When I asked Mr. Simmons regarding their involvement with Keep Houston Beautiful and the Esplanade Project he responded “We are a key sponsor for both Keep Houston Beautiful and Keep Texas Beautiful because we believe that global problems can be solved at a local level.” He was excited that so many community members and families had shown up in support to plant trees and help make Houstonians proud of their City.

Turning Houston Green is a huge proponent of single stream recycling — a process allowing recyclables to be handled in one container (rather than multiple bins for glass, paper, and plastics) making the act of recycling easier and more accessible to the common citizen. According to the blog, single stream recycling has caused a 200% recycling increase in San Antonio, and a whopping 300% increase in Dallas. Are similar outcomes on the horizon for Houston? Simmons has high hopes that people will follow suit.

The competitor in me says that Houston can do better. Right? Mr. Simmons stated that “People want to do the right thing… When recycling is made easy, people do it” so Greenstar works closely with Municipalities to help make recycling convenient for residents. They believe that Texas can be a National leader in Recycling and that single stream recycling is the answer for Houston.

For more on the subject, check out the rest of the interview. Otherwise, chime in: do you think single stream recycling is the way of the future for Houston and other cities like it? Could easier recycling lead to a more eco-conscious population? Let us know!

There are lots of good reasons to recycle and we’ve had many of those addressed. But for me the basic of this bill comes down to an issue of fairness, that we in Utah deserve to receive the service of recycling that we pay for when we buy this product.

E-waste is among the fastest-growing environmental problems in the United States, and it’s something government officials aren’t taking lightly — according to the report, the bill passed 47-26, and is now moving on to a Senate vote where it will hopefully take hold and pave the way for more recycling laws in the future.

Topping the list is air-dying, which tackles the current problem of material waste in the process of dying textiles. New methods are promising to drastically cut the amount of resources needed to color fabrics:

During the dying process, water is used to apply color, but also to push the fabrics through machines. New machines by companies like Fongs are using air to push the fabrics, thus reducing the amount of water used. With this method, the dying of a t-shirt can go from requiring 200 to using only 50 liters of water (Textile World).

Another, more eco sound, alternative is a system called AirDye, which works with proprietary dyes that are heat-transferred from paper to fabric in a one-step process. This can save between seven and 75 gallons of water in the dying of a pound of fabric, save energy, and produces no harmful by-products.

Along with processes, however, are new and sustainable takes on materials. Cork, PET bottles, stinging nettles, seaweed, banana fibers, and recycled fabrics are all finding new life on the cutting edge of fashion:

[Alternative materials] include, for example, fabrics made with nylon recovered from products like nets and carpets by Mipan. An example of the use of this is the swimwear line Eco Panda.

Some factories are also recycling cotton industrial leftovers, which keeps these scraps from incinerators or landfills and creates new materials. One example is the Italian initiative EcotecProject.

Overall, the verdict is in: the fashion world is on the precipice of some major green changes. The big question is whether they will pass as a fad or catch on permanently. Would you wear recycled materials? Are alternative plant fibers really so radically different from cotton? Let us know!

Osaka University and Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Co. have designed a robot with laser-sensing technology that can distinguish six different types of plastic from all other garbage. The 5-foot 6-inch by 6-foot 9-inch machine identifies the plastic materials by analyzing the reflectivity of five different wavelengths of lasers on the garbage. Once it identifies the material, it sorts the garbage into different piles.

According to green tech blog EcoGeek, this efficient little robot is poised to revolutionize the ease with which we recycle. Currently, the biggest obstacle facing recycling in Japan is confusion over which types of plastic are recyclable and which aren’t, leading to lower recycling rates overall. The superior sorting skills of the robot will take out the guesswork by simply wicking away the unrecyclables from the pile, hopefully leading to heightened confidence in recycling and an increased rate in the long run.

Will this handy-dandy robot be showing up in everyday households any time soon? Probably not quite yet. Only one prototype exists at the moment, and the article quotes soon-to-be-produced models as pricing out at around $55,000–a price tag fit for businesses and industry more than your typical kitchen. That said, it’s a good indicator of things to expect in the future, and robots are always a good start.