In America alone, the amount of wasted clothing in the past 20 years has risen from 7 to 14 million tons every year. That’s why it makes sense to never throw something away or try to pass it on unless it has been used as much as possible. Apart from the environmental side, there is also a sentimental side to sharing your old clothes with your offspring. It’s just so cute seeing a wedding dress being passed down through generations.
Today we see more and more kids and teenagers solving global problems together with adults, and Ryan Hickman from California is one of these devoted young people. Recycling turned into a real passion for Ryan when he was just 3 years old. After visiting a local recycling center with his father, Ryan found his mission: he wanted to keep cans and bottles from reaching the ocean.
Over 300 million tons of plastic and 200 billion aluminum cans are manufactured every year, 50% of which are only for single-use purposes. This young couple from Australia found a way to help the environment and save up for their dream wedding at the same time using 10-cent refunds for recycled cans.
Fantasmagorie is said to be the first animated film ever. It was made in 1908, and it’s one of the earliest examples of hand-drawn animation. But did you know that ancient people entertained children with cartoons about 2.6 million years ago?
Ideally, nothing should get into your toilet apart from toilet paper, pee, and poo. However, oftentimes people use it as a garbage bin, flushing down everything that, for some reason was unfit for a regular trash bin. It can become the reason for the unpleasant smells in the lavatory and even toilet clogs.
Many of us feel guilty every time we finish a plastic water bottle. Luckily, the future seems promising. Scientists have devised a solution that will not only ease our conscience, but also sweeten our taste buds. Say hello to the new and improved vanilla flavoring made from used plastic bottles.
Between 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic trash enter the ocean every year, claimed a 2015 study. To fight the rise of pollution, many of us do our best to recycle or even upcycle what we own. And the latter seems to be extremely popular among those with sewing skills. On Reddit, people share how they turn worn-out jackets into baby clothes or pajamas into dresses in an act that breathes new life into what would otherwise become trash.
Sometimes imagination can bring us unexpected results. Even a bottle of ketchup can become a home phone from a designer’s perspective. Such people like to recycle stuff and add some unusual details. This kind of creativity is not popular, but still, it clings to the eye.
E-waste refers to electronics that are thrown away in the trash, and it has increased by 21% over the last 5 years. And the worst thing is that the chemicals that these devices have can create severe environmental damage. That’s why repurposing or reusing them is important in order to give them some extra life.
There’s a Japanese village called Kamatsu that sorts its trash into a whopping 35 categories, and several governments pay their citizens when they deposit recyclables correctly. Communities around the world are implementing various incentives to help reduce waste.You might not be able to have 35 bins at home, but you can find creative new uses for many things that you’d usually toss. Repurposing is a great way to reduce waste (and save money!). We at Bright Side collected some cool ways to reuse common household items.
Making our day-to-day actions sustainable is not getting any easier. Not only does everyone seem to have an additional tip to share, but sometimes simple actions that look environmentally friendly turn out not to be. Even with your heart in the right place, it can get hard to keep up with the changes and make the best choices.
Every day, a single person can generate up to 5 kilos of waste, and if we add together what everyone on the planet produces, that would be 2 billion tons of waste every year. However, not everything that is discarded is garbage, as many of these things can be recycled, and others can even be turned into fertilizer for plants.
Through recycling, repairing, repurposing, and upgrading waste material, “upcycling” has evolved as one of the most sustainable waste management options. But it’s not only a great way to reduce waste and save a buck or 2 — it can also spark your creativity and make you proud of your handicrafts.
The art of recycling and creating something amazing out of things that have already fulfilled their cycle can be achieved with a little skill and a lot of imagination. Some people saw scrap metal as an opportunity to turn it into something functional as well as beautiful.
We consume lots of things and our planet is overloaded with leftovers. Some designers think about the ecological situation and create amazing things from old stuff. Only about 13% is recycled on a global level, but this level can be higher with our help.
Every day, millions of plastics are produced, and we use it on a daily basis. But we can recycle items to create a new functional object that will benefit us in the long run or to make handcrafted gifts for our loved ones. This saves Mother Earth and inspires us to explore our creativity and save money while raising awareness.At Bright Side, we gathered photos of inventors who made useful things while producing no waste.
The number of inhabitants, territorial surface, neighboring countries, government system, and some other geographical characteristics is what we usually learn about a country when we study it at school or do a quick search in an encyclopedia. However, behind those numbers lies something that makes each and every country fascinating: its very own culture, habits, and customs. These are often very different from ours, which is why we’re so amazed when reading stories from thousands of kilometers away.
Each year, more and more people are looking for alternatives to real Christmas trees, searching for creative and eco-friendly ways to celebrate. From recycling the scraps you no longer need to stacks of empty pizza boxes lying around, there’s an avalanche of cool Christmas tree ideas that you can bring to life right away.
There are 2 types of people in life: those who love to collect things because “someday they will need them,” and those who prefer to buy new things over and over again. Not surprisingly, members of the first group almost always recycle much of what the second group throws away. But what would happen if real treasure appeared amid so much “junk?” There is no one better to tell this story than those who have lived it.
