'Zero waste' town recycles most of its trash

A warehouse in Switzerland is being transformed into new creative workspaces. The catch: It’s being constructed out of reused building materials. About 70 percent of it is being made from old materials like wood floorboards, steel beams, and windows. A network of treasure hunters are on the lookout for used materials that can be used in constructing these buildings. The workspace is nearly complete and it already has tenants for all of the spaces. They were also able to cut the building’s carbon emissions in half.

A digital marketplace called Trash Coin is increasing the amount of waste that gets recycled in Nigeria. People can find the nearest drop-off location on the company’s mobile app to exchange recyclables for payment vouchers. Payment is based on the weight of the waste and can be transferred to bank accounts or used to pay for services like electricity.

A startup in Germany created an online platform, Cirplus, that connects recycling companies with manufacturers and distributors in the plastic industry. The site encourages the move towards a circular economy by improving transparency for buyers and sellers.

The Kenyan start-up Gjenge Makers creates pavers that are stronger and cheaper than typical concrete by heating a mixture of shredded plastic waste and sand and then compressing it to form the blocks.

Planet 3R is putting a dent in the amount of waste on the streets of Ibadan, Nigeria, by collecting waste from residents and turning it into usable products like clothes, accessories, and home decor. After collection, the waste is sorted, washed, dried, shredded, and woven together to create something similar to fabric.

In 2020, Vienna, Austria launched a program to subsidize half the cost of repairs to items such as clothing, electronics, bicycles, and furniture. The initiative supported the repair of more than 35,000 items, saving 850 tons of carbon dioxide emissions and spurring other localities, such as Thüringen, Germany, and Portland, Oregon, to roll out their own repair bonus schemes.

A clean-tech startup in Germany is producing sustainable food packaging out of agricultural waste as an alternative solution to single-use plastic. Bio-Lutions claims its products are compostable and uses less water than other products, but the material used won’t work for some food items like hot beverages. The company already has investors such as Delivery Hero that will use its products when the factory is producing compostable packaging.

Companies and research initiatives around the world are developing and testing new toilets that can collect human urine and turn it into fertilizer. These urine diversion toilets have been implemented in places like South Africa with mixed results. However, researchers in Sweden are using portable toilets to gather the urine, dry it into fertilizer pellets that are then used to grow barley for beer. This work could show how to implement these kinds of toilets on a large scale.

A clean tech startup called Forever Ware created reusable, stainless steel containers for restaurants to use instead of single-use takeout containers. So far, four restaurants in Minneapolis are participating in the program, where customers pay a deposit for the container and can return it to any restaurant in the network. Within two months, the containers were used about 1,400 times, which probably cut back on some plastic waste ending up in landfills.

Mason & Greens is a zero-waste store that reduces environmental impact by selling package-free items, from shampoo bars to organic produce. Dry goods and the wines, oils, and kombucha on tap are bought with reusable containers and priced by the ounce, which reduces plastic waste and allows customers to buy only what they need. In addition to minimizing products' carbon footprints, the store has been profitable since it opened and the owners say that, while prices are initially higher for consumers, reusable products may be less expensive in the long run because they don’t have to be replaced as frequently.