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Today’s Wonder of the Day takes a look at what happens after you reduce, reuse, and recycle!

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A new generation of recycling has now gone from local drop-off centers to a shopping mall that sells only repaired or upcycled products.

The new recycling establishment, ReTuna Återbruksgalleria, has nothing to do with the fish; instead, it was named after the Swedish town in which the building is located, Eskilstuna, Sweden.

The facilities contain both a recycling center and a shopping mall. Customers can donate the items that they no longer need, then shop for something new - all in one stop.

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Dropped off goods are sorted into various workshops where they are refurbished or repaired accordingly. Products are then sorted into 14 specialty shops that include furniture, computers, audio equipment, clothes, toys, bikes, and gardening and building materials; all garnered from second-hand products.

The center also includes a café and restaurant with a heavy focus on organic products, as well as a conference and exhibition facility complete with a specialty school for studying recycling.

The center, which is operated by the local municipality, has benefitted the local economy by creating 50 new repair and retail jobs, and providing space for private start-ups and local artisans.

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The biggest bonus for the Swedish community is how the center relieves local government from the tremendous burden and expense of disposing of unwanted goods while turning potential "waste" into profits.

"Our idea is that the customer comes here and leaves for example some furniture and clothing that can get tired or have no use for anymore," says Anna Bergström, center manager ReTuna Recycling Galleria. "Then you go a lap at the mall. Maybe find a new jacket and a new framework that will make the photograph of the grandfather unique and extra fine. Since you eat organic lunch in our restaurant to gather strength to go another lap and find new flowers for the garden and a new lamp for the living room. When you leave here, you should feel that you did something good for the environment and that they shopped climate."
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Reprint(Photo by ReTuna Återbruksgalleria)

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Sweden Opens World's First Mall for Repaired and Recycled Goods - Good News Network

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A new generation of recycling has now gone from local drop-off centers to a shopping mall that sells only repaired or upcycled products. The new recycling establishment, ReTuna Återbruksgalleria, has nothing to do with the fish; instead, it was named after the Swedish town in which the building is located, Eskilstuna, Sweden.

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Building with Waste, a new book about, well, you can guess, may not sound like it should top your holiday reading list - but, construction geeks as we are, we found its premise fascinating. Every year, human settlements produce 1.3bn tonnes worth of solid waste products. The book argues that we could and should be putting this to good use as cheap, durable and green building materials.

Compilers Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska and Felix Heise looked into the worlds of architecture, construction, and the delightfully named field of "garbology" to find new and exciting materials made out of stuff you'd normally find at a landfill site. Their book argues that, in future, we could end up re-using pretty much everything, as we did back when all waste was organic.

This could come in handy if, as is predicted, our municipal waste output doubles by 2025. As Mitchell Joachim, one of the book's contributors, puts it:

The future city makes no distinction between waste and supply.

So, from animal blood bricks to nappy roofing, here are our favourite waste-based materials featured in the book.

1. NewspaperWood

This design comes froom Norway, where over 1m tonnes of paper and cardboard are recycled every year. The wood is created by rolling up paper and solvent-free glue to create something not dissimilar to a log, then chopping it into usable planks. The wood can then be sealed so it's waterproof and flame-retardant, and used to build anything you would normally build with wood.

2. Nappy roofing

Image: Lightweight tiles ltd.

Good news: something can be salvaged from all those nappies and sanitary products we throw away, even though they're, well, really gross. Special recycling plants separate out the polymers from the, er, organic waste, and these polymers can then be used to ceate fibre-based construction materials like the tiles in the image above.

3. Recy blocks

These colourful bricks are made from old plastic bags, which are notoriously difficult to recycle in any other way. Recycled bags or plastic packaging are placed in a heat mold, and forced together to form the blocks. They're too lightweight to act as load-bearing walls, but can be used to divide up rooms or outdoor areas.

4. Blood Brick

This idea rests on the assumption that animal blood counts as a waste product. This, we realise, is a potentially offensive idea - but while carnivores are still munching away, they're still wasting loads of animal blood, especially in societies without industrialised food production systems. And, as it turns out, blood is one of the strongest bio-adhesives out there, as it contains high levels of protein.

British architecture student Jack Munro proposes using freeze-dried blood (which comes as a a powder), mixed with sand to form a paste; this can then be cast as bricks. This could be especially useful in remote communities, where blood from animal slaughter is plentiful, but strong construction materials are thin on the ground.

