Are you experimenting with making beeswax wrap?

Most DIY instructions I read use 100% cotton fabric to make the wrap.  The reason is, if you use stretchable material like cut outs from your old t-shirt, the beeswax may not able to coat the surface fully or the wax may crack once you stretch the finished product.

I read from the instruction posted at Apartment Therapy that “the best options for fabric are something about the thickness of a bed sheet with a very tight weave”. So you can consider using your used bedsheet to make beeswax wrap.



From that article I discovered how partially waxed wraps can be saved by using the beeswax beads or pellets and parchment paper method. You can sprinkle a small amount of wax beads on those areas that did not get waxed, place a parchment paper over un-waxed side of the fabric and iron over it.

So, now I know, there are actually other ways to making beeswax wrap.  You can also learn the methods and how to use your wraps by watching this video.



Another discovery I made is that you can even make Beeless Vegan Food Wraps!  You use carnauba wax or candelilla wax flakes with jojoba oil as shown in this video.

Edible Water Bottle

"Containers" for drinking water from Skipping Rocks Lab are made of plants and seaweed which makes it possible for you to swallow it, with the water, whole.



Since, they are biodegradable, I wonder if it will be possible to leave a few blobs to water plants in my garden while I am away on a holiday.

Re-using the magnetic whiteboard with alphabets your kids have outgrown

What can you do with the magnetic whiteboard with alphabets your kids have outgrown

I am still keeping the set I bought for my children years ago as I can use the alphabets like a stencil for creating craft work.

Here is one noticeboard I did for a Buddhist Society I was a member at.



I named it, "Poem in my Ears", to hang strings of good attributes to cultivate.



Like the idea?  You should not have any problem finding such whiteboard with alphabets in the market.

Solution to plastic litters in the Philippines

According to a report by Greenpeace, Philippines is the third worst plastic polluter of oceans.

However, there is hope for change through a trash management programme developed by nonprofit, Mother Earth Foundation. The city council of San Fernando allows the poor to make a living by picking through trash from every house daily and bring it all to sell at one of its 35 waste warehouses throughout the city.

Through this new system, more than 75 percent of waste gets composted or recycled and it costs the city council about 80 percent less to manage waste, as trash trucks are no longer required to collect waste from every house.

To boost plastic recycling, Dutch designer, Dave Hakkens, provides free tutorial at Precious Plastic so that one can learn t build a machine that can shred up plastic waste so that the material can be used to make useful artifacts.



More money can be made from a finished product than from recycling, if the poor adopt this idea.

Edible Six Pack Rings

If you have bought cans of beer packed in plastic six-pack rings, you are likely guilty of harming some marine creatures or killing them if they have digested them thinking that they are food.

Saltwater Brewery in Delray Beach, Florida, has found a solution that will make you comfortable about buying their six-packs.  They have created 100 percent biodegradable and compostable six-pack rings.  To top that up, they are created from the by-products of beer and since beer is made up of barley and wheat, they are completely safe for humans and fish to eat.



So, the next time you buy a six-pack beer from Saltwater Brewery, you may want to consider keeping the rings. You never know if there is a company out there who will buy them off you for fish feed.

Pod Works, the Mini Work Stations

With a mobile phone in hand, gone were the days when we had to look for coins to make calls from a public phone booth.  So, what is going to happen with British Telecom red phone boxes that have gone redundant?

Bar Works Inc, a New York based company, is fitting out these phone booths with plugs, printers/scanners, WiFi and ethernet connections to create mini work stations for people on the go. The idea is that it can be very expensive to pay for cups of coffee just so you can have free internet access in a noisy cafe, when you are out of town.

Now you can pay a membership fee of £19.99 so you can have the privacy to work in a Pod Works any time, day or night, in the location you are heading to, that is, if a link to an APP confirms that it is available there.  To top that up, you will get free tea and coffee from its hot drink machine.

Pod Works will launch in July, 2016 and only in London, Leeds and Edinburgh.

This got me thinking.  Why does it take someone from USA to see value in UK's iconic looking red phone boxes?

Maybe reading, "HBR's 10 Must Reads on Innovation" by Harvard Business Review, which includes the article, "The Discipline of Innovation", by Peter F. Drucker will help us to discover how we can create wealth from the abandoned and save the environment along the way.

Tracking Electronic Waste

Do you want to know where electronic waste will likely end up in? 

Nonprofit organisation, Basel Action Network (BAN), working with the help of MIT Senseable City Lab, put GPS trackers on e-waste in USA and discovered that much of it ended up in Asia.  You can view the interactive map from "e-Trash Transparency Project" at the following link:

http://senseable.mit.edu/monitour-app/

BAN  issues “e-Steward” certification to recyclers who are able to handle these materials with social responsibility and use environmentally sound practices.  The idea is to keep e-waste out of landfills and to prevent electronics waste from being exported to countries with poor regulations as they can be harmful to their environment and the people put in place to work on them.

The tracking device has enabled BAN to audit recyclers they have certified.  As a result of this investigation, the “e-Steward” certification for Total Reclaim, a Seattle-based e-waste recycler, has been revoked.

That is how Dell discovered that even some of their used electronic items have been exported to Asia. Dell has a "Reconnect program", which encourages consumers to donate electronic items that they no longer use. These should have been collected, refurbished and sold at an affordable cost to those in need or "recycled responsibly" through their partnership with Goodwill Industries, a nonprofit organization. The "Reconnect program" creates green jobs and support Goodwill's efforts to help disadvantaged people and those with disabilities by providing education, training and career services. It looks like there is a loophole somewhere that Dell needs to fix.

If this bothers you, what else can you do with your used electronic devices that you plan to replace? Randy Sarafan has some ideas and you may be inspired to start a new hobby after reading his book, "62 Projects to Make with a Dead Computer: (And Other Discarded Electronics)".