Recyclable

Sportswear giant PUMA is pushing its sustainability credentials with a new range of products that are either recyclable or biodegradable. Called InCycle, the "closed-loop" collection includes footwear, apparel and accessories that, rather than being tossed in the garbage at the end of their life-cycle, can be returned under the company's "Bring Me Back Program."  Read More

During Milan Design Week 2012, Italian furniture maker Calligaris has introduced the use of liquid wood, a composite biomaterial consisting of polymer and wood. Producing its first range of chairs, liquid wood is 100% recyclable and produced with raw materials that are easily available and renewable.  Read More

It’s possible that your next laptop computer could contain parts of your present-day notebook ... not your notebook computer, mind you, but your actual notebook. At least, it will if China's PEGA Design and Engineering has anything to say about it. The company’s new Paper PP Alloy, made from a combination of recycled paper and polypropylene, is intended for use in the shells of consumer electronic devices.  Read More

Spartanburg, South Carolina, is home to one of the largest privately owned chemical and textile research establishments in the world, Milliken & Company. The firm's innovative research that combines textiles and chemistry has now produced a thermoplastic composite called Tegris that is cheap, recyclable and tough. These properties make Tegris an attractive alternative to (or composite partner for) carbon fiber, and it's already proving to have wide ranging applications in the automotive, military and sporting industries.  Read More

Card Radio was conceived as an environmentally friendly piece of consumer electronics, presumably with the mass market in mind. Its entire housing is made from recyclable, though not recycled, cardboard. Despite its low cost and eco-credentials, Card Radio aims not to sacrifice elegance, harkening back to the 1960s aesthetic that designer Chris McNicholl claims as its influence.  Read More

Synthetic resins start out as viscous liquids that eventually solidify or "cure" into clear or translucent solids. These materials, which combine the desirable properties of strength, durability and light weight, are so useful that you can find them in thousands of applications, particularly aircraft, automobiles and electronic circuits. But for all that versatility, there's one thing that's remained elusive: once cured, resins can not be reshaped. Now, a team from France's National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), led by award-winning physicist Ludwik Leibler, has developed an inexpensive and easily-produced material that is not only reshapable (like glass), but also repairable and recyclable, again, like glass. That's a potential boon for the auto body industry alone, and the possibilities for other uses are seemingly endless.  Read More

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has developed a highly flexible electronic paper that's both re-writable and re-usable, and like the Boogie Board electronic memo pads, the technology doesn't need electricity to retain the screen image. The institute is currently in licensing talks with manufacturers at home and in the U.S., and has taken first prize in the Materials and Basic Science and Technology category of the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards.  Read More

We've seen the cardboard record player and cardboard USB sticks, now another design that thinks outside the (cardboard) box - the foldable phone concept. Created by Chengyuan Wei, the Origami phone handset comes flat and like a pop-up book, transforms into a 3D handset with a few simple folds ... oh, and it's recyclable.  Read More

Joining products like the Life Straw, the Bobble and the Katadyn Vario in the portable water filtration market, the Revolve filter bottle is designed to remove up to 99.99% of all contaminants found in tap water and one filter will produce the equivalent of 800 single use 16 oz bottles of water.  Read More