5. Bottle bricks

Image: Aaron "tango" Tang via Flickr.

This proposal is a little different, as it relies on producing a consumer good specifically so it can later be used as a building material. Lots of companies now make bottles in cuboid or other tesselative shapes, to make them easier to transport.

But the practice of doing so to create construction materials actually started with beer company Heineken in the 1960s - Alfred Henry Heineken, owner of the brewery, visited a Carribean island and was dismayed at both lack of shelter, and the number of discarded Heineken bottles scattered everywhere. So the company landed on a new, brick-shaped design for the bottle, shown in the images above. The bottleneck slots into the base of the next bottle, forming an interlocking line.

6. Smog insulators

Image: New Terrirories/City of Bangkok.

One of our biggest waste receptacles is the air, which isn't great for our lungs, or for the human race's chances of survival on a planet that's rapidly getting hotter. "Dustyrelief", a system created by the City of Bangkok and design firm New-Territories, involves placing an electrically charged metal mesh over a building, which attracts large smog particles and sticks them together. Eventually, this creates a kind of silvery fur over the building's surface. Not particularly attractive, perhaps, but much better than a similar shag forming on the insides of your lungs.

7. Mushroom walls

Image: Evocative designs.

Here, designers figured out a way to grow wall insulator and packing materials using mycelium, a bacteria found in rotting organisms like tree trunks and agricultural byproducts. If placed in a mold, these organic matters grow to the desired shape within a couple of days, and can then be stopped using a hot oven. This is particularly useful because traditional insulating and packing materials tend to be non-biodegradable, or, in the case of asbestos, poisonous.

8. Plasphalt

The bit on the left is plasphalt, the bit on the right is asphalt. Image: TEWA.

OK, yes, we mostly like this one for its fun name. Plasphalt is made up of grains of plastic produced from unsorted plastic waste, which replaces the sand and gravel traditionally used in asphalt production. In testing, it was found that plasphalt roads were far less vulnerable to wear and tear than traditional asphalt, because the asphalt emulsion bonded better with the plastic than with gravel or sand.

9. Wine cork panels

Image: Yemm & Hart materials.

These wall or floor tiles are made by combining recycled granulated cork with whole wine corks, which you can see as those oblong shapes in the tiles above. This is a pretty useful idea, considering the world apparently consumes around 31.7bn bottles of wine a year. For shame.

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9 building materials made entirely from waste products

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Building with Waste, a new book about, well, you can guess, may not sound like it should top your holiday reading list - but, construction geeks as we are, we found its premise fascinating. Every year, human settlements produce 1.3bn tonnes worth of solid waste products.

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According to the infographics, the U.S. is actually seventh in the listing of countries with the highest recycling rates. Recycling and going green isn't anything to be lax about, as a ton of recycled paper can save, in its equivalence, an average of 165 gallons of gasoline.

Countries That Have The Highest Rates of Recycling

Leading the list with a whopping 52 percent of its waste being recycled is Switzerland. This is nearly double what the United States has.

Number two on the list is Austria with 49.7 percent. This is a close match for number three-ranked Germany with 48 percent and number four-ranked Netherlands with 46 percent. Norway is ranked number five with 40 percent while Sweden comes in at number six with 34 percent.

States With the Best Rankings in the US

There are some states that have cornered the market with recycling efforts.

These states are the Top 10 in rank for having the highest amount of waste recycled.

These are in order from best to worst >>>

Fresno, California

Fremont, California

San Antonio, Texas

Burlington, Vermont

Anaheim, California

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Jacksonville, Florida

San Diego, California

Madison, Wisconsin

Durham, North Carolina

As you can see four of the Top 10 cities in the U.S. are in California, a state where there is much more effort to maintaining a greener environment than in other areas. Add in the fact that California has some very strict emissions guidelines all in efforts of lowering the carbon footprint of the state.

States With the Worst Rankings in the US

Some might say these states all need to take a remedial course in recycling efforts. They are the worst of the 50.

These states are listed as the bottom of the worst to the least of the worst >>>

Wichita, Kansas

Las Vegas, Nevada

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Billings, Montana

Lubbock, Texas

St. Petersburg, Florida

Detroit, Michigan

Lincoln, Nebraska

Aurora, Colorado

Louisville, Kentucky

As you can see, Colorado has two of the worst cities in the bottom 10 that were ranked. Wichita ranks at the very bottom of the list. Florida is surprising, in that it has a listing in the best cities and the worst cities.

There are many things that the US can do to increase the recycling rate.

Places like California are making recycling mandatory in many locations, in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint on an area that sees a great number of population.

If more states implemented this plan, perhaps the United States could rise higher in the rankings.

As a business owner and/or consumer, what are you doing to improve the recycling effort in your community?

About the Author

Tina Samuels writes on social media, small business, environmental issues, and .

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According to the infographics, the U.S. is actually seventh in the listing of countries with the highest recycling rates. Recycling and going green isn't anything to be lax about, as a ton of recycled paper can save, in its equivalence, an average of 165 gallons of gasoline.

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Landfill dumping statistics including waste material

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It seems like every time you turn on the television you hear a news story about a local landfill reaching capacity or a city fighting the addition of a new dump.

Unfortunately, landfills are reaching capacity on a regular basis, which leaves towns and counties needing to find new ways to deal with the growing waste problem. While you may not be able to solve your town's trash problem yourself, every little thing you do helps.

Waste Management Statistics and Facts

Keep in mind these shocking landfill facts and statistics and perhaps you will be inspired to make changes in your life.

1. Reports show that Americans generate between 250 and 400 million tons of garbage each year--all of which requires landfill space.

2. 53.4 of paper products are recycled in the United States - While this is a huge improvement over years before, there is still big room for improvement!

3. The average office worker uses over 500 paper cups per year. Think of the impact of reducing this by only half!

4. The amount of waste generated has tripled since 1960.

5. The United States has the highest amount of waste generated per person of any country at an average of 4.6 pounds per day.

6. Only around 1/10 of solid garbage in the United States is recycled each year.

7. Despite this seemingly low rate, this is still an increase of around 100% over the last decade--we are making improvements!

8. Each year around 100.2 billion plastic bags are used by Americans.

9. In the Pacific Ocean, there is a "Plastic Island" twice the size of Texas that was created by dumping waste into the ocean.

10. 36% of what is thrown away in the US each year is paper or cardboard--much of which is recyclable.

11. The United States has over 3,000 active landfills and over 10,000 "old" landfills. All of these create hazardous gas and could be a danger to groundwater.

12. Aluminum can be recycled innumerable times with no loss of quality, yet only a small fraction of cans are.

13. When Ireland enacted a 15 cent per bag charge, consumers consumed 90 percent fewer bags.

14. Each day, people in the U.S. throw enough trash away to fill 63,000 garbage trucks.

15. An average American throws away around 1,200 pounds of waste each year that could be composted and kept out of the landfill.

16. While recycling is increasing each year, so is consumption--Reducing consumption while increasing recycling is the key to reducing landfill usage.

17. Each ton of paper recycled can save three cubic yards of landfill space.

18. During the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, an extra million tons of waste is generated--per week.

19. 38 million miles of ribbon are put into landfills each year. That is enough to tie a bow around the earth.

20. Plastic bottles put into the landfill will take thousands of years to decompose since they are shielded from sunlight.

Key Takeaways:

As you can see, the facts about landfills and trash can be a bit scary. However, it is an area in which everyone can make a difference. The statistics above show a lot of important information, but some of the takeaways include:

Landfills create dangerous gasses and are an unpleasant addition to the community.

Paper and plastics that can be recycled are not being done so at the degree that they should be--recycling initiatives are helping, but the problem is not solved.

Waste reduction and composting are also significant ways to reduce the amount of waste put into the landfill.

Need Help?

Interested in learning more about waste management best practices in Connecticut, contact us today!

Photo Credit

Statistics gathered from:

1. http://thinkoutsidethebin.com/2010/11/30/landfill-statistics-in-the-u-s-staggering/

2. http://harmony1.com/recycling-infographic/

3. http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html

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20 Horrifying Waste Management Statistics and Facts About Landfills

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It seems like every time you turn on the television you hear a news story about a local landfill reaching capacity or a city fighting the addition of a new dump. Unfortunately, landfills are reaching capacity on a regular basis, which leaves towns and counties needing to find new ways to deal with the growing waste problem.

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Landfill mining: is this the next big thing in recycling?

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We need to change the way we think about landfills. They're not static end-stations for obsolete materials, but reservoirs rich in reusable resources.