GUEST POST from Kevin Roberts
The UK is drowning in junk. In seven years there will be nowhere left to put it – check out this story on Packington (which sounds suspiciously like “pack it in”), one of the many landfills surging towards capacity. It covers about 380 acres and contains more than 18.5 million tons of rubbish. The height of a skyscraper where once there was flat land, it is, literally, a waste of space.
Answers to problems this big come in DOT (Do One Thing) form, multiplied by collective action. One good idea to emerge from a conversation with a waste tip supervisor is the world’s first paper wine bottle made by packaging company GreenBottle. It weighs about a tenth of a glass bottle, has a tenth of the carbon footprint, and is compostable, gone in a matter of weeks. More exciting is the inventor’s quiet comment that he can be more radical yet with the bottle’s design – so far he’s stuck to the conventional shape to stop wine shoppers going into shock. I say mix it up – stun me!
This is the unreasonable power of creativity at work, rescuing the world one idea at a time – here are a few more eco-innovations, movements and machines to bend your mind, saving space and resources: e-paper; cardboard vacuum cleaners; lawn couches; virtual water; Boeing’s new Dreamliner.
Image credit: Green Earth Blogs
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