Today we throw away more than 20,000 plastic bottles every second, not to mention other garbage and industrial waste. And only 7% of them are recycled, the rest go to landfills and into the ocean. But thankfully, there are enough enthusiasts who struggle to reduce our environmental footprint and are trying to make this cause of eco-disasters into really fantastic inventions and even objects of art. We at Bright Side found 19 inventions proving that sustainability and social responsibility have become a new trend today. And that is a good reason for being hopeful for a brighter future.
The country that is known for the band ABBA, its furniture, and many other things, has a lot of interesting details about its culture. For example, people in Sweden have a cultural thing called fika. The point of fika is to drink coffee, communicate with people, and eat sweet cinnamon buns. There are quite a few facts about Sweden that make us think it may be a parallel universe, where people have a unique way of thinking and treating the world around them.
If you have old stuff you don’t want in your home anymore, don’t rush to throw it away. When we looked through the r/ZeroWaste group on Reddit, we realized that old junk can be turned into really cool, useful things instead of ending up in a landfill. Cat beds, shopping bags, hats, shorts, and even curtains — the participants of this group made these and other beautiful things from scraps, and we are truly impressed.
Gardening brings a lot of joy, but it can become even more enjoyable when you know how to make it easier and less time-consuming. From planting seeds in eggshells to turning old jeans into a pouch for carrying tools, green-thumbed Internet users are happily sharing tricks that help them grow the tastiest vegetables and the most beautiful flowers.
The easiest and most common thing to do when something is no longer useful is to throw it away, and then most of us just forget that the object even existed. But your garbage undergoes a whole cycle that not many people know about (dividing, recycling, etc). However, not all objects can be “thrown away” just like that. Some of the most common things we use every day, like batteries or cosmetics, are tremendously toxic and can actually have a big environmental impact if not treated properly. Some others, like hair or food scraps, can be reused without necessarily having to be treated by experts.
Our hearts can beat in a special way when shopping at a thrift store and finding an antique that seems meant for us. It’s like finding a small treasure! It’s a feeling that can be compared to the satisfaction of recycling some small token that our granny was especially fond of. This is the case of the bathtub that was turned into a sofa or the drum that was turned into a flowerpot.
Sweden gave the world safe and comfortable Volvo cars, cheap and stylish IKEA furniture, great games like Minecraft and Battlefield, and many other awesome things. According to HSBC, this country is in 20th place in terms of the attraction of immigrants. Free education, a good healthcare system, clear air, and untouched nature — these are the things that attract new citizens to Sweden.
Clutter in our homes can actually make us feel stressed out and helpless. Excess knick-knacks on the shelves, postcards, lots of mugs, old clothes, and even tubes with cosmetics can fill our minds with too many stimuli. This forces our visual, tactile, and other senses to be constantly working, never letting us rest.
Hello! My name is Mila. 5 years ago, I started traveling a lot, and one of the first countries I went to was Germany. I was surprised to see how locals care about ecology — they sort waste, install solar panels on the roofs of their houses, take bottles to the reverse vending machines, and refuse to use plastic bags. I was inspired by their example and decided to also help nature and reduce the amount of waste on the planet.
Today, it’s trendy to get rid of unnecessary things, and so-called “treasure hunters” gladly use this for their own benefit. These people support the movement known as “dumpster diving.” There’s also a community on the Internet where users share photos of old things that they found in garbage bins and on curbsides along the road. Of course, some people are involved in this because they have no other choice, but there are others who’ve turned these searches into a hobby. We can admit that this activity helps us to care a bit more about ecology since it decreases the level of consumption and expenses for recycling garbage, which makes our planet a bit cleaner.
Throughout our lives, we acquire a huge number of things, and some, if not most, inevitably become irrelevant and useless, turning into piles of junk that lie around the house. Sometimes it’s useful to check what you have and get rid of the stuff you don’t need in order to make more room in your place. Decluttering helps to turn your space into a cozy home.
The skin completely recycles itself every 2 weeks according to researchers. Even so, some people barely change over the years, but others turn out looking so drastically different that they should consider changing out their pictures in their passports and driver’s licenses.
When it comes to the idea of “saving the world,” we’ve often felt the need to take big action, solving all the problems at once as if we were superheroes. But today, we know that this is impossible and what matters most are the little things we do every day — or try not to do.
The fingerprints of a koala are so indistinguishable from humans’ that only specialist in fingerprints can read the difference between them. In this and many other ways animals are so much like people! They are as vulnerable as we are and it’s so easy to make them sad by taking away their homes or putting them in captivity.
Releasing balloons has always been seen as a way to celebrate something. However, it’s finally time we stop doing this. A non-profit organization called Balloons Blow is pleading for everyone to stop releasing balloons in the air, as they will just come back to the ground and sea, polluting the earth and having damaging effects on wildlife.
It’s probably about time to change the information in school textbooks and add a new ocean to the 5 that already exist — an ocean of plastic. In fact, around one million plastic bottles are bought every single minute and less than half of them will be recycled. It’s no wonder that people are starting to get concerned with this problem and, luckily, have some alternatives to lighten the load on nature.
Experts say that during the past several decades we’ve produced 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste, only 9% of which went to recycling. In order to fight pollution and prevent a global disaster, we need to reuse and recycle much more waste than we do right now. Richart Sowa, an artist from England, showed the world a creative way to reuse plastic bottles, when he turned 100,000 of them into a beautiful floating island.
