Mitsubishi is working to make recycling e-waste more efficient through a new technology announced last week.

Typically, e-waste recycling means separating out plastics from electronic components, and the various types of plastic also need to be sorted, and the resins need to be removed from the shards of waste, all of which becomes a fairly complex process. Mitsubishi’s process, the details of which are still under wraps, will simplify removal of polystyrene, polypropylene, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene resins (say that three times fast…) and the whole process becomes much easier, with Mitsubishi claiming the process has a 99% purity rate of recovered plastics.

The revamped process will be performed at a new recycling plant just outside of Tokyo that the company will start construction of by October of next year. The simplification of any process typically also means energy savings, so we’re eager to hear more details of the process as they’re unveiled, so we can see just how far reaching the eco-impact of the process is.

Via GoodCleanTech

Power plants swapping their coal for renewable fuel sources seems to be a growing trend, and Hawaii looks to add this idea to the host of other sustainable practices the state has been implementing. Hawaii has just finished a blessing ceremony for the Hu Honua Bioenergy Facility on Big Island’s Hamakua Coast.

The 24 MW plant is a project of MMA Renewable Ventures and will supply about 7-10% of the island’s power needs – or enough for about 18,000 homes. The fuel source is plant waste that would otherwise go into landfills. Residents are excited about the project, which is expected to generate hundreds of local jobs. Their excitement was documented in the fact that a whopping 95% of residents approached with a petition to convert the power plant from coal to biomass went ahead and signed the petition.

The conversion helps Hawaii meet the goal of having 20% of its energy come from renewable resources by 2020, and in turn helps all of us get an eensy bit closer to ending our use of coal.

Via RenewableEnergyWorld, MM Renewable Ventures

One of the biggest water wasters in a household is the laundry machine. Let’s face it: we throw dirty, smelly clothes into a machine, turn it on, do other chores around the house and an hour later, we have clean, nice-smelling clothes. That takes up a lot of water that we prefer not to think about. Sanyo’s Aqua washing machine aims to do all those functions with the added bonus of using much less water.

Going beyond the difficult-to-accept notion of using plastic chips to beat the clothes clean, The Aqua Loop water-saving technology uses 96% less water than an equivalent Sanyo washer from just a decade ago, while still working like a washing machine. The three-in-one machine not only washes but also dries clothes and recycles water. Manager Koji Nobuchi says the new Sanyo machines were designed to recognize the global wastewater management problem. The machine doesn’t need water to sterilize or deodorize clothes and recycles bath water, using a filtration system.

The drum-style machines converts air to ozone to eliminate bacteria and odor, a process previously used only in commercial washing machines like those in hospitals with ozone-generating machines. But Sanyo is now packaging the technology for household use. Water is purified using a recycling process. The ozone washes away bacteria, which can lead to smells, and dirt.

“By making a washing machine that can reuse bathwater and recycle it in Japan, customers not only save on their water bills, but they save water than needs to be used for drinking,” says Sanyo spokesman Aaron Fowles in an article published in Digital World Tokyo last month. “[T]hat type of water makes up less than one per cent of the Earth’s water supply.”

The machine is only available now in Japan and Taiwan, but the company hopes to eventually enter the U.S. and European market. The only washer we’ve heard of that sounds as interesting is one that doesn’t use detergent. Here’s a demonstration of how Sanyo’s water-saver works.

Via GoodCleanTech, TechJapan

So we're all getting pretty darned familiar with the arguments for and against biofuels. But what about bioplastics? Since we can, theoretically, do anything with corn that we can do with petroleum, wouldn't it be better to do it with corn?

Well, not necessarily. BioPlastics are a mixed bag, and considerably more complicated than biofuels. Mostly, this is because there are about two dozen different ways to create bioplastic, and every one has different properties and capabilities.

