If the brilliant late-1980s TV show “MacGyver” has taught us anything, it’s that you can repel a gang of thugs, break out of prison, and build a functioning spacecraft with little more than a paper clip, a C battery, some twist ties and an empty tube of toothpaste. Yes, OK, fine, MacGyver was fiction, but […]

Cinder blocks await their final destination at a construction site. The process of making concrete creates a whole lot of carbon dioxide, but one company wants to change that by trapping and injecting CO2 emissions into the concrete itself. What’s the most abundant man-made material in the world? Spend too much time scrolling through posts […]

Recycling was shaken up by China’s trash ban. On January 1, China stopped taking 24 types of waste and recyclable items like plastic and paper from overseas. China was the biggest buyer of New Zealand’s waste and recyclables. The change meant councils had to find other overseas buyers for recyclable waste, but that came with a whole new set of recycling guidelines […]

Friday was a good day for recycling. The first commercial airline hit the skies fuelled by repurposed waste carbon, Canada started turning old fire hoses into hammocks for zoo animals and Jacinda Ardern opened an Auckland building mostly made from salvaged material. But, when at home Kiwi’s still can’t get their recycling bins right. Kiwis […]

Now that straws are out of the picture, it’s time to set our sights on the next wasteful item we could all live without. To-go coffee cups have my vote! They’re unnecessary, often unrecyclable, and produced in staggering amounts. (Starbucks alone serves about 8,000 per minute.) This fall, let’s all vow to either take a […]

Does your garden look as pretty at night as it does during the day? Here are some options to ensure that it does. Let there be light! Make a plan Think about what you need from your outdoor lighting: safety and security, ambience, highlighting a feature, illuminating a work area. Each type of need requires […]

Flooding from remnants of Hurricane Rosa raised concerns Tuesday after floodwaters rendered roads impassable for the Menagers Dam community near Sells, Arizona, and many residents were evacuated due to “uncertainty over the integrity of the dam,” officials said. The rainfall from Hurricane Rosa produced “unprecedented levels of flooding on the Tohono O’odham Nation, particularly in […]

Food access is not just a health issue—it’s an issue of equality. Last year 40 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, meaning they consistently did not have access to enough food to live a healthy life. Statistics like this are startling and leave us wondering if anything can be done to combat such a pressing, […]

When it comes to cleaning up around the house, few tools are as convenient as the trusty paper towel roll. But, like most things we use once and then throw away, these aren’t the most eco-friendly. Made from wood fibers that are broken down and dyed with bleach, paper towels require a lot of water […]

The sunburnt country of Australia is the perfect location to harness the power of solar energy. Discovered in 1839 by Alexandre Edmond Becquere, solar power is the conversion of light into electricity via photovoltaics. However, according to Energy Matters, it wasn’t until 100 years later in 1941 that Russell Ohl invented the solar cell. Now, […]