The sidewalks on the streets of Philadelphia are dotted with brand-new solar-powered trash cans these days.

Solar-powered Trash Compactors in Philadelphia

These new, landfill-crunching compacting bins are powered completely by the sun and are capable of receiving around 8 times as much waste as a regular trash can.

(more…)

If you're new here and you like our articles, how about subscribing free for our updates via RSS feed.

On show recently at Designers & Agents Green Room, Aurora Robson’s unique artwork has been a refreshing combination of intricate patterns and colours. Her work uses recycled materials that are stylishly highlighted with solar-powered LEDs.

Aurora Robson, hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a contemporary artist who works with installations, works on paper, paintings, sculpture, video, photography, and performance art. She would like to describe herself as being primarily a sculptor.

For her recent show at Designers & Agents Green Room, Aurora made use of about 20,000 plastic bottles from the landfill. She uses recycled materials in her works of art to such an extent where she enjoys receiving junk mail because “it gives her new material to create her work.”

“The language and costly graphic devices and fancy printing used in junk mail gives it a persuasive, positive and personal flavour, making it great fodder for my work. My practice is ultimately about recognising and embracing new possibilities and displays and encouraging others to do the same,” she said.

Some of Aurora Robson’s outstanding pieces of art included works involving plastic bottles carved, cut and twisted into what one critic described as “romantic, unrecognizable forms.”

In short, like all good artists using recycled materials as their medium, Aurora Robson transforms the trash into things of beauty shrouded in mystery.

Quite inspiring, isn’t it?

[via Inhabitat]

So what if the plastic bags decomposed in just 3 months. An editor at the Asahi Shimbun opined that plastic shopping bags are NOT the biggest problem. Some 30 billion shopping bags that weigh several hundreds of thousands of tons are NOT the problem.

A survey by this editor revealed -

1. 83% of those who get plastic bags reuse (recycle?) them as liners for their kitchen garbage cans.

2. 80% also used the plastic bags to line their waste baskets.

3. 43% find yet other ways to reuse the little buggers.

5. A mere 0.8% just threw them away.

In the absence of plastic bags for this purpose, most said they would buy garbage bags for the same purpose or reuse newspaper.

Not a few people reused the plastic bags when they went shopping. Many are opting to buy a lot of the cheap plastic bags instead of the more costly heavy plastic bags. In other words…collecting money for plastic bags at the supermarket is just another way to, well, make money. The bags are already being reused, recycled. What’s the big deal?