Filabot Turns Your Plastic Junk Into Material for 3-D Printers | Wired Design | Wired.com For desktop 3-D printers to work, they need some kind of material to work with. Most contemporary printers use plastic filament, available in spools from various suppliers. Filabot reduces the need for that stuff. Instead you can grind up household plastics or even past projects to make new lines. Think a meat grinder on top of a pasta maker and you get the general idea. “Plastic extrusion is nothing new,” says McNaney in the Kickstarter pitch video. “The only thing we’d like to do is adapt it to the desktop environment.” The need for something like this is enormous. The whole point of 3-D printing is that you can do rapid prototyping and customization of parts.

Filabot Turns Your Plastic Junk Into Material for 3-D Printers | Wired Design | Wired.com

For desktop 3-D printers to work, they need some kind of material to work with. Most contemporary printers use plastic filament, available in spools from various suppliers. Filabot reduces the need for that stuff. Instead you can grind up household plastics or even past projects to make new lines.

Think a meat grinder on top of a pasta maker and you get the general idea. “Plastic extrusion is nothing new,” says McNaney in the Kickstarter pitch video. “The only thing we’d like to do is adapt it to the desktop environment.”

The need for something like this is enormous. The whole point of 3-D printing is that you can do rapid prototyping and customization of parts.

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Recycling Around the World November 15 is America Recycles Day, an annual event launched in 1997 by the National Recycling Coalition. The need to reuse and recycle raw materials has never been as urgent as it is today. The human race has reached a worldwide population of 7 billion, and America is responsible for consuming a disproportionate share of the planet’s resources. In many parts of the world, recycling is done by necessity. In others, artists, governments, and businesses have found creative and useful ways to reuse materials — a plastic bottle may find itself reborn as artwork, a warm blanket, or fuel oil. Collected here are photographs of various recycling efforts around the world, ranging from small and whimsical to industrial in scale. Above: A laborer rests on piles of plastic bottles at a recycling center in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, on November 6, 2011. (Reuters/Stringer) See more vivid photos at In Focus via theatlantic:

Recycling Around the World

November 15 is America Recycles Day, an annual event launched in 1997 by the National Recycling Coalition. The need to reuse and recycle raw materials has never been as urgent as it is today. The human race has reached a worldwide population of 7 billion, and America is responsible for consuming a disproportionate share of the planet’s resources. In many parts of the world, recycling is done by necessity. In others, artists, governments, and businesses have found creative and useful ways to reuse materials — a plastic bottle may find itself reborn as artwork, a warm blanket, or fuel oil. Collected here are photographs of various recycling efforts around the world, ranging from small and whimsical to industrial in scale.

Above: A laborer rests on piles of plastic bottles at a recycling center in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, on November 6, 2011. (Reuters/Stringer)

See more vivid photos at In Focus

via theatlantic:

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Project Aims to Track and Regulate International E-Waste Electronic waste, which releases toxic chemicals into the environment, is a growing international problem. A joint five-year project from the EPA and United Nations will track e-waste shipments around the globe and seek to encourage the recycling of hazardous materials. While Americans own on average 24 electronics per household, only 10 to 15 percent of these machines are recycled when thrown out. Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a broad category including a wide range of devices from televisions and mobile phones to refrigerators and toasters. A new joint international project between the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and UNU (United Nations University) seeks to better regulate e-waste by tracking shipments from North America to African and Asian nations for recycling.  Electronics markets are growing quickly, and e-waste is skyrocketing as a result. When not properly recycled, e-waste often ends up at normal waste facilities, where it is burned to release toxic chemicals. Many personal computers, for example, contain cadmium (Cd), a chemical dangerous to humans. In addition to toxic chemicals, e-waste contains valuable materials such as rare earth metals and gold. According to UNU’s StEP (Solving the E-Waste Problem) Initiative, recycling one million cell phones can recover about 50 pounds of gold and 550 pounds of silver Source: Smarter Technology

Project Aims to Track and Regulate International E-Waste

Electronic waste, which releases toxic chemicals into the environment, is a growing international problem. A joint five-year project from the EPA and United Nations will track e-waste shipments around the globe and seek to encourage the recycling of hazardous materials.

While Americans own on average 24 electronics per household, only 10 to 15 percent of these machines are recycled when thrown out. Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a broad category including a wide range of devices from televisions and mobile phones to refrigerators and toasters.

A new joint international project between the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and UNU (United Nations University) seeks to better regulate e-waste by tracking shipments from North America to African and Asian nations for recycling. 

Electronics markets are growing quickly, and e-waste is skyrocketing as a result. When not properly recycled, e-waste often ends up at normal waste facilities, where it is burned to release toxic chemicals. Many personal computers, for example, contain cadmium (Cd), a chemical dangerous to humans.

In addition to toxic chemicals, e-waste contains valuable materials such as rare earth metals and gold. According to UNU’s StEP (Solving the E-Waste Problem) Initiative, recycling one million cell phones can recover about 50 pounds of gold and 550 pounds of silver

Source: Smarter Technology

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“‘Wasteland’ isn’t just a movie about recycling. The film touches on the transformative power of looking at life a little differently. To change your perspective and learn more about the film, watch the trailer here.” doitdoitdoitnow:

“‘Wasteland’ isn’t just a movie about recycling. The film touches on the transformative power of looking at life a little differently. To change your perspective and learn more about the film, watch the trailer here.”

doitdoitdoitnow:

(via thegreenurbanist)

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Singularity University Ends 2nd Year With a Dozen More Ways to Help a Billion People

This year’s 80 students were challenged with positively affecting 1 billion people in the next decade. Drawing on what they had learned about accelerating technology in the past 10 weeks of study, the students laid the groundwork for more than a dozen new startups in five general areas of interest: Water, Food, Energy, Space, and UpCycle. 

….

The first of these was Energy, and contained just one group: Amunda. The project, which will almost certainly become a startup, is aimed towards bringing transparency to the world energy market. Through the open exchange of information, Amunda hopes to pair alternative energy entrepreneurs with emerging markets. 

…

Three groups (Nishio, Sensoria, and H2020) aimed towards tackling three problems with the world’s water supply: availability, purity, and distribution. Nishio wants to use synthetic biology and nanotechnology filters to desalinate water along the coast and pump it using solar power.

…

In Food, there was just one project: Agropolis. The team’s general aim was to accelerate the adoption of small scale hydroponics and aeroponics. Homes could grow a large portion of their own groceries, restaurants could serve vegetables grown in the same building where you eat, and billions of people all over the world would have access to bountiful local food.

…

The final area for team projects was termed UpCycle, which basically covers sustainability. We can’t forget that the exponential growth of technology is likely to lead to an exponential growth in waste (at least in the short term). i2Cycle sought to pair up industries so that one company’s waste could be another’s supplies. Fre3dom is looking into how remote areas of the world could repair and maintain their expensive equipment through novel processes like 3D prinitng. Eventually such an endeavor could lead to the decentralization of manufacturing as a whole. My favorite, however, was Biomine. The project considered removing the valuable metals from electronic waste. The millions of computers and mobile phones thrown away every year contain tons of copper and other marketable metals.


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AI: Analytics Innovators: Episode 2 (RecycleBank , Earthmine, FitBit Tracker)

This web video series features ground-breaking companies, services and products that epitomize the era of new intelligence that IBM’s Business Analytics & Optimization Services was born into.

See more BAO content and clips at the Global Business Services New Intelligence Video Studio.  Know of other analytics innovators we should feature? Share in comments here!

  • RecycleBank a kind of “frequent recycling” rewards program
  • Earthmine a 3D city mapping service based on Mars Rover technology
  • FitBit Tracker a $99 wearable health monitoring device that measures your bodily activity and sleep patterns

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