Tim Noble & Sue Webster, two lovely, London based artists in LOVE create magnificent shadow art from trash. A pile of seemingly ugly rubbish is meticulously arranged by the duo and back lit to create glorious scenes of simple lovely human existence.
"An estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses EVERYDAY!"
If you haven't realized yet, I love finding out what happens to all of our trash we throw into trash cans.
By now, we all know that we need to recycle our electronics. In fact, there are signs all over NYC right now for an Electronic Recycling Event happening this weekend.
I just saw this article on NotCot via the NYTimes about how a company in Islandia, NY deals with all of our old hard drives and computer equipment.
The short of it is that it all gets shredded on a 60 ft. long conveyor belt and made into shreds, no longer than 4" long.
"At the end of the shredding process, the e-scrap is shipped in 2,000-pound storage containers to a company in Canada where it is ground and pulverized into its very low-tech base components: small particles of copper, plastic, steel, silver, gold, platinum. This material is then sold to companies that use it in other products."
This seems like a long way to travel, but I can only hope that they are doing their homework and this is the most efficient way to be handling these scraps.
I love the images: (courtesy of Maxine Hicks for the NY Times)
Thank you to the New York Times for getting the dirt on this!
You may not want to hang this chandelier in your living room (or maybe you do?), but the concept is great.
"Dutch Designer Anneke Jakobs collected discarded cartons in the street during her days as a student at the Utrecht School of Product Design. Ten cartons make up the luxe chandelier. Desktop paper fasteners hold it all together."
It is from a site called Point Click Home, where they have an article with a bunch of well designed products, all made out of items that normally end up in the trash.
Take a look, they have some great looking stuff:
This is made out of 334 newspapers the artist collected off the street.
This is made from 100% domestic recycled plastic waste.
This chandelier is made from hundreds of discarded plastic stirrers.
These lamps are made from bottom of clear bottles.
These lamps are made from used plastic packaging.
For more information on each of the artists that created these items, you can go to their site.
Of course, we prefer when trash is reused, but we love when it receives CPR, has a much longer life and looks even better than before!
I read Niki's post about NYC's recycling plan with interest, because trash and our methods of dealing with it have been in the forefront of my mind ever since I saw an amazing piece on Korean television about a Canadian company called Plasco Energy.
Plasco just may have got this whole "trash" thing figured out.
Using a technique called Plasma Gasification, they've devised a way to reduce landfill content by 99.9 percent. You heard that right: Ninety-nine point nine percent.
Here's how their system works:
Municipal solid waste arrives at the Plasco facility where it is shredded. Recyclables are sifted and sorted out.
What's left is run through past electric plasma torches in high heat, but almost zero oxygen. This results in decomposition, not combustion. So no smoke is produced, just usable gases. These gases are refined into fuel gas and used to power Plasco's operation. Meaning, once the system is started, it is self-sustaining, needing only more trash to keep running.
Furthermore, the gases produced are also used to run a series of generators which create electric power. This power is then sold to the grid.
All material left over is then run past the plasma torches a second time, turning decomposed ash into a crystalline, glass-like material which is non-toxic, non-leaching, and can be used as roadbed aggregate, in construction materials, even polished and set to create jewelry. It looks a bit like obsidian, and personally, I think it would make some very cool black brick.
Any water that comes out of the process is perfectly clean and can be used for irrigation purposes.
So, just to recap:
Trash in. Recyclables, power, fuel, salt, sulfur, clean water, and black glass-like material out.
What's left? .1 percent heavy metals from improperly disposed trash; things like batteries and paints.
And it gets better. Plasco's operation, besides being self-sustaining and extremely productive, is very quiet, modular so it can be scaled to whatever size you need, and doesn't stink up the neighborhood.
New York currently has to pay $90 per ton of trash in hauling and disposal fees. With a Plasco system in place, NY could be making $15 a ton.
Think what this technology means to the future of NYC. Instead of looking at trash as a problem, we realize that it is a huge asset.
Fresh Kills Landfill becomes Fresh Kills Mine. Plasma gasification quietly and efficiently turns countless tons of our trash into wonderful usable products like gas and electricity while making our city money!
How nice is that? A landfill is just a mine in reverse!
And you don't even have to sort your trash anymore.
(Personally, I've never understood why the onus of dealing with municipal waste fell on the private citizen. Isn't the whole point of a state and federal government to deal with that issue, among others? Isn't the point of those institutions existing to let us live our lives happily, cleanly, and productively? Shouldn't we be free of the worry that our trash is going to harm our environment?)
Really, what are you and I supposed to do with an aluminum can? A dirty diaper? Our take-out containers?
Plasma gasification, that's what.
Waste = Food! Waste = Energy! Waste = $$$!
What do you think? Should we start a "polite declaration of intention" and ask Mayor Bloomberg to invite Plasco to set up shop in NYC?
It would eliminate 99.9 percent of my concerns about the future of NYC's trash.
I was on the subway today when I saw these lovely trash cans.
I've heard rumors about all our trash being sorted and recycled, but is it true? Why not have separate bins? I did some digging and I thought I'd share what I found out. Apparently, all the trash goes to a place in NJ called All American Recycling in Jersey City. It gets sorted on conveyer belts and 25 people pick out the trash that can get recycled. 40% of the trash can actually be taken out and recycled! Which is about 7100 tons! That's lots!
Click here to see an interview with a lady who followed the trash to the recycling center and explaining why separate bins wouldn't help the situation (which is debatable).
As these makers have shown us, there is no such thing as trash.
"Trash" is just a jumble of resources whose useful life we've arbitrarily decided to end.
Trash, in its component bits, is all good stuff. Recyclables, compostables, precious metals, ship-building materials.
A "landfill" is just a huge pile of crushed and layered resources. Think of how many boats could be made out of the materials in Fresh Kills Landfill? How many houses? How much gold is layered in there? Silver? Diamonds?
Luckily, landfills aren't going anywhere. They will sit quietly until we are ready to face them.
So, the idea of trash is trashed. Use your resources to the fullest possible extent. Make a boat.
As you can see, there are many of them, clearly labeled, for all kinds of materials.
I didn't ask these people to pose or anything, they were actually actively recycling.
Humans want to do better, they just need to be given the means.
I would love to see bins like these on every other street in NYC. (Plus one more for dog waste, which shouldn't go in the trash anyways, it should be composted.)
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