e-waste » Sift Blog

Use egg cartons in the garden and then compost them.

Another week has flown by. The SIFT week has been full of a couple of new potential applicants, board papers, research, current projects management and some admin thrown in for good measure.

Lots of different things have popped up through our google reader and other newsletters, here’s the best links for you this week:

• Past SIFT project Envirocomp has received $30,000 through the MfE’s Waste Minimisation Fund to carry out a feasibility study on expanding their nappy composting. More  here.
• Photos of dumped e-waste being searched through by Ghanians looking for the valuable metals to sell. Not the best photos – this is quite sad and should not be occuring. More here from The New York Times.
• Waveney from Rubbish Free’s roundup of their weekend at the Nelson Eco Fest here.
• Have you found your WalkScore yet? More here from World Changing. Walk Score is based on Google Maps so it you know there are more services and utilities in your area that would make your Walk Score better update Google Maps with the information.
• Philipe Stark has designed home and urban usable wind turbines. From Greenpages. Now they would be a stylish addition to any home.
• Creative ways to drink tap water from Re-Nest here.
• Molly Eagen is a 25 year living in Minneapolis, USA and is attempting, as part of her thesis, to live 100 days without oil. This is a well researched blog that provides great ideas and new ways to live for all of us. Oil permeates nearly all facets of our 21st century lives so we are looking forward to seeing how she gets on living without it. Could you live 100 days without oil? (Originally via Re-Nest).
• Interactive map that shows the Earth breathing – tracking global CO2 emissions in real time. It takes 14 minutes for New Zealand to clock up 1000 tonnes. It is very well done and you can scroll over each country to see the stats.
• The biodegradable pen from GOOD USA.
• The United Nations Environment Programme has released a new report on sustainability and behaviour change. This is a great tool for all of you in communications, marketing and social change. Developed in conjunction with our favourite Sustainability Communications organisation – Futerra. You can download the report here (originally via Celsias).
• Love this video celebrating the 2010 World Humanitarian Day here.
• This is another great infographic …The National Geographic looks at how much water is embedded in everything we use (note these measurements may be different for NZ). Scroll to the right to see a whole raft of different products from meat, vege, oil, energy, solar. Very interesting.
• This has been one of the blog topics this week so we might as well add it to the list too – Japanese firm Blest is making fuel out of plastic. The video shows how it is all done. We like the way that the machine is portable and could be used for smaller or remote sites.
• Maybe we should just do a graphics blog post! Here is another one from the BBC showing how big different things are against the size of your own country - things like the Pakistan floods, the Pyramids, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, World War II and the Twin Towers.
• Also from the BBC Mexico has completely banned plastic bags and if you use them you go to jail! More here.

That will definitely keep you going for the weekend and we hope it is a waste free one!

P.S You might have noticed that our waste counter is lighter than it was last week. We have updated it to be in line with the waste statistics from the Christchurch City Council for the year to June 2010 which is 179,207 tonnes to Kate Valley Landfill. That’s a 20% drop on last year meaning our waste counter would have been way out. It was updated by the nice people at HairyLemon.

*Image via here.