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The international collaboration was announced at the textiles recycling expo in Brussels. It highlights growing commercial interest in technologies that can process blended textiles, including denim and mixed-fibre garments. As brands, recyclers and manufacturers look for scalable circular solutions, technologies that can recover high-value fibres from post-consumer textiles are becoming increasingly important. At the centre of the project is The Green Machine, a polyester and cellulose recycling system that uses hydrothermal treatment and dissolution treatment to separate cotton-polyester blends. It is based in a pilot developed by R D specialist HKrita. By decomposing cotton into cellulose powder, polyester fibres are separated while maintaining quality, allowing fibre-to-fibre recycling. The recycled cotton cellulosic powder can be used in re-spinning and agriculture, supporting a broader range of circular applications. The next phase aims to develop the Green Machine into a complete treatment process within an industrial set-up. By separating the blended textiles, the system recovers PET fibre for re-spinning while converting cotton fibre into cellulosic powder for uses including composite fibre, water-retaining material for cotton farming and PFC-free durable water-repellent surface finish. In this way, it supports the goal of end-to-end recycling, where post-consumer textiles are recovered as raw materials for the production cycle. The Green Machine is attracting attention because it can handle difficult textile stream including denim and mixed textiles. Denim is a particular challenge for recyclers, which makes Jeanologia’s involvement especially relevant. The process uses only heat, water and a small amount of environmentally safe chemicals, with a recovery rate of over 97% for polyester fibres within two hours. A major advantage is that it requires only 30% of the energy needed to produce virgin PET fibres. Based in Gresham, Oregon, Looptworks spe...

Saranac Lake is hosting free hazardous and electronic waste disposal events to ensure responsible recycling and proper disposal of items.

Two farmers from the NSW Upper Hunter are on a mission to stop city food waste from going to landfill. They are collecting tonnes of scraps from restaurants and cafes in Newcastle for compost, then using worms to turn it all into liquid fertiliser. All businesses that sell or handle food in NSW will need to comply with new FOGO mandates by July 2030, with those with the largest bin volumes targeted first from July 1. While diners are enjoying their evening seaside meals, Andrew Collins is happily outside chasing the scraps. Cruising the streets of Newcastle, Mr Collins picks up more than 20 tonnes of food waste each week from more than 70 businesses he partners with. It started with a few buckets in the back of utes, but there is now a network of bins he supplies to hospitality venues and collects seven days a week, turning their trash into farming treasure. Coffee grinds, waste fish, the oyster shells — it s a very diverse city that has every type of cuisine that all gets mixed together, he said.

GORKHA: Four community forest user groups in Gorkha have begun producing organic fertiliser from leaf litter and other forest biomass that would otherwise go to waste. The initiative has been launched by the Ram Laxman Community Forest User Group and the Bagpani Community Forest User Group in Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality-1, the Ludi Damgade Community []

A new motorised composting system is being developed especially for Auckland schools to encourage recycling and keep small hands safe.

A friend from church asked me two questions: “Could about everything be composted? and When should we start our compost pile?” These same questions were discussed recently at a Master Gardener meeting. It’s something many gardeners wonder about, and I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned. The following items are on the list: fruit and vegetable scraps, rotten fruit and vegetables, spent coffee grounds, eggshells, paper coffee liners, loose leaf tea, tea bags, soiled paper napkins and paper towels, paper towel tubes, expired plant-based milks, cardboard pizza boxes, food boxes, spoiled leftovers, unfinished meals, tofu, aquatic plants, corn husks and corncobs, straw and much more. Some of these are brown or carbon-based, and others are green or nitrogen-based.

Expired beer, once destined for waste, found a new purpose at Swachagraha Kalika Kendra. Volunteers transformed ten crates of seven-month-old beer into a valuable resource for composting and gardening. Diluted with water, the beer

Keeping a data centre cool on Earth is a surprisingly large part of the job. Cooling can swallow anywhere from a tenth to a third of a facility s entire energy budget, and the thirstiest sites drink millions of litres of water to do it. Move that data centre into orbit and the whole approach collapses. There is no air to blow across the servers, no cooling towers, and no river to dump the heat into. The only way left to get rid of waste heat is to radiate it away as infrared light into the blackness of space, through vast panels. That single fact shapes everything about the idea of computing in orbit. Every computer turns electricity into heat, and a data centre is thousands of them packed together. Left unchecked, that heat would quickly cook the machines, so a large share of the effort and expense goes not into computing but into carrying the heat away. The bill is real. Cooling commonly accounts for something in the range of a tenth to a third of a data centre s total energy use, and often more in hot climates. Much of that cooling relies on water, evaporated to carry heat off just as sweat cools skin. A single one-megawatt facility can get through tens of millions of litres a year, and the largest operators consume water by the billions of litres, a growing source of tension where supplies are tight. On the ground, heat has easy ways to escape. It moves by conduction into cooler materials, by convection as air or water flows past and carries it off, and by evaporation in cooling towers. Every one of those methods depends on having a surrounding fluid, air or water, to hand the heat to. Space has neither. The vacuum around a spacecraft is not cold air; it is very nearly nothing at all. With no air to convect into and no water to evaporate, and nothing to conduct heat into, the familiar cooling methods simply stop functioning. You cannot fan away heat that has nowhere to go. There is one mechanism that still works in a vacuum, and only one: thermal radiation....

As fruits traders in Lagos State count their losses due to spoilage of their items, a project that turns fruit waste into energy which powers streetlights and a few shops in Babajide Sanwo-Olu Market, Ketu, is helping traders to maintain a cleaner and safer environment, SULIYAT TELLA reports.

Environmental organisations yesterday urged the government to scrap the proposed Tk 5,745-crore North Dhaka 42.5-megawatt waste-to-energy (WtE) project in Aminbazar, alleging that it would impose a heavy financial burden, worsen air pollution, and undermine sustainable waste management. They described the project as one of the country’s most expensive and environmentally damaging power initiatives. Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN), the Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development (BWGED) and the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) shared the findings at a press conference at a Dhaka restaurant. In the keynote paper, Hasan Mehedi, chief executive of CLEAN, said at 85 percent of its capacity, the plant would generate around 316.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, at the purchase rate of Tk 26.79 per unit. “If the plant utilisation declines, the tariff could rise to between Tk 47-75 per unit,” he added. Also, the project agreement requires DNCC to supply 3,000 tonnes of municipal waste daily. If DNCC fails to deliver the agreed amount, it would have to pay US$50 per tonne of waste shortfall. The speakers argued that as DNCC currently generates around 2,750 tonnes of waste daily, the arrangement could create financial incentives to generate more waste instead of promoting recycling and waste reduction. They also expressed concern over environmental and health impacts, claiming the plant would emit about 4,11,392 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, alongside ash, ultrafine particulates and toxic pollutants, including heavy metals, dioxins and furans, which pose serious health risks. The keynote paper added that the same investment could install around 425MW of solar power capable of generating nearly 688 million units of electricity annually without fuel costs or harmful emissions.