1. Why make stuff out of it when you can eat it? There are lots of hungry people in the world, and it seems a little odd to be making disposable cups out of the stuff when it could be being eaten. Though bioplastic definitely isn't causing an increase in the price of food, it's not impossible to imagine it.
2. You can't always recycle it. Because bioplastics come in dozens of varieties, there's no way to make sure you're getting the right chemicals in the recycling vat. And, in general, the solution is compost instead of re-entering the supply stream.
3. It could make plastic recycling impossible. Even worse than not being recyclable itself, if it creeps into the recycling stream (which is likely, since it doesn't look any different) it can introduce new chemicals that make the final recycled product weaker or even unusable.
4. Compostable doesn't mean compostable. If you toss a bioplastic fork into your compost and assume it'll be dirt in a few months, you'll be sorely disappointed. While bioplastic is (sometimes) compostable, it requires high intensity, high heat commercial composting.
5. It's never made from organic corn, and generally made from genetically modified corn. And while EcoGeek doesn't have a problem with genetic modification, many other environmentally aware people do.
6. It makes low quality plastic. Instead of solving the problem of the disposable society, bio-plastics generally can only be made into disposable items. They're having problems even making transparent bioplastic that's strong enough to hold water for a few months.
7. It's good marketing, but bad honesty. It's very easy to have bioplastic cups or bags or forks. But it's very difficult to figure out what that means. Because there are so many different types of bioplastic, you never really know what you're getting into. Maybe it's compostable, maybe it's not. Maybe it's recyclable, maybe it's not.
8. What's wrong with storing carbon in landfills? Plastic has gotten a bad rap, for poisoning babies and strangling sea lions. But if it is used properly and ends up in the landfill, I don't see what the problem is. Creating durable products with petroleum is certainly much preferred to burning it. And while plastics factories are big polluters, bio plastics factories though better, don't get us clean either.

None of that is to say that bioplastics might not reign supreme some day, they certainly have advantages as well. They're infinitely producible and safer to burn. But until a durable, recyclable and cheap option starts to win this crazy format war, I'm staying away.

Those deadlines for greening things up are getting closer, and new goals are getting shorter timelines – and this is highlighted by Boston’s mayor Thomas Menino stating that all of the city’s taxis will be hybrid by 2015.

Now, he called for the taxis to be replaced with hybrids, though we know that a slightly greener method would be converting existing taxis to hybrids, or all new taxis must be hybrids, etc. However, green steps are green steps, and they don’t want to be shown up by New York.

Plus, that short timeframe thing is accentuated further by city officials saying they expect that half the goal will be reached within two years. This is expected to happen in part because as of January, any cab older than 6 years has to be replaced.

Of course, this is an expensive endeavor, the cost of which will be reflected in the rates. Hopefully this doesn’t deter people from catching a cab instead of driving, but if it does, we might know where they can get a used car… Eco-friendly cabs are popping up more often, and it’ll be interesting to see what model they choose.

Via Inhabitat, Photo via chunyang

Sameerwadi, Karnataka in India is looking into the various ways money can be made off the waste from sugarcane processing. After juice is pressed out of sugarcane, a fiber waste called bagasse is left over. A whole lot of bagasse. As a way to insulate sugarcane businesses from variations in market prices, a few technologies to turn bagasse into a usable substance are popping up.

On the one hand, Godavari Sugar Mills Ltd will use the fiber to make ethanol. The project hopes to be able to scale up from demonstration size to commercial size within a few years, processing about 5,000 tons of bagasse within four years, but they don’t state how much ethanol they plan to make with it. GSML also wants to make items like paper, cardboard, textiles, water-soluble adhesives, cements, dyes – even L-lactic acid – and other items from the waste to help make the facility viable. In other words, they don’t feel they’ll make very much from ethanol production. It’s the high-grade cellulose, lignin and hemicellulose derived from bagasse that will be the money makers.

Getting as much product and profit from sugarcane in both its edible and nonedible forms is the exact way we can make crops stretch and hopefully reduce the amount of the earth’s resources used to make various products.

Via TreeHugger, LiveMint; photo via GSML

Twenty thousand light bulbs were added to the Eiffel Tower to mark the new millennium, and because people like things that sparkle, the tower is lit every night for 10 minutes. However, Paris officials have decided to cut back and light the tower for just five minutes per night not because it is a particularly efficient thing to do, but because it looks efficient.

No, this isn’t a case of greenwashing. It is, to them, a statement saying that there isn’t a real reason to use up these resources, so we’re cutting back…as we all should do wherever we can.

By the same token, sustainability is practiced throughout the tourist destination, with tickets made of recycled paper, and the electricity comes from renewable sources. Paris is setting some seriously great examples, from air quality to cars to airports and more. The rest of the world might readily take note.

Via Telegraph; photo via Fabian w