Companies offering solutions to environmental challenges

[Ivan Seeking]

In honor of those companies offering unique solutions to our environmental challenges.

Mohawk Carpet

As the concern for our environment continues to grow, Mohawk has accepted the challenge to do our part to reduce, reuse, renew and recycle. The SmartStand® with DuPont™ and EverStrand™ fibers are two ground-breaking methods to manufacturing carpet. These fibers truly reduce, reuse, renew and recycle. One could say a better environment is just a kernel of corn or a plastic bottle away.

http://www.mohawkcarpet.com/green-flooring/green-carpeting/default.aspx

 

[Evo]

I have a large tote bag made out of recycled plastic bottles, it looks and feels like high quality canvass.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I have a large tote bag made out of recycled plastic bottles, it looks and feels like high quality canvass.

Who makes it?

 

[Evo]

Who makes it?

I don't know, it was a gift from my company, they are always giving us gifts. There is no tag. It does say that it was made from 9 recycled bottles. I love it. I could see clothing made from this stuff. Definitely drapes, chairs and couches. I would think if there was some flamability issue, they'd have taken care of that with the carpet.

 

[Kurdt]

I wonder if you could convince someone with OCD to wear an item of clothing fashioned from recycled bottles.

 

[Evo]

I wonder if you could convince someone with OCD to wear an item of clothing fashioned from recycled bottles.

Do they wear polyester?

 

[Kurdt]

Do they wear polyester?

If it makes the joke work for you.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Turning billboards into bags

...Clemente: Last year was the election period in the Philippines and there were a lot of advertising banners and campaign banners actually. It's really proliferating all over the country and since our advocacy is solid waste management, we already started talking about how are we going to address all this waste around us in the country?

Since my business is in the sewing industry, I thought why don't we try to sew it and make it into something. So we got one and tried to sew it, if the needle could go through it and it did. So I said maybe we could try to make something out of it, at first it was purses, and then eventually since it was May, and June is the start of the school year suggested why don't we make school bags out of it for the children in the public schools...

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/08/eco.billboards/index.html#cnnSTCText

 

[Moonbear]

Interesting. So, perhaps instead of making signs out of cardboard, they should be made from things like canvas so they can be reused? Not a bad idea.

 

[Astronuc]

Speaking of unusual materials, the daughter of a friend made a handbag from duct tape.

Recycled plastics are usually melted to form fibers.

There's a company that takes styrofoam from electronics packaging and recycles it into building products like molding for windows, doors, and floorboards, and perhaps exterior trim.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Interesting. So, perhaps instead of making signs out of cardboard, they should be made from things like canvas so they can be reused? Not a bad idea.

Apparently the billboard covers are made of a canvas-like material. They recognized that the old billboard covers are a valuable resource that was being wasted.

Or am I misunderstanding? What signs?

 

[Moonbear]

There's a company that takes styrofoam from electronics packaging and recycles it into building products like molding for windows, doors, and floorboards, and perhaps exterior trim.

That brings to mind...if anyone knows of a good use for small pieces of wood, mostly red oak, that are scraps from producing other wood products like barstools and cabinet doors, etc., I know of a company that is looking for ideas, preferably profitable. Currently, they can either just turn it into wood shavings or chips (i.e., for mulch or animal bedding) or sell it to a company in China that splices pieces together to form the core in stair railings. They're looking for a better use both to reduce their own expenses since everything unused cuts into their profits as a wasted expense on the lumber purchases for making their products and because they want to be responsible in their use of the lumber. (I toured their company on a recent trip through the state...I just realized I never shared my stories about that with PFers, and it was a REALLY cool trip, including a tour of a coal-fired powerplant and neighboring wind farm (I didn't even know we had a wind farm in this state), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (AMAZING!), a fish hatchery, Seneca Caverns, and a horseback ride up to Seneca Rock, a high school, and a rural clinic, an old coal mining town, and an old steam-powered railroad ride. There were a few other things too, but those were the highlights. The whole point was that we could then come back with the information about what's going on in the state and then determine which of those areas we might be able to help improve.

So, yeah, finding ways to use wood scrap is the one relevant to this thread.

 

[Moonbear]

Or am I misunderstanding? What signs?

I was thinking of all those campaign signs that sprout up every 100 feet around the time of every election. I don't know what those things are made out of, but I always assumed it was some sort of laminated paper. It seems like a HUGE amount of paper that gets used across the country when you think about every political candidate in every little community who puts up signs for everything from school board and town council seats to state legislators and presidential candidates. I don't know if any of it can be recycled if it's coated in some sort of plastic or something to keep it from disintegrating in the first rain, so if there's something else those could be made from that could be better reused, that seems like something to consider to me. I wasn't thinking about billboards, I was thinking about the sort of signs that people have out in their lawns.

 

[Integral]

Check out http://www.ecovativedesign.com/greensulate.html" This stuff is completely organic, its strength comes from mushroom mycelia. It could replace sytrofoam as packing material and insulation.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I was thinking of all those campaign signs that sprout up every 100 feet around the time of every election. I don't know what those things are made out of, but I always assumed it was some sort of laminated paper. It seems like a HUGE amount of paper that gets used across the country when you think about every political candidate in every little community who puts up signs for everything from school board and town council seats to state legislators and presidential candidates. I don't know if any of it can be recycled if it's coated in some sort of plastic or something to keep it from disintegrating in the first rain, so if there's something else those could be made from that could be better reused, that seems like something to consider to me. I wasn't thinking about billboards, I was thinking about the sort of signs that people have out in their lawns.

Ah! No doubt there are many throw-away products that could be made environmentally friendly with little effort.

One related observation: With the widespread death of newspapers, my father-in-law and his brother were lamenting that fact and the very few number of pages that now pass as a local paper. While there are certainly issues related to the quality of the press and investigative journalism, the real objection was they have been reading the paper almost every day for over half a century. I mentioned that the internet is a far more efficient medium - look at all of the paper, ink, and distribution costs that are avoided! But to them, it is like losing an old friend. While I do feel a bit sorry for them, I get a little lift every time I think about it. And really it is amazing when you think about it. Back at the end of 2000, one of the networks ran a special in which historians and others voted for Gutenberg's printing press as the most important invention of the millenia. To a large degree, the death of the printed newspaper marks the end of an age. We have moved on from Gutenberg to Google.

 

[Astronuc]

www.byogy.com (they are updating their website), but they produce fuels from biological waste streams - i.e. sewage, manure and biomass.

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2008/08/19/byogy-renewables-texas-a-direct-conversion-to-commence-by-2010/

In Texas, Byogy Renewables, in conjunction with the group of researchers at Texas A&M, have announced a process to produce gasoline directly from waste biomass. The conversion process, according to the Texas A&M group, is between $1.70 and $2.00, depending on the cost of the waste biomass feedstock, including manure, food waste or lawn clippings. The company said that it would be ready to commence fuel production by 2010.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/08/startup-license.html