These smart bins signal crews when it’s time to empty them
Plus a brand that's making recyclable toothpaste
Today’s snapshot👇🏽
These smart bins signal crews when it’s time to empty them
A brand that’s making recyclable toothpaste
Quiz of the Week
Sustainable brands that I recently discovered
News that made me feel good
🚮 These smart bins signal crews when it’s time to empty them
In Japan, you are socially expected to carry any trash generated from snacking directly to your house or your hotel and dispose of it there. So it’s normal for residents there to hold onto accumulated wrappers and napkins until the end of the day and store them in their handbag or backpack till then.
But it’s a different story for the increasing number of tourists that are coming to the country now. They usually search for public bins and are not accustomed to filling their pockets or backpacks with waste while sightseeing.
So Kyoto, which was once the capital of Japan and is known for its classical Buddhist temples, gardens, and imperial palaces, is turning to solar-powered smart bins to tackle this problem.
These bins can automatically compress garbage to roughly one-fifth of its original volume. This allows them to hold more waste before requiring collection.
The bins are also connected to the internet, providing real-time updates on how full they are. This allows sanitation crews to monitor capacity remotely and schedule pickups before trash overflows.
This addresses the lack of public trash bins without requiring significant resources to maintain them.
🦷 A brand that’s making recyclable toothpaste
Thinking outside the tube…UK-based Suri, which is known for its electric toothbrushes with plant-based replaceable heads, is setting the new standard for toothpaste. It has developed a refillable model for them.
Keep the bottle…The refillable toothpaste comes with an outer bottle that’s made of 50% recycled plastic. Inside it, there are refills that last for a month. Another sustainable brand, Shellworks, makes the refills.
Finer details…These refills are plant-based and home compostable and are made of a material called Vivomer, which is free from microplastics, phthalates, BPA, and PFAS.
⌛ Quiz of the week
Note: Answer at the end of the newsletter. No one (including me) can see your response, so feel free to vote. 😉
👏 Sustainable brands that I recently discovered
🇫🇷 Syntetica: A circular nylon recycling technology.
🇮🇳 E3 Electric.Ai: AI-powered modular electric scooters.
🇩🇰 Visibuilt: Biobased technology for road construction.
🇬🇧 StratX: Landfill covers designed to reduce emissions.
🇬🇧 Dogtooth Technologies: Autonomous robots for harvesting soft fruits.
🙌 News that made me feel good
🩳 Cool biz…Male workers in Tokyo encouraged to wear shorts to cut down on air conditioning bills during peak temperatures.
🚫 BYOB…Sri Lanka banned the purchase and use of single-use plastic water bottles in all government institutions.
🫁 Breathe…Higher EV adoption has reduced the number of premature deaths from air pollution in China.
🔆 Solar engineers…This program is training people to become solar engineers to bring clean energy to some of the world’s most remote communities.
🔄 Second life…Ukrainian power grids are buying the Netherlands’ worn-out wind turbines and putting them back to work.
Quiz answer: Philippines
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