Packaging-Free Supermarket Coming to Germany. Berlin is about to get an innovative supermarket that does not include any wasteful packaging. Original Unverpackt (Original Unpacked) is the brainchild of Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, who grew tired of purchasing food that came in an absurd amount of disposable packaging. They aren’t veterans of the food industry; they’re just two gals who dropped out of their college studies to make a difference. Even when you bring your own reusable shopping bags, your groceries come with a ton of packaging. Original Unverpackt (OU) will have no disposable packaging whatsoever. Bulk items like beans, pasta, and cereal are dispensed from gravity storage units. Rather than using the same scoop that who-knows-how-many people have used before you to get food from bins, OU shoppers will press a handle and allow the desired amount of food to fall right into your personal storage container brought from home.
Recycling machines. Why throw something away when you can be rewarded for recycling it instead? The City is trialing 4 reverse vending machines in the local area so there is an option to recycle when you are out and about. A reverse vending machine works the opposite way to a vending machine – you put in an empty drink container and you get to choose a reward for your recycling efforts. What can go into the machines? The machines love empty drink cans and plastic bottles. Careful not to put in glass or containers full of liquid, and do not crush your containers beforehand – our machines won’t cope. Did you know? The City has tried using recycling bins in public areas, but levels of contamination made it impossible to recycle the materials collected.
The beauty of these machines is that they accept only items that can be recycled and reject anything else. The machine also identifies the type of recyclable container by barcode, so if your plastic bottle is rejected, check that the label is intact. Locations Links. Deep sea mining – the gold rush on the ocean floor | Environment. Global Health and Wellness News: Greener chemical cleanups. Cleaning up oil spills and metal contaminants in a low-impact, sustainable and inexpensive manner remains a challenge for companies and governments globally.
But a group of researchers at UW—Madison is examining alternative materials that can be modified to absorb oil and chemicals. If further developed, the technology may offer a cheaper and "greener" method to absorb oil and heavy metals from water and other surfaces. Shaoqin "Sarah" Gong, a researcher at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) and associate professor of biomedical engineering, graduate student Qifeng Zheng, and Zhiyong Cai, a project leader at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, have recently created and patented the new aerogel technology. Aerogels, which are highly porous materials and the lightest solids in existence, are already used in a variety of applications, ranging from insulation and aerospace materials to thickening agents in paints. Read more at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.