DailyDirt: Reusing Plastic Instead Of Throwing It All Away...

Disposable packaging adds up to a lot of trash. Sure, some of it gets recycled, but there's a significant amount that doesn't -- and ends up polluting the environment in mind-boggling ways. In the not-so-distant future, we might have more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish. But it doesn't have to be that way.

• Making comfortable running shoes from plastic recycled from old fishing nets retrieved from the coast of Africa isn't the easiest way to recycle, but it might be one of the more fashionable ways. Adidas is only making 50 pairs of shoes made with this kind of recycled plastic, so it's nowhere near a sustainable manufacturing process. However, using more recycled plastics in fashionable items could catch on -- if it can be done economically. [url]
• Do you have any idea what all those plastic recycling numbers mean? A bunch of common plastics that make up everyday containers can also be useful prototyping materials, so check out this brief guide to prototyping materials for which plastics might be suitable for DIY projects. [url]
• Plastic garbage floating on water might be gathered up more easily with a "tractor beam" of small artificial surface waves. It would probably be a bit difficult to overcome the natural waves in the oceans to clean up garbage, but this is analogous to how trash in ocean gyres came about in the first place. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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