Latest News

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.

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 []

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.

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....

Environmental activists on Saturday expressed concern that the proposed waste-to-energy project at the Amin Bazar landfill under the Dhaka North ...

According to new research, rather than food processing leftovers ending up in landfills or compost, they could find a second life as a natural source of vitamin C, potentially replacing the synthetic form commonly used in supplements. According to a report from Swansea Bay News, researchers from Swansea University and the nutrition startup BIOVIT are exploring the idea that nutrients stripped away during food processing could be recovered rather than discarded. The outlet reports that Innovate UK is backing the effort, which centers on agricultural leftovers and food-processing byproducts. BIOVIT says preliminary findings suggest fruit and vegetable material can lose up to 60% of its vitamins and minerals during processing. This lost material could be useful again if researchers can nail down a method for capturing and repurposing it. In turn, researchers at Swansea University s Natural Products BioHUB are aiming to transform discarded food-processing material into a more sustainable, naturally sourced replacement for synthetic vitamin C. Dr Farooq Shah, director of BioHUB, told Swansea Bay News that transforming the waste into useful supplements can help support circular manufacturing and strengthen local food supply chains. Food waste is costly, resource-intensive, and environmentally damaging — and not every form of it can simply be donated or consumed. In many cases, food processing leftovers must be handled carefully to ensure they are safe for human consumption. If nutrients can be safely extracted from those materials, it would provide another way to keep valuable resources in circulation rather than throwing them away. A successful process could also affect the products people use every day. Vitamin C is widely used in supplements and fortified foods, and much of it is made synthetically. A recovered, natural version could give manufacturers another option while making better use of materials that would otherwise be discarded. Ky Wright, founder and...