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Complete the circle.
Our vision is to make the world a more sustainable place to explore. Inspired by cyclical patterns in nature, we're working to keep the circle going by giving old gear new life.

Complete the circle.
Our vision is to make the world a more sustainable place to explore. Inspired by cyclical patterns in nature, we're working to keep the circle going by giving old gear new life.

Complete

the circle.

Our vision is to make the world a more sustainable place to explore. Inspired by cyclical patterns in nature, we're working to keep the circle going by giving old gear new life.

Complete

the circle.

Our vision is to make the world a more sustainable place to explore. Inspired by cyclical patterns in nature, we're working to keep the circle going by giving old gear new life.

What is Circular Design?

It's gear that's built to live on (and on, and on). Our strategic design process considers these
four pillars around circularity when crafting our Circular Design products.

What is Circular Design?

It's gear that's built to live on (and on, and on). Our strategic design process considers these
four pillars around circularity when crafting our Circular Design products.

Circular Design

Meet the gear that helps keep resources in use and out of landfills. It's constructed to minimize waste and is recyclable when you get it back to us.

Circular Design

Meet the gear that helps keep resources in use and out of landfills. It's constructed to minimize waste and is recyclable when you get it back to us.

The North Face

Renewed Take-Back

XPLR Pass™ members: Give us your used The North Face apparel and footwear to get a $10 shopping credit with us. Not a member? Join today -it's free. As part of our commitment to circularity, accepted items will be washed, tuned-up and resold through The North Face Renewed, donated or recycled.
Terms and conditions apply.

The North Face Renewed Take-Back

XPLR Pass™ members: Give us your used The North Face apparel and footwear to get a $10 shopping credit with us. Not a member? Join today -it's free. As part of our commitment to circularity, accepted items will be washed, tuned-up and resold through The North Face Renewed, donated or recycled.
Terms and conditions apply.

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Circularity means giving old gear new life. The North Face is flipping the status quo of how they make gear and how you can dispose of it more responsibly.

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Warren Buffett said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." It has been more than two decades now since a 1996 issue of Lifemagazine depicted a Pakistani boy sewing a Nike soccer ball, reportedly for six cents per hour. After the story, the company lost more than half its market capitalisation in just one year - it took Nike six years of demonstrated social responsibility to recuperate. Even today Nike is - fairly or unfairly - ranked low on lists of ethical companies. It has survived financially, but the reputation of the brand may never recover.

Environmental reputations can be just as hard to rebuild. NGOs like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund believe in the potential fragility of the environment, and they see the potential fragility of companies' brands as a means of pressuring them to change.

"When Greenpeace reaches for its toolbox, it tends to find only one tool, and that's a mallet," said Scott Poynton, founder of the Forest Trust "and it tends to beat people over the head with it."

If you want evidence the mallet approach works, consider KitKat. In 2010, Guinness World Records certified that KitKat was the world's most global brand, sold in more countries than any other that year. But on 17 March that year, Greenpeace released a video parody of a KitKat commercial.

The clip opens with a bored office worker feeding papers into a shredder. Then, the screen turns red with the text "Have a break?" The worker opens a KitKat wrapper, but instead of fingers of chocolate, he finds the finger of an orangutan - complete with tufts of orange hair. Coworkers watch in horror as he crunches into the finger and blood dribbles on to his keyboard. The video urged viewers to "give the orangutan a break" and "stop Nestlé buying palm oil from companies that destroy rainforests".

Greenpeace used the power of social media to attack fast, far, and wide. In a matter of weeks, 1.5 million people had watched the video.

The attack surprised Nestlé. For one thing, the company thought it had already been addressing the issue. Nestlé had adopted a "no deforestation" policy when directly sourcing palm oil, committing that its palm oil would "not come from areas cleared of natural forest after November 2005". Nestlé neither produced palm oil nor owned any farms near orangutan habitats, nor had it ever ordered the clearing of rainforests to increase production of palm oil - but one of its suppliers had. Bosses attempted to address the issue by cancelling that supplier's contracts, a response that initially failed. Although the effects of the campaign on KitKat sales are not publicly known, we can infer they were significant - it took just eight weeks for the company to agree to Greenpeace's demands.

Public shaming may drive change in some notable instances, but success stories such as this are few and far between. Campaigns from environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace are necessarily targeted, their effectiveness limited to the company or brand under fire. After a summer of heatwaves and forest fires you might think that any CEO worth their salt would have sustainability in mind, whether for righteous (environmental) or unrighteous (PR) reasons. The problem is that sustainability and public image are two of many factors that a company must balance to be successful.

Each and every day CEOs across the world face numerous decisions, and sustainability is just one in a long list of priorities. Few will simply admit that they don't care, although it is clear from interviews conducted with them that many will only go as far as the customers demand, or only make environmentally positive decisions if they also reduce costs.

When it comes to sustainability in business it may even be necessary to take an entirely agnostic view on the science of climate change. To some extent it is irrelevant whether business executives personally embrace environmentalists' arguments about "the challenge of our time", or if they believe it is a hoax. The business merits of sustainability are based on the fact that even the most ardent climate-sceptic company executives face natural resource costs, public relations problems, regulatory burdens, and a green consumer segment.

Regardless of what they may personally believe, they still have to balance whether and how to pursue environmental initiatives, weighing time and resources against many competing demands. Naturally, most of them focus on green initiatives that are aligned with their shareholders' performance goals.

The dual role of businesses' supply chains in creating both economic growth (including jobs) and environmental impact highlights a fallacy in the Greenpeace story of "profits v planet". The environmentalists' narrative ignores the role of businesses and their supply chains in both employing people and delivering improved standards of living to humanity, especially to the billions of people who have yet to enjoy the plenty that modern industry can provide.

After Walmart's 2011 pledge to buy more sustainable seafood, Greenpeace contended that Walmart was not doing enough, whereas Alaskan fishermen and state officials complained that Walmart was asking too much of them. The real conflict is not "profits v planet" but rather "some people v other people". Our challenge is to prove that sustainability benefits everybody, but especially those CEOs whose company profits drive such decision making.

T his is an edited extract from Balancing Green by Yossi Sheffi (MIT Press)

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Profits v planet: can big business and the environment get along? | Yossi Sheffi

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Yossi Sheffi: Sustainability can bring benefits to everybody - including company execs with their eyes on the bottom line

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ALBATROSS, a film by artist Chris Jordan, is a powerfully moving love story about birds on Midway Island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with ocean plastic. This award-winning 97 minute film is offered as a free public artwork.

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What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce

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Cobalt and Child Labour... do you really need that new phone? 

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Cobalt and Child Labour... do you really need that new phone? 

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Special report:  Inside the Congo cobalt mines that exploit children

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Discovery Channel's How It's Made - Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Products

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Ellen takes us on a journey to investigates how insights from living systems might offer some of the answers to how we can re-design our future, in a world of increasing finite materials and energy.

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PARIS, France - Two years ago, France was the first country to pass a law preventing supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food. Under the country's circular economy roadmap, lawmakers are planning to do the same for clothing.

Spearheaded by prime minister Édouard Philippe, by 2019 new regulations or incentives could prohibit brands from discarding unsold clothing into landfills or through incineration, instead requiring sustainable measures like recycling or donating to charity shops.

The initiative forms part of the proposed Circular Economy Roadmap, which outlines 50 measures for France to become a circular, sustainable economy - one that moves away from a linear "take, make, dispose" model towards a model of restoration and regeneration.

Europeans consumed over 6.4 million tonnes of clothing in 2017, according to the European Clothing Action Plan. France alone discards 600,000 tonnes of clothing and accessories per year, says a case study by the Ellen MacArthur foundation, of which only a quarter is collected in recycling bins or charity shops.

While the detailed terms of the proposal have not been outlined, legislators say it may include potential tax breaks for companies that re-use or recycle clothing, rather than dump them in a landfill, thereby linking sustainable practices with profit. Regardless, it is not likely to be a fully-fledged law, but rather an incentivised proposal.

It may include potential tax breaks for companies that re-use or recycle clothing.

