Waste and recycling

IBM and Saudi Arabia's national research group are opening a solar-powered desalination plant in the city of Al-Khafji.

The pilot plant will supply water to about 100,000 people and pump out about 30,000 cubic meters of potable drinking water per day. It will run exclusively on solar-powered electricity, and showcase two technology breakthroughs that were the result of a multi-year collaborative research agreement signed in 2008 by IBM and the Saudi research group known as the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST).

On the solar end, the plant will use ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic (UHCPV) cells … Read more

Fuel start-up Cobalt Technologies has figured out a way to use trees poisoned and killed by pine beetles to make biobutanol, the company announced Wednesday.

Cobalt develops biofuels that can be mixed with gas, diesel, or jet fuel, as well as used to make plastics. Up until now, the company has used forestry byproducts that originated from healthy trees to make its n-butanol. The result is a gasoline blend made up of 12 percent biobutanol, which the company has claimed can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 85 percent when compared to conventional gasoline. It's been touting the … Read more

A group of scientists with funding from the Department of Energy has presented a new type of roof coating that would allow all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of black and white roofs combined.

It's long been agreed that a white roof, because it naturally reflects sunlight, reduces the amount of heat a building absorbs in extremely hot and sunny situations, thus, contributing to keeping the building cool (think Greece). Some have even gone as far as to propose white "green" roofs as a geoengineering idea for reducing global warming because they may both reduce air conditioning use and reflect more sunlight … Read more

With literally hundreds of millions of mobile phones piling up in U.S. homes, how to profitably recycle these devices is a pressing question.

Start-up eRecyclingCorps on Tuesday is scheduled to announce that its customer Sprint is offering a phone buyback program in which consumers can get money for older phones when they upgrade to a newer model.

eRecycling Corp has developed an in-store application and a Web service, offered from Sprint's site. The application lets a person see how much an older phone is worth and get a credit for its residual value when buying a new one. … Read more

A group of scientists from IBM and Stanford University announced Wednesday a chemistry breakthrough that could change the nature of plastics and plastics recycling.

Using organic catalysts, the team has developed a new method for producing and breaking down plastic polymers.

"Additionally, the team has developed a new strategy for the synthesis of high molecular weight cyclic polyesters and the generation of new families of biocompatible polymers for biomedical applications," according to IBM.

In terms of real-world application, the science could lead to plastics becoming endlessly recyclable rather than junk in a landfill.

As IBM points out, many … Read more

Waste from discarded electronics will rise dramatically in the developing world within a decade, with computer waste in India alone to grow by 500 percent from 2007 levels by 2020, a U.N. study released Monday said.

E-waste--a term describing electronics including phones, printers, televisions, refrigerators and other appliances--grows globally by 40 million metric tones a year. Toxins are emitted when it is improperly burned by scavengers looking for valuable components, such as copper and gold.

A report released in Bali on Monday (PDF) by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) predicted that by 2020, e-waste from computers would grow … Read more

A new sugar-based polymer could be used to make common food containers compostable at home right alongside your potato peels and egg shells.

A team of engineers and scientists at the Imperial College London led by Charlotte Williams in partnership with BioCeramic Therapeutics have created a degradable material from sugars derived from the breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass.

Williams noted in the group's announcement that while they're not the first to come up with a "biorenewable plastic," many of those have previously been made from sugar beet- or corn-based biomass.

It's a fairly accurate estimate.

In … Read more

Do you know where or how to recycle that old TV or computer? If not, you're not alone.

Around 12 percent more people used the Web site Earth911.com last year than in 2008 to find out how to recycle their used items, according to a report (PDF) released Monday by Earth911.com.

The company offers a searchable database at its Web site where you can type the name of a product like computers or cell phones along with your ZIP code and receive a list of local stores and facilities to drop off those items for recycling.

Among … Read more

If you've ever dreamed of sticking all that paperwork on your desk where the sun don't shine, a Japanese machine can turn it all into toilet paper for you.

Appropriately named White Goat, this device designed for the office can take regular letter-size paper or shreds, including that sales report you cursed until you were blue in the face, and transform it into nearly pristine rolls of white tissue.

White Goat was developed by Oriental Co., a small shredder maker based in Kiryu City, north of Tokyo, which says it's the first product of its kind in … Read more