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Changing the textile industry

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Rothy's: Washable Shoes and Bags Made with Recycled Materials

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From men's and women's shoes to bags for all, discover classic styles that blend exceptional comfort, innovation and sustainable design. Knit with recycled materials. Free shipping & easy returns.

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What could we make with them?

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Ibu Sofi | Jogja, Indonesia

Ibu Sofi couldn't bear to throw away her plastic and have it dumped in the local river, so she saved it for three years. Then she met the Ecobrick... and she has been packing ever since! Ibu Sofi has gone on to teach hundreds of folks in her city how to go zero waste!
Read the Full story

An Ecobrick is a plastic bottle packed solid with non-biological waste to make a re-useable building block. Best of all, you don't need any fancy machines, special skills, engineers or even politicians to get started.

Also know as Eco Bricks, Eco-Bricks, Ecolladrillos, and bottle bricks, Wikipedia gives it the single, un-hyphenated word: Ecobricks.

Manung Jane | Besao, Philippines

Every morning, Jane goes around town collecting plastics from the local stores. Every day she makes one Ecobrick. Slow and steady, she rebuilt her old walls with bottles and ecobricks. Now, people come from all over now to see her home!
Read Jane's full story

You can build just about anything from Ecobricks. Around the world people are innovating everything from gardens, to tables, chairs, walls and more with Ecobricks. Your imagination is the limit! Here on Ecobricks.org you can find a showcase and guide to all the most established bottle building methods.

Jo Stodgel | Santa Fe, USA

"In America, we might have lots of recycling, but that doesn't mean the plastic goes away." Jo came face to face with the reality of plastic's poison and potential in the dumps of Africa. He has thus been passionately ecobricking for the last 5 years. Read Jo's full story...

Ecobricks sequester CO2, keep plastic out of the biosphere and out of the industrial recycling system. Ecobricking unites communities and raises ecological consciousness. Best of it all, Ecobricking let's you take personal responsibility for your plastic. After lots of research and experiments we've found Ecobricks to be the deepest solution for our own plastic.

Pak Agung | Bali, Indonesia

Pak Agung has been going around his island of Bali, for the last two years, talking with schools and mayors about the perils of plastic. Then he gives them the Vision Ecobrick Guide, and shows them how to put the plastic to good use. Read Pak Agung's Full Story

Our team has worked hard to craft our series of Vision Ecobrick Guidebooks to help you and your community get started ecobrickin... right. The guides are free, open source, and designed to be photocopied and shared. Ideal for Ecobrick begininers, teachers and community leaders. Available in half a dozen languages. Signup to access and download.

Our 2017 Indonesian Ecobrick Earth Heroes

Shanti Wurdiani Ramadhani / Jombang

Mp / Situ Gintung

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Ibu Sofi | Jogja, Indonesia Ibu Sofi couldn't bear to throw away her plastic and have it dumped in the local river, so she saved it for three years. Then she met the Ecobrick... and she has been packing ever since! Ibu Sofi has gone on to teach hundreds of folks in her city how to go zero waste!

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A Spoon You Can Eat Is a Tasty Alternative to Plastic Waste | Short Film Showcase

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A craft beer company has brewed up a brilliant idea.

Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, has created edible six-pack rings that feed, rather than kill, marine life if the rings end up in the ocean and an animal happens to eat it. The rings are created from beer by-products during the brewing process such as barley and wheat and are completely safe for humans and fish to eat.

The rings are also 100 percent biodegradable and compostable, which just ups the product's sustainability game.

The brand says that the innovative design is as resistant and efficient as plastic packaging. The only drawback is that edible six-pack rings are more expensive to produce. But the company hopes that customers will be willing to pay a little more in order to help the environment and animal life.

"It's a big investment for a small brewery created by fisherman, surfers and people that love the sea," Peter Agardy, head of brand at Saltwater Brewery, said in the below video.

The brand also believes that if more breweries hop on this bandwagon, prices may go down. If more companies invested in the technology, production cost would go down and edible rings would become competitive with plastic ones, saving marine lives -- which is desperately needed.

According to a report published in the journal PNAS, researchers have found that about 90 percent of seabirds have eaten plastic and are likely to retain some in their gut. They also are "virtually certain" that by 2050, any seabird found dead will have plastic in their stomach.

The Ocean Conservancy's 2015 Ocean Trash Index - which enlisted 561,895 volunteers to pick up 16,186,759 pounds of garbage - also offers a few staggering facts. It cites plastic as among the most common trash item ingested by sea turtles in 2015. Volunteers found 57 marine mammals, 440 fish and 22 sharks, skates and sting rays entangled in plastic. The index also explains that littering isn't the sole culprit for plastic in the ocean. Plastic can also be blown by the wind from a trashcan or dump, end up in a storm drain and then travel through pipes into the ocean.

Facts like these makes a concept like edible six-pack rings seem vital.

"We hope to influence the big guys," Chris Goves, Saltwater Brewery's president, said. "And hopefully inspire them to get on board,"

BEFORE YOU GO

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Edible Rings On Six-Packs Feed Marine Life If They End Up In The Ocean

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A craft beer company has brewed up a brilliant idea. Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, has created edible six-pack rings that feed, rather than kill, marine life if the rings end up in the ocean and an animal happens to eat it.

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The City of Phoenix: Towards Zero Waste | DIF 2017

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Uploaded by Disruptive Innovation Festival on 2017-11-10.

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Resources

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The circular economy: from consumer to user

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Explaining the Circular Economy and How Society Can Re-think Progress | Animated Video Essay

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View another perspective

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The circular economy's June jamboree in Finland, attended by around 1,500 experts and policymakers, showed just how much momentum the concept has gained in recent years.

Little wonder. The circular economy model - which aims to use closed-loop production to keep resources in play for as long as possible - is presented as a pragmatic, win-win solution; an almost magical fix for our environmental woes.

As well as easing climate change, resource depletion and waste, its backers promise economic growth and job creation too. Big business can continue to flourish, buoyed by "new opportunities" and "expanding markets".

But this vision ignores the fact that on a finite planet endless economic growth is not an option. And it fails to see that solving our ecological crises means diluting the power of global corporations - not propping them up.

One of the tenets of the circular economy is the idea that closing material and product loops will prevent primary production. But recent research published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology concludes that circular economy activities can actually increase overall production, "partially or fully offset[ting] their benefits".

This suggests that the circular economy suffers from a similar rebound effect to energy-efficiency strategies. Just as more efficient coal plants can lead to lower coal prices and therefore higher demand for coal, more efficient use of materials can make products cheaper and therefore more appealing. While technical changes succeed in lowering the per-unit impact, overall the environmental benefit is largely offset by economic growth.

The architect and thinker Walter Stahel has proposed a shift from taxing labour to taxing non-renewable resources, which could mitigate the rebound effect while offering a solution to structural unemployment. But since big business is suspicious of new taxes and higher material costs, this approach is not encouraged by the circular economy's key advocates.

Corporate interests are served by the circular economy in other ways too. Take one of its most widely hailed features, the business trend towards offering services rather than selling ownership. Sharing underused items, like children's shoes or DIY tools, may save money and materials. But a "sharing economy" put in place and dominated by large corporations also increases corporate power and can exacerbate inequalities and dependencies. Just consider the precarious working conditions of Uber and delivery drivers.

Intertwined crises

The shaping of the circular economy should not be left to global corporations. It has to be owned by citizens and an enlightened civil society, and it has to acknowledge the fact that complex problems do not have easy solutions.

Our environmental crises are intertwined with the crises of inequality, migration and democracy, and none of these can be solved in isolation. Maximising recycling and re-use of materials is necessary, but cannot be a cure-all.

To truly flourish, the circular economy needs to be part of a bigger effort to tackle economic growth, wasteful consumerism and undemocratic power structures in the global economy. It needs to be geared to the real needs of all people rather than the excessive consumption of a few, and to be underpinned by more cooperative mechanisms rather than controlled by a small number of powerful companies.

Imagine an Airbnb owned by its users rather than a profit-seeking company with quasi-monopoly status, providing value for participants rather than venture capitalists and private equity funds. Without pressure to maximise growth and profits, such an organisation could be a champion for equality and resource efficiency.

Or think of a world with widespread networks of community gardens, repair cafes and time banks - where individuals can provide services, track and bank their hours and then spend those hours to get their own needs met - and where the introduction of a universal basic income has made participation in such activities realistic for ordinary people.

In such a vision, global corporations might still exist, but would play a much less dominant role than today. Peer-to-peer economic co-operation or local and regional community-led production and consumption models would thrive, helping to support a less growth-dependent and more sustainable economic system.

Only once the circular economy is embedded in such a holistic framework will it be worthy of the buzz it is generating.

Micha Narberhaus is founder of Smart CSOs Lab. Joséphine von Mitschke-Collande is programme manager at Innaxis Research Institute.

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Circular economy isn't a magical fix for our environmental woes

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The circular economy's June jamboree in Finland, attended by around 1,500 experts and policymakers, showed just how much momentum the concept has gained in recent years. Little wonder. The circular economy model - which aims to use closed-loop production to keep resources in play for as long as possible - is presented as a pragmatic, win-win solution; an almost magical fix for our environmental woes.

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Design Challenge

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Imagine a world where cellular devices are built to last and are completely recyclable-free from hazardous chemicals. ACT NOW: http://act.gp/2m18lmW via Greenpeace International