"Now is the time for the fashion industry to ensure their products are used more," says Francois Souchet, lead of the Circular Fibres Initiative at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. "Whether it's through pressure from legislators or consumers, a lot of signals say the time is right for the industry to rethink their business model."

The country's circular economy roadmap offers a direct incentive for brands to rethink their supply chain model from the ground up. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which worked with the French government on the scheme, outlines three areas of action that brands can take. First, set up new business models that move away from a classic retail model. Second, innovate and use recyclable materials. Third, make clothes to be made again by incorporating recycling into the design process.

"We avoid [the practice of disposing of unsold clothing] and do everything we can to eradicate it," said French luxury house Chanel in a statement. "Chanel's strategy of [producing] collections only when we receive orders from our buyers cuts down considerably on unsold stock. We are also currently thinking about the best way of recycling unsold items."

But other companies may find it tougher to implement the new measures. Last year, H&M was accused by Danish television programme Operation X of burning 12 tonnes of new, unsold clothing per year (although the fast fashion chain denied the claims). Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton has long been rumoured to burn all unsold bags to avoid lowering brand cachet by selling discounted items in outlet stores. The company was not available for comment.

While the new circular economy incentive only addresses textiles, it's likely that luxury brands will consider alternative recycling methods, rather than donating unsold clothing, to avoid brand dilution.

"The opportunity is to disconnect revenues from resource consumption and satisfy changing customer needs," said Souchet. "Brands need to align the design and business model."
Related Articles:
[ Fashion in 2018 | Sustainability Credibility ]

[ Swedish Plant Burns H&amp;M Rags Instead of Coal ]

[ The Cost of Dead Inventory: Retail's Dirty Little Secret ]

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What Should French Fashion Do With Its Unsold Clothing?

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A circular economy incentive to prohibit brands from discarding unsold clothing means luxury and high street retailers need to rethink their practices.

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This artist has spent twelve years researching how best to recycle landfill materials; and his results have already become a great help to the environment.

After twelve years of research and development, Uruguayan designer Juan Muzzi patented the world's first bike made entirely out of recycled plastic.

Muzzi's Sao Paulo-based company, Muzzicycle, produces 10,000 bikes per month - and the expansive waiting list is an indicator of the bike's ever-growing popularity. According to the company's website, the company uses almost 16 tons of wasted plastic every year, translating to well over 5 tons of CO2 emissions saved from the atmosphere.

RELATED: Student Invents Biodegradable Packaging From Seagrass That Washes Up on Beaches

The bike's construction requires 90% less energy than regular bike frames. They are also designed to be rust-resistant, more shock-absorbent, and even less jarring on the prostate and spine.

According to the designer, the next steps for Muzzicycle are increasing production capacity and developing a wheelchair with the same material. He plans to sell the wheelchairs at the same production costs to manufacture.

The company is also worried about generating income for the poorest of Brazil - currently, the plastic comes from different NGOs that collect the materials from the streets. These NGOs employ city residents - usually homeless - who make their living collecting these kind of recyclables.

( WATCH the video below)
Pedal This Story Over To Your Friends: Click To Share

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Bikes Made With Recycled Materials are Saving Tons of Plastic Every Year - Good News Network

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This artist has spent twelve years researching how best to recycle landfill materials; and his results have already become a great help to the environment. After twelve years of research and development, Uruguayan designer Juan Muzzi patented the world's first bike made entirely out of recycled plastic.

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MarinaTex is a home compostable material designed as an alternative to single-use plastic films. The material is comprised of waste material from the fishing...

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One potential solution to the massive plastic pollution problem could come from Evoware, which makes seaweed-based packaging that is not only 100% biodegradable, but is edible as well.

Plastics have been a boon to industry, but are now the bane of the planet, even as plastic pollution is expected to continue unabated ( and even increase), with experts now predicting that by 2050 " the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight.." It's a curious and infuriating fact that our culture manufactures single-use products, such as beverage bottles, packaging, drinking straws, and bags, out of a material that basically never goes away, but instead just breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that find their way into almost everything.

According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, some 33% of all plastic is "used just once and thrown away," which contributes to an immense global problem. Although we might idealistically call for a ban of plastics, or mandatory recycling, or adding a hefty surcharge for each 'disposable' plastic item, one of the only things that seems to hold promise in reducing plastic pollution is to move toward greener materials that are made from renewable resources and can break down quickly without adding more of a toxic load to our waterways.

To intentionally misquote Mr. McGuire in the '67 film The Graduate, "There's a great future in bioplastics," but the problem is that some bioplastics can contain petro-based plastics as well, which might reduce the overall amount of fossil fuel-based plastics, while inadvertently creating more waste by allowing consumers to treat these bioplastics more casually than they do traditional plastics. But one solution might come from an Indonesian company that has found a method of producing biodegradable packaging from seaweed, which is shelf-stable for up to two years but is dissolvable in warm water.

According to Evoware, the development of a seaweed-based packaging company in Indonesia has the potential to address several issues, the first of which is that nation is "the world's second largest plastic contributor to the ocean," and that some 90% of plastic waste ends up in the ocean, and "70% of that waste comes from food and beverage packaging." The second issue is the state of seaweed farmers in Indonesia, which is "the largest seaweed producing country," and yet these farmers remain very poor and their families suffer from malnutrition and other poverty-related difficulties.

The Evoware seaweed-based packaging products come in two basic varieties, a biodegradable one that can be used for packaging soaps and other non-consumable items, and an edible one that can be used as a food wrap, for flavoring sachets, or tea bags. The edible packaging, which is "almost tasteless and odorless," dissolves in warm water and is considered to be nutritious, as it "contains high fiber, vitamins and minerals."

"Seaweed-based packagings are good for small-format food sachets and wraps, e.g. instant noodle seasoning, cereal, single serving coffee powder and the complements, rice wrap, burger wrap, etc. It's good to replace your conventional packaging to enjoy your delicious food in a convenient and healthy way, and a best way to save our only earth. It can also be used to package the non-food based contents such as toothpicks, soap bars and sanitary pads." - Evoware

By turning to locally-grown seaweed as a feedstock for biodegradable packaging, Evoware aims to boost the livelihoods of seaweed farmers while also working to reduce plastic waste in general, and to reduce ocean pollution in particular. The company was recently chosen as a winner in the Social Venture Challenge Asia 2017, which brought Evoware a cash award as well as a mentorship and participation in a business incubator, which aim to help bring the company's products to a bigger market.

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This Indonesian Company Turns Seaweed Into Edible & Biodegradable Packaging

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One potential solution to the massive plastic pollution problem could come from Evoware, which makes seaweed-based packaging that is not only 100% biodegradable, but is edible as well.

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Designers create unique clothing pieces by upcycling old or discarded textiles, giving them a new life and reducing waste in the fashion industry.

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The Origins of the Linear Economy | Seeing the Bigger Picture

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Belgian brand Komrads is set to market the first trainers made from the fermented pulp of apple peel.

The textile industry is one of the highest polluting in the world, from the raw materials to the manufacture, not forgetting the transport of the finished product and recycling. A number of initiatives are gradually being created to make the fashion industry ethically and ecologically responsible. One of these is Belgian, namely apple leather trainers. No, you are not dreaming!

This is an innovation by the Belgian brand Komrads, which has been producing sustainable trainers, among other things, since 2015. Komrads worked on this new product for a year and a half and now has a prototype, which will soon be ready to market. These new trainers, the Komrads World, have a limited ecological footprint whilst also being fashionable and affordable. "It looks like traditional leather, but is 100% vegetarian and ecological," explained Mark Vandevelde, the brand's founder.

Production does not require the extraction of raw materials. The sole is made of 100% recycled leather from car tyres, which is then coloured with organic paint. The apple leather is made in Italy, where the apple peel pulp is fermented into high-quality leather. Lastly, the shoes are made under fair conditions in Portugal.

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Trainers made from apple leather: a Belgian invention

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The textile industry is one of the highest polluting in the world, from the raw materials to the manufacture, not forgetting the transport of the finished product and recycling. A number of initiatives are gradually being created to make the fashion industry ethically and ecologically responsible.

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Modular smartphones like the Fairphone allow users to easily replace or upgrade components, reducing electronic waste and extending the device's lifespan. This design promotes sustainability and responsible consumption.

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The Futurecraft Loop performance running shoes can be returned to Adidas, where they will be ground up to make more shoes, again and again.

So, recycling is a mess. Manufacturers have sold us on the idea that it's the consumer's responsibility to recycle the manufacturer's product, ostensibly relieving the manufacturer of responsibility for all the trash their products generate. Meanwhile, despite many of us trying our best to uphold our end of the deal, recycling is complicated - and in the end, 91 percent of plastic, for example, is not recycled.

Given plastic's nearly eternal durability, it's little wonder that we're finding it literally everywhere on the planet. And we keep making new plastic at a prodigious rate - National Geographic notes that "If present trends continue, by 2050, there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills."

As consumers we can stop consuming things made of and packaged in plastic, but manufacturers have to address the issue from the top - quite simply, the time has come.

Which brings us to Adidas.

The Futurecraft Loop

I was invited to the unveiling of the company's revolutionary new performance running shoe, the Futurecraft Loop - and to be honest, I was a bit skeptical. Billed as a 100 percent recyclable shoe .... well, we've heard claims like this before (hello Starbucks, hi there Keurig).

But I have to say, I am impressed. Yes, the mystical/futuristic event in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with a fog machine and Willow Smith (who is partnering with Adidas on the project), left some stars in my eyes - but I left feeling genuinely excited about the future of the Futurecraft Loop.

Adidas is no stranger to sustainability innovations. In 2015, the company partnered with Parley for the Oceans to create shoes whose uppers were made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed and recycled from marine plastic waste and illegal deep-sea gillnets. This year, they will produce 11 million pairs of these wonderfully "trashy" shoes through intercepting plastic waste on beaches, remote islands and in coastal communities.

At the Futurecraft Loop event, Eric Liedtke, Executive Board Member at Adidas and head of Global Brands, said that an "army of innovators" had been working on the new shoe for more than six years - and described how much of a challenge it was. These are performance shoes, afterall, and have many parts that need to best serve the athlete/wearer.

How It Works

What has made the recycling of shoes - and most things - difficult is that the various materials of an item need to be separated prior to recycling. How did Adidas solve this problem? They figured out how to make the shoe with a single material (100 percent reusable thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)) - and it is constructed without the use of adhesives or other chemicals. The TPU is spun to yarn, knitted, molded and clean-fused to a midsole.

Once the user is done with the shoes, they are returned to Adidas, where they are washed, ground to pellets and melted into material for components for a new pair of shoes, with zero waste and nothing thrown away.

"Futurecraft Loop is our first running shoe that is made to be remade," said Liedtke. "It is a statement of our intent to take responsibility for the entire life of our product; proof that we can build high-performance running shoes that you don't have to throw away."

Liedtke also says that the company is aiming to be using only recycled polyester in all of their products by 2024.

"Taking plastic waste out of the system is the first step, but we can't stop there," said Liedtke. "What happens to your shoes after you've worn them out? You throw them away - except there is no away. There are only landfills and incinerators and ultimately an atmosphere choked with excess carbon, or oceans filled with plastic waste. The next step is to end the concept of "waste" entirely. Our dream is that you can keep wearing the same shoes over and over again."

For now, the first generation Futurecraft Loop has been rolled out as part of a "global beta program with 200 leading Creators from across the world's major cities," to take the shoes for a spin. This was the part of the event where 200 pairs of sneakers magically appeared - I was wondering why they wanted my shoe size beforehand.

Now those of us with the shoes will put them to the test before returning them with feedback ahead of the second generation drop. The target for the wider release is Spring Summer 2021. In the meantime, I am planning on testing mine hard ... and finding solace in the fact that this will be just one of the many lives they'll lead. Stay tuned for more...

More at Adidas.

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Adidas Unveils Running Shoes That Never Have to Be Thrown Away

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The Futurecraft Loop performance running shoes can be returned to Adidas, where they will be ground up to make more shoes, again and again. So, recycling is a mess. Manufacturers have sold us on the idea that it's the consumer's responsibility to recycle the manufacturer's product, ostensibly relieving the manufacturer of responsibility for all the trash their products generate.

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Behold the humble bamboo chopsticks.

Most people see them as disposable utensils, something to be used over their sushi lunch or Chinese take-out, then thrown away.

But in them, Felix Bock sees the future.

A bamboo chopstick, he said, is almost a perfect raw material. Neatly tapered. No knots or cracks. Made with a fast-growing sustainable resource.

"It's just not justified we use them as chopsticks only," says Bock, founder and CEO of ChopValue, a Vancouver-based company that collects used bamboo chopsticks from local restaurants and turns them into home decor, household items and furniture.

"When you look at these chopsticks that have travelled 9,000 kilometres from China to Vancouver, then used for 20 minutes - I think the waste of it all resonates with people."

Bock, who hails from a small village in Germany, is a self-proclaimed bamboo enthusiast. A Ph.D. student at the University of B.C. studying structural bamboo products, Bock initially struggled to connect his research to Vancouver, where bamboo trees don't grow.

The eureka moment came one night in 2016 while eating sushi at home with his girlfriend.

He was frustrated at the time, he recalled. A project proposal to use wood from demolition and construction sites had no takers in the wood industry.

His girlfriend suggested he start with something smaller and more tangible: The chopsticks in their hands.

At first, Bock demurred. "But I couldn't sleep at night because I did the math of how many Asian restaurants we have, and how popular Asian cuisine is in Vancouver," he says, estimating at the time that about 100,000 chopsticks were thrown out daily in Metro Vancouver.

He invested $200 in cardboard bins, then he and Hugh Grady, an intern at the UBC lab turned founding partner at ChopValue, reached out to eateries in Kitsilano. Two weeks later, their lab was overflowing with tens of thousands of chopsticks.

Two months later, ChopValue was incorporated. Bock put his studies on the back burner (he is still working on completing his Ph.D).

"Restaurants were waiting for their bins to get picked up," he says. "I strongly felt the responsibility that once you started, you can't stop anymore."

Using a hydraulic hot press he designed, Bock turned the chopsticks into an 8×8-inch engineered bamboo tile - the raw material for ChopValue's array of products - using heat, steam, pressure and a water-based resin.

They quickly outgrew their small workshop in the False Creek flats, and moved into a 2,000-square-foot "micro-factory" in South Vancouver.

Today, ChopValue collects 350,000 chopsticks per week from about 300 partners, including Vancouver International Airport and several Metro Vancouver malls. Bock estimates they've diverted more than three million chopsticks from the waste stream.

This year, the company expanded to Victoria, Montreal and Los Angeles, and now has 18 employees.

The enterprise was cash-flow positive from the start, says Bock, although it made very little money in the first year, plowing back every dollar earned into the company. In its second year, angel investors got onboard.

This year, the company is aiming to make $1 million in revenue, says Bock. He declined to disclose how much the company made in previous years.

The company's product line, which started with tiles and coasters, now include wall decor, yoga blocks and furniture.

Each item comes labelled with its carbon footprint count, as well as the number of chopsticks it took to make. A set of coasters? 300 chopsticks. Hexagon tiles that can be displayed on the wall? 1,800 chopsticks. A nine-foot-long showstopper of a table? 100,000 chopsticks.

One of ChopValue's biggest potentials, says Bock, is in designing premium products for the restaurant and hospitality industry - the chopsticks going full circle, in a sense.

That's already what has happened in some locations such as Pacific Poke, a local chain of poke restaurants, which collects chopsticks for ChopValue and also uses its products, including table tops, wall art and cabinets.

Keeping their environmental footprint in check is one of the reasons Bock decided to go with a franchise model to expand the concept - from collection and design to production and sales - to other cities instead of centralizing manufacturing in one location, then shipping the products around the world.

"I knew I needed to do this for myself at least for a year ... and show it's feasible, and has traction, that we are doing something right," says Bock.

Now that he knows it's doable, Bock's plan is to expand to 75 to 100 locations over the next three years.

"We haven't even scratched the surface yet, with the potential for this," he says.
chchan@postmedia.com twitter.com/cherylchan CLICK HERE to report a typo. Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Email vantips@postmedia.com.

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Vancouver chopsticks get a second, higher-class life

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Behold the humble bamboo chopsticks. Most people see them as disposable utensils, something to be used over their sushi lunch or Chinese take-out, then thrown away. But in them, Felix Bock sees the future. A bamboo chopstick, he said, is almost a perfect raw material. Neatly tapered. No knots or cracks.

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Clothing rental services like Rent the Runway offer consumers the opportunity to wear high-quality clothing without purchasing it. This reduces textile waste and promotes a circular fashion economy.

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About Rothy's | The "Go To" Shoes for Versatility Comfort & Style

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Read the story behind Rothy's and our comfortable ballet shoes & pointed toe flats. Made from recycled plastic bottles and using an eco-friendly manufacturing process.

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For Bill Gates, toilets are serious business. The billionaire philanthropist kicked off the Reinvented Toilet Expo in China and unveiled a new toilet that does not require water or sewers, and uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer, Reuters reported.

"We are all here for one reason: because more than half the world's population doesn't have the safe sanitation they need to lead healthy and productive lives," Gates said in a speech on Tuesday in Beijing.

Gates tweeted a video Monday that described his and his foundation's mission to improve sanitation for countries that do not have or cannot afford to build the sewer infrastructure to remove waste.

To drive home the importance of safe sanitation, Gates brought a jar of feces with him during his keynote in Beijing.

"You might guess what's in this beaker-and you'd be right. Human feces. This small amount of feces could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs," the Microsoft co-founder said.

He kept the jar on the podium for nearly 10 minutes before removing it, the Associated Press reported.

Poor sanitation kills nearly 500,000 children under the age of five annually and costs an estimated $223 billion a year in the form of higher health costs and lost productivity and wages, Reuters reported, citing the information from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The untreated sewage can also negatively impact the surrounding environment.

"Some of the untreated human waste is in unlined pit latrines that contaminates groundwater around people's homes," Gates said in his speech. "Some is collected manually, or by trucks, and is dumped into nearby fields or bodies of water. And some is collected in sewers but never gets treated. The point is that we are far from the goal the world set in 2015 of everyone using a safely-managed toilet."

The aim of the expo is to "launch a new category of innovative, decentralized sanitation solutions that will benefit millions of people worldwide," Gates said.

Several of these "reinvented toilets" are currently being tested in Durban, South Africa.

"Durban is a good place to run these tests because the city is growing fast and many people there don't have a modern sanitation, which means that, even if they have access to a toilet, the waste can get into the environment and make people sick," Gates said in the video.

"A typical toilet needs water, but many of the new approaches don't require any water at all, some of them don't need electricity either, others run on solar power," he added. "All of them remove the pathogens from the waste and, most importantly, they don't have to be connected to the sewer system."

The next step for the project is to pitch the concept to manufacturers, Gates told Reuters. He estimated that the market for the toilets will be more than $6 billion by 2030.

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Bill Gates Unveils Toilet That Transforms Waste Into Fertilizer, Doesn't Require Water or Sewers

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For Bill Gates, toilets are serious business. The billionaire philanthropist kicked off the Reinvented Toilet Expo in China and unveiled a new toilet that does not require water or sewers, and uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer, Reuters reported. "We are all here for one reason...

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Urchin bags are created with upcycled seat belts bike inner tubes vinyl and banners. Each recycled bag is handmade and unique.

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Innovative companies design furniture using recycled materials such as ocean plastic, reclaimed wood, and metal. This reduces the need for virgin materials and helps manage waste.

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Packaging made from biodegradable materials like cornstarch, mushrooms, or seaweed is gaining popularity. These materials break down naturally and reduce plastic pollution.

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Some companies provide refill stations for products like cleaning supplies and personal care items, encouraging customers to reuse containers and reduce plastic waste.

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Eco-industrial parks optimize resource use by connecting businesses in a network that mimics natural ecosystems. Waste from one process becomes the input for another, reducing overall waste.

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Urban farming initiatives transform unused urban spaces into productive agricultural areas. This promotes local food production, reduces transportation emissions, and enhances urban sustainability.