compost

Rich in vitamins and minerals, spirulina is a type of blue-green algae commonly used as a dietary supplement that you may have mixed into a drink as a powder or taken in a tablet when you were on a health kick. Now, researchers have used it to create a bioplastic that will degrade in your compost bin in the same amount of time it takes for a banana peel to break down.We use plastics in many situations because they’re durable and cheap to make. But they’re also everywhere in the environment because they persist for years…

As a 30-year-old architecture student in 2013, Katrina Spade began pondering her mortality. Specifically, what would happen to her body after she…

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing. I’ve thought a lot about composting. It was a daily part of life for five years when I lived off-grid. Granted, we were composting more than just food, but I got to know carbon/nitrogen ratios,…

The rats don’t run this city—garbage rules do. New York City Mayor (and crypto enthusiast) Eric Adams proposed a new rule this week for the city’s composting program. It would require residents to set aside yard-related waste like leaves, branches, and grass aside for composting. The plan aims to get more garbage that would attract rodents off the streets. Misha Collins on What Made Supernatural Successful“This material, the most putrescible portion of New York City’s curbside waste stream, attracts rats and other…

Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, displays a sample of the compost material left from the decomposition of a cow, left, and some of the combination of wood chips, alfalfa and straw used in the process. April 19, 2019Photo: Elaine Thompson (AP)When Howard Fischer eventually dies, he is going to be composted in Seattle. He’ll be wrapped in cloth, placed on a bed of wood chips, and then his family will cover him in alfalfa and flowers. After a ceremony, his body will go intoa hexagonal vessel with an internal…

Fast fashion is big business, but it is also a big polluter, responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions. Roughly 70% of the $3 trillion fashion industry is comprised of articles made from synthetics or petrochemicals.While some companies are claiming sustainable clothing lines, there is a very wide variance in what that means. For some the carbon reduction is in the manufacturing, while for others it is in the clothing itself.The market for plant-based clothing is growing fast, shown by companies like Activ…

“Do you know that for the last 15 minutes, you have been talking non-stop about composting? I’ve just had a long day at the office and wanted to have a relaxing conversation with you,” she said. I was on the phone to a close family member, who lives in London. That’s when I suddenly realised that Ashok Kumar’s love interest in Khoobsurat (1980) was authentic. For those of you who haven’t watched it, much of the action in that popular film emerges from Rekha’s attempts to liberate the members of her sister’s marital…

Every year, people in the United Kingdom throw away around 96 billion pieces of plastic packaging—an average household tosses 66 pieces every week. Almost half of this packaging waste ends up being incinerated, while a quarter is buried in landfills, according to a May 2022 survey by Everyday Plastic and Greenpeace. The scale of the waste is hard to fathom.“The plastics crisis can be daunting,” says Insiya Jafferjee, the CEO and cofounder of packaging company Shellworks. Speaking at WIRED Impact in London this November,…

Compostable plastic that has not fully disintegrated in a compost bin. Photo: Citizen scientist image from www.bigcompostexperiment.org.ukSeemingly every corner of our world is now littered with plastics, and only a tiny percentage of it is ever recycled. To mitigate this, many companies are offering items labeled as “compostable” or “biodegradable” plastic—but as new research finds, those may be a misnomers. 01:25Randall Park's Favorite SuperheroesMonday 5:02PMA study published this week in Frontiers in Sustainability by…

And tree waste isn’t the only unwanted product that can be used to make this compost. Cities could also nourish their trees with a little assistance from their human residents: by recycling their poop.A growing number of wastewater treatment plants are devising ways to produce safe soil amendments based on recycled biosolids—the feces and other organic matter that pass through water treatment plants and also often end up in landfills or incinerators. DC Water, which provides water and sewer services for the US capital, is…