taste horrible.

Festival of the Sea: Beach Clean in Oban with GRAB

In the context of SAMS' Festival of the Sea, GRAB Trust's Caroline Askew and several helpers participated in a Beach Clean at Oban Harbour on 24th May.