Do you have an idea of the decomposition rates of trash or garbage you use and throw away every day?
- Aluminum can – 80 to 200 years
- Tissue – 2 to 4 weeks
- Plastic Bag – 10 to 20 years
- Disposable Diaper – 450 years
- Cigarette Butt – 1 to 5 years
- Glass Bottle – 1 million years
Did you know that each family uses an average of 500 glass bottles and jars every year? People throw 200 kilograms of plastic into the oceans every second, think about it.
Always recycle your glass products! Their re-purposing qualities are endless.
Here are some companies and countries recycling waste products
Supermarkets in Vietnam and Thailand are replacing plastic packaging with banana leaves. Banana leaves are providing an alternative to plastic packaging in select supermarkets in Vietnam and Thailand.
While supermarkets are using the leaves to wrap vegetables and fruit, the grocery chain Lotte Mart intends to use them for perishable products.
In India, Roads are built using recycled waste plastic and they are surprisingly strong. Chennai’s Jambulingam Street was one of India’s first plastic roads.
Cars, trucks, and auto rickshaws pound the road daily and it has weathered floods, monsoons, and heatwaves. But after years of wear and tear, it has to be potholes or cracks.
The roads are built using special glue made from shredded waste plastic. The adhesive is added to the tarmac to create a durable bond. The surface is cheap, hard-wearing, and in plentiful supply.
India has over 33,700 kilometers of plastic roads. One kilometer of road uses the equivalent of one million plastic bags and saves around a tonne of asphalt. and costs about 8% less than a conventional road.
Should the Philippines be building roads from waste plastic as India did? (ICPE Mumbai) @hcmariwala
A pub in Japan is made from 100% recycled/reused materials! The owners want to hit zero waste by 2020! @Speak535
This pub is made from Japanese recycled newspapers and bottles. The exterior is made of recycled windows and there’s a chandelier made of recycled bottles, old newspapers are used for wallpaper, and tiles from an abandoned factory make up the floor.
The pub is in the town of Kamikatsu which wants to hit zero waste targets by 2020 and already recycles more than 80% of its rubbish. The building’s architect says it encourages locals to think about the circular economy. Unwanted items can already be swapped at a special shop and the town has 40 separate categories for recycling.
Should the Philippines go to zero waste?