Vespa scooters enjoyed a high place during their heydays, but as time passes, these classics from the past get old, rusty and useless, not to mention that their fuel efficiency would be too poor by modern standards. All that aside, there’s still a lot of people in love with the old scooter. Bel & Bel give people a chance to own the Vespa, albeit in an entirely different way.

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Here’s a statistic that I bet will surprise you:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that for every one barrel of residential trash, 71 more were created before the products that produced that waste reached consumer households.

What’s more, a new report from the EPA shows that ordinary consumer products and packaging account for 44% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Can you imagine how much waste and GHG emissions could be eliminated from the production-consumption cycle if products could be re-designed to use less material, be longer life, repairable, reusable, and safer?
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Imagine if all the world’s rivers and lakes were no longer filled with marine life but with plastic bottles, containers and packaging instead.

Plastic recycling

The damaging effect to wildlife and marine eco- systems throughout the world would be catastrophic, resulting in less and less plant life being able to grow, CO2 emissions rising and our planet would literally be chocking on its own plastic waste.

Yet this isn’t something that is a million years from now, our Earth’s demise is happening now with over 150 billion tonnes of plastic being dumped into the ocean by the worldwide fishing industry alone. But it is also something that we can combat now, quite easily, simply by recycling.

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Upcycling is better than recycling or “reusing” in many ways. The idea is to start from discarded products or waste and create something sustainable, and usable as a daily item. Austrian shop Gabarage is busy showing the world the potential of garbage; the custom products that can be made from trash, and the money such products can bring in.

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Those steam powered boats have already done a lot of damage to the waters, polluting them ever so much and we need to find a way to make them greener. We might be on to something here.

DYI amphibious bicycle made from recycled water bottles

This DIY Amphibious bicycle is made using recycled water barrels and is totally human powered denying any need for energy. Unless you consider what the human must consume to have the calories to burn.

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Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have created history of sorts by turning their urine into water and actually drinking it!

On May 20, astronauts aboard the space station drank water that had been recycled from their urine, sweat and water that condenses from exhaled air. What is more, they said “cheers” as they clicked drinking bags and toasted those working on the ground at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) who themselves were sipping their own version of recycled drinking water.

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An art student came up with her own idea of how to promote recycling. She created an invisible car. Kind of, sort of. She painted her car to match the parking lot in front of her art studio entrance. How cool is that? But, the car is still there. Or is it?

My question – is she really wearing clothes or are they painted on, too? I mean there are girls who are saving on textile recycling by just painting their clothes on, right?

The young lady’s car will be used to advertise for a recycling company.

“I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact.” She went on to say that “People have been stopping in the street to look and coming up and almost bumping into it, so it’s had the desired effect,” said Sara Watson.

Hats off to Sara for a cool and original idea as well as the lesson she wants to teach to the rest of us.

[Via Inhabitat]

If you’ve been wondering what to do with all those paper rolls, pizza boxes or shopping bags instead of recycling them the old fashion way, Japanese Yuken Teryua has a brilliant solution. An elegant and highly attractive collection of recycled materials that has been turned into eco-art. Yuken seems like a gifted artist with a vision, that finds beauty in the ordinary. That toilet paper rolls tree that could hang delicately in any contemporary home or the bag tree with the green light are definitely our favorite. An amazing mix of functionality and awareness. No? [via booooooom]

Remember the “funny” guy with the British humor that was talking to his bin? Well the story continues and this time we can understand more about the recycling campaign that mayor Boris Johnson is promoting for London.

“Despite recent reports of a downturn in the market for recycled materials the Mayor is confident that the recycling market will recover. Over 60 per cent of the rubbish we throw away can actually be recycled and yet Londoners on average are recycling 20 per cent of their waste. Now everyone in London can recycle paper, glass and cans at the very least and the message from the Recycle for London campaign is to reassure people and encourage them to recycle more.”

There is something we can do, right?

It seems ironic and even startling to an extent when one gets to know that the paper industry across the world produces three times more carbon emissions than aviation industry.

It might be a touch unbelievable, but if you consider the fact that thousands of acres of trees are mowed down for paper and that subsequently only adds to carbon footprint, this is not all that surprising.

In the wake of UK formation of organizations such as Shrink which are asking people to reduce their paper consumption by 50% in UK and French supremo Sarkozy following the path, it only is fair that the entire planet takes up the cause as well.

Those who often calculate the carbon footprint left over by the paper industry, forget to add in the number of trees that have been chopped down for the wood. These reduced number of trees automatically means greater pollution.

According to a survey conducted by Xerox, 45% of all paper used by employees in firms reaches the dustbin. This, along with all the junk mail that we get further adds to wastage in paper. It is easy to look past something that we consider such an integral part of our life and waste it callously while it could still cause plenty of damage to the planet.

Using paper judiciously and reducing its wastage can easily help conserve more trees and also cut down on the whole carbon footprint. Many paper plantations are already highly contentious, especially in developing nations. By not printing stuff that we do not really need and by using recycled paper as often as we can, we can indeed help cut down on the staggering figures that are in front of us today.

Remember that every time you save a sheet of paper, you are adding something meaningful to the planet.

Source: The Guardian
Image courtesy of Deibu