Tag: Recycling

Lights on fishing nets reduce unwanted bycatch. But, once discarded, fishing nets endanger sea life. Enter a British startup, which aims to reuse old nets and reduce marine pollution. With the help of small investors, the English founder has developed a patented machine in a shipping container, which can shred and clean up to 20kg of old nylon nets...

Chickpeas are a readymade replacement for coffee. Coffee grounds, meanwhile, can be used for sustainable building projects. A Warsaw-based startup identified the waste product’s potential for the circular economy and developed a patented technology to extract valuable resources from it. Initial attempts a few years ago were certainly helpful. The team’s latest system is set up so that coffee-industry...

Rare components in batteries can be sustainably recovered. Recycling long-life materials such as PTFE still represents a challenge. But a research team in Japan has found a way to convert PTFE into reusable, organic fluorine compounds. The team exposed the material to a 5 Mega Gray dose of electron beams in a heated environment of 370°C. Treatment that caused...

Blood sugar levels can be tested using the magnetometer in smartphones. Permanent magnets, however, are needed for EVs and wind turbines. The rare earths they contain are particularly valuable. Now, a Northern Irish startup is using a patented method to recycle magnets sustainably. The magnets are crushed before being mined for base metals like iron, aluminium or copper using...

A thoughtful hiker turned citrus fruits into toilet paper. And, as a Sicilian founder has shown with her biodegradable yarn, oranges can play an additional role in the circular economy. Her juicy thought? Only 40% of the fruit gets used during the juicing process. The rest is rich in cellulose, which, thanks to the startup's patented process, can be...

Smart waste sorting leads to more efficient recycling. But currently it’s more expensive to make polyester or nylon reusable than to manufacture them from scratch. Enter a London-based startup which has been developing bioactive agents for cost-neutral recycling. An AI searches for new combinations of amino acids and proteins which could split plastics into their chemical components under low...

Some tiny houses descend from wind turbines. Now, a German-Ukrainian team has built its own tiny trailer using recycled plastic and 3D-printing techniques. With granules from 7,500 recycled plastic bottles, reinforced by stabilising fibreglass, the prototype was printed in one piece. Ensuring the 3m x 1.85m mobile home weighed only 400kg. The kitchen is concealed towards the rear, under...

Sawdust can replace polystyrene. Now a team led by an American design and engineering student has discovered another way to manufacture sustainable packaging material. The team mixed coffee grounds, brown rice flour, Reishi mushroom spores, xanthan gum and water to form a paste, which was 3D printed into different objects. These were then kept in a closed container for ten...