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| The Loop Newsletter |
Issue #54 |
A Bright Spot after a LONG COLD WINTER – Visit a Flower Show in Philly or Antique & Garden Show in TN - Recycling / Reuse is ALIVE & WELL! Sustaining Beauty will explore ways to live beautifully while still preserving our world’s natural splendor and embrace the possibilities of a greener lifestyle. Be a part of sustaining beauty in our world! Close the Loop’s rubber mulch will be on display at the Schaffer Designs & Beautiful Blooms Booths at the Philadelphia Flower Show (Mar 1-8) and the most beautiful part to me is they have donated this rubber mulch to Bridesburg Boys & Girls Club to use for their playground safety surfacing after the show is over. Many times, the waste generated from these events is excessive, but these designers have chosen to REUSE instead of LANDFILLING ~ what a great idea!! Close the Loop’s glass mulch will be on display at the TN Antique and Garden show (Feb 5-8) & will also be reused after the show is over! Also check out the iconservepa.org DCNR booth at the Philly Flower Show for our milk jug posts made into a table/chair set.
Get What You Need Without Money…BarteringMoneyless transactions provide mutual enrichment while preserving cash for other needs, and exchanging unwanted goods delays their obsolescence and preserves resources. Whether you’re looking to give your old belongings new life by recycling them through a barter exchange, or to emphasize the human connections in your economic transactions by intentionally seeking cooperative swaps, the ‘grassroots economy’ of bartering can be a way for you to advance economic well-being. Read more. POLLI Bricks: Build a House with Recycled Bottlesby Daniel FlahiffThe creative minds at miniWIZ recently debuted the POLLI-Brick, a recycled polymer bottle that can be interlocked to build an incredible array of structures. Made from recycled PET bottles, the lightweight bricks offer excellent acoustic and thermal insulation and can build anything from fences and roofs to pots for plants, skylights and beautiful walls of light. Read more.
Cardboard Artist Mark Langan’s Latest Creation in Cardboard Another amazing piece of artwork that Mark has done by taking advantage of waste materials in such ways as making sure the ribbing of the corrugated board matched directionally the same as the ribbing of the trailer. Using wraps where appropriate to simulate such things as the corner posts of the trailer. Read more. |
In this issue: · Flower Shows Recycle & Reuse! · Bartering· Building with recycled bottles· Electric Car Returns Energy to the Grid· Top 10 Reasons to Recycle· Video – Are you Eating Garbage?· Cradle-to-Cradle Design· Ways to be Involved in Recycling· Renaming OSW· Green Prisons Farm, Recycle· DTV Transition
Be sure to check out closetheloop.com for green building & recycled products.
Our hope is you will truly close the loop by using recycled products ~ made right here in the USA. Close the Loop is helping to keep manufacturing jobs in the USA & build the market for high quality recycled products.
Be part of the solution!Please check out our Garden Glass Mulch, Rubber Mulch, Plastic Post & Rail Fencing made from milk jugs and much more on our website.Don’t be afraid to try an alternative mulch this year ~ try glass mulch ~ it’s beautiful, lasts 1,000 years, the smaller size is even safe and comfortable to walk on barefoot!!
CLOSETHELOOP takes all major credit cards & paypal! Buy Your Recycled Products Here! |
Electric Car Returns Energy to the GridThis vehicle was developed by Willett Kempton, a renewable-energy professor at the University of Delaware, can hit 95 miles an hour and go 120 miles before charging. As impressive as those numbers are, the car's real benefit is that it's not just a user of energy. It's also a provider. The battery in this new breed of electric car can both give and receive, taking a charge and then, through the same electrical cord, sending some of its stored energy back to a hungry electricity grid, as needed. They touted the plug-in car as a way to reduce emissions that cause global warming, save customers money, and wean the U.S. off foreign oil. Better still, the car owners could be paid for the electricity they return, perhaps enough to earn back the cost of the car in a few years. Read more.PA Residents: Please contact your state representative to pass SENATE BILL 152 ~ to allow neighborhood electric vehicles on our roadways. Read the latest news article on this subject.
(from the National Recycling Coalition)
Good For Our Economy
American companies rely on recycling programs to provide the raw materials they need to make new products.
Recycling in the U.S. is a $236 billion a year industry. More than 56,000 recycling and reuse enterprises employ 1.1 million workers nationwide.
The average American discards seven and a half pounds of garbage every day. Most of this garbage goes into to landfills, where it's compacted and buried.
Recycling requires far less energy, uses fewer natural resources, and keeps waste from piling up in landfills.
Recycling offers significant energy savings over manufacturing with virgin materials. (Manufacturing with recycled aluminum cans uses 95% less energy.)
No one wants to live next door to a landfill. Recycling preserves existing landfill space.
In 2000, recycling of solid waste prevented the release of 32.9 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCE, the unit of measure for greenhouse gases) into the air.
Making goods from recycled materials generates far less water pollution than manufacturing from virgin materials.
Using recycled materials reduces the need to damage forests, wetlands, rivers and other places essential to wildlife.
Recycling and buying recycled products creates demand for more recycled products, decreasing waste and helping our economy. |
Are you eating GARBAGE? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch ~ 10 Million Square Miles large! ~ An estimated 3 ½ million tons of trash floating on the ocean. Birds & fish mistake the plastic for food. View the Good Morning America video.
The End is Near:Cradle-to-Cradle DesignProduct manufacturers worldwide have invested millions to improve the sustainability of their production processes. This end-of-life design approach is gaining popularity in many green organizations where designers are incorporating characteristics into new products that allow for easy recycling, repurposing and dismantling when their current usefulness ends. Read more.
Educational & Interactive Recycling Websites for Schools & Children and Ways to be Involved . . . The United States is the number one trash producing country in the world. On average, each American produces 1,609 pounds of trash each year. Read more.
Renaming OSW - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that, effective Jan. 18, the Office of Solid Waste (OSW) has been reorganized and renamed as the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR). Sounds better, don’t you think? We gotta work on the name SWAC (Solid Waste Advisory Committee)!
Green Prisons Farm, Recycle to Save Energy, Money Inmates of the minimum-security facility, 25 miles from Olympia, the state capital, raise bees, grow organic tomatoes and lettuce, compost 100 percent of food waste and even recycle shoe scraps that are made into playground turf. Read more.
Upcoming events: March 26-29 at the Columbia Mall in Bloomsburg, PA ~ the POWER TO SAVE expo.April 27-28th PA ReMaDe Expo 2009 – is a business and industry expo, in the heart of downtown Harrisburg, creating the only one-stop marketplace for recycled commodities and recycled content products. |
The Digital TV Transmission has been DELAYED until JUNE ~The House on Wednesday approved a bill to move the DTV transition from February 17 to June 12, by a vote of 264 to 158. Read more. For more information on what you need to know about DTV and what you can do with your old analog TV. Read more.Have you checked out www.hulu.com yet? Just watch TV on your computer! |
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Specials fromClose the Loop! PLASTIC FENCINGTaking orders now for the spring ’09 ~ Plastic post & rail fencing made from milk-jugs! Contact us! Check it out online: http://www.plasticfencing.us/ NEW PRODUCTS!Tire pots/planters made from retread tire scraps…really cool! Check it out! |
Inspirational Quotes
”What you are is God’s gift to you, what you make of yourself is your gift to God.” ~ Jewish Proverb“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” ~ Wayne Gretzky“To desire to be rich is to desire to have more than what we need to be content.” ~ Amish Saying |
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