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recycling

“Disposable body warmers” can actually be recycled! “I will donate” The revitalization business is a hot topic…What is it used for? Interview with the representative: J-CAST news[full text]

by Chief editor of world-today-news.com February 11, 2023

written by Chief editor of world-today-news.com

Efforts to recycle “disposable body warmers”, which are convenient for keeping warm easily, have attracted attention on Twitter.

On February 6, 2023, the J-CAST News editorial department interviewed Go Green Group (Osaka City), which collects disposable body warmers, about how they started their business.

Tomi Narihara’s manga that became a hot topic on SNS (1)
Tomi Narihara’s manga that became a hot topic on SNS (2)
Cairo is processed into water purification agent “GoGreenCube”
Dismantling work of disposable body warmers
Dismantling work of disposable body warmers

Contributing to water purification in ponds, etc.

The trigger that attracted attention was an essay manga posted on Twitter by manga artist Tonmi Narihara (@tonmi_n). She said that she donates the disposable body warmers that she used a lot during the winter to the Go Green Group, and she said that she is romantic about science and technology that the discarded body warmers can be used for other purposes.

In an interview, Narihara revealed that he became interested in the project a few years ago after seeing a tweet introducing a project to collect body warmers. She says that her motivation for drawing the manga was “Knowledge that there is such a project because Cairo is often used seasonally.” In the manga, he explained that when allergic cough asthma is severe, putting a warm pad between or slightly above the shoulder blades makes it feel more comfortable, but added that there is no medical evidence, so please judge at your own risk.

As of 15:00 on the 7th, the manga has been retweeted more than 16,000 times and received over 23,000 “likes”. It seems that there were quite a few people who felt that it would be a waste to dispose of the Cairo. was taken.

How are collected disposable body warmers recycled? Takashi Yamashita, CEO of the Go Green Group, explained to the interviewer that recycled body warmers are used as a water purification agent, and are used in ponds of temples and shrines, ponds of government offices, and moats of ancient tombs that are World Heritage Sites.

According to the official website, the body warmers will be processed into GoGreenCube, a water purification agent. When divalent iron ions contained in body warmers are eluted into water, they combine with hydrogen sulfide and phosphoric acid contained in sludge and become harmless. As a result, water quality is improved, and an ideal aquatic environment for aquatic organisms can be maintained.

Impressed by the research, “I can’t believe that using garbage can improve the environment…”

Mr. Yamashita got involved in the Cairo recycling business when he learned about the research of Professor Tsuyoshi Sasaki of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

Mr. Yamashita’s previous job was a convenience store owner. He said he felt guilty about food loss and other issues, and thought about what he could do for the global environment. Seeing a Chinese woman working part-time buy a large amount of Cairo as souvenirs from her hometown, she wondered, “What is Cairo in the first place?”

“When I was researching cairo on the Internet, I came across a study by the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, and was impressed, saying, ‘This is amazing! How can the environment be improved by using garbage?

Since the winter of 2018, the golf course has cooperated, and from January 2021, the general public has also collected body warmers. We are currently collecting them all over the country.

“We have not been able to ascertain all collection locations. Everyone is volunteering to collect Cairo. About 10,000 individuals, more than 100 schools, and more than 300 companies from Hokkaido to Okinawa. With your cooperation, we have collected nearly 100 tons of body warmers so far.”

Regarding being talked about on SNS this time, I am grateful, saying, “I feel very grateful.” It is said that many inquiries have been received. Regarding the future, he enthusiastically said, “There are still few places where water purification materials are used, so the challenge is to increase them.”

(Kyoko Takigawa, J-CAST News Editorial Department)

February 11, 2023 0 comments

Entertainment

Recycling through music, an initiative in favor of the environment

by Chief editor of world-today-news.com January 22, 2023

written by Chief editor of world-today-news.com

Another case of transformation occurs from Barranquilla with an independent initiative that seeks, through music, to promote cultural appropriation, as well as to generate environmental awareness through recycling.

The project, led by the musician William Martínezallows children, young people and adults to delve into the musical roots of the Colombian Caribbean using materials that have completed their useful life to give them a second use and build instruments with them.

It is about ‘Instruments for the world’, which was born two years ago through an application to the portfolio of stimuli of the Ministry of Culture.

“One of the requisite questions to present the project was how the musical ecosystem can be enriched, and looking at the society in which we find ourselves, I realized that there is not much in terms of recycling, access to instruments is very high and the general knowledge of the people in front of the autochthonous instruments is very poor. That’s when I saw how this proposal could answer these three questions and from that moment ‘Instruments for the world’ was born”, he recounted.

Boys and girls are part of the project who attend classes given by Martínez, in which they are taught the native instruments of the region, the importance of recycling and their subsequent construction.

“The musical ecosystem is made up of the social fabric and this has to heal in its different areas (…) all children are explorers by nature and somehow the advent of technology has stolen a bit of playing and experimenting. So this work with the children seeks not only to teach them about native instruments, but also for them to explore acoustics, sound, music and to generate their own instruments”, he said.

Las plastic and glass bottles, PVC pipesglasses, wood, boxes and other elements serve as inputs so that these little ones can create flutes, bagpipes, drums, guacharacas and other recyclable instruments.

“They are small classes and not all of them are theoretical. I gather the children and tell them about the sound. The first experiments they do are phones with disposable plastic cups and using other recyclable materials, they see that there are some that transmit vibration better than others”, said the musician, who added that from the first experience children stop seeing garbage as rubbish and they always look for ways to generate a sound and create instruments in everything they find.

A manual results from these classes with the type of instruments they chose, the materials they used, the scores they devised and the songs they created. “That material remains and serves as the basis for expanding the project to other places.”

“The most important thing about all this is that if you are aware not only of the region’s music, but also the importance of recycling, we did it, because we are educating people, making music and recycling. That already makes a change in society and that is what we are looking for with ‘Instruments for the world’”, she asserted.

Finally, he expressed his wish that the project could be financed by the State or the district or departmental administrations to offer schools free courses for students to create the instruments, recycle and disseminate the results of the investigations that have been made of endangered instruments.

January 22, 2023 0 comments

News

How to identify the weaknesses of recycled materials at the nanometric scale?

by Chief editor of world-today-news.com January 18, 2023

written by Chief editor of world-today-news.com

The Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble is equipped with a new tomographic atomic probe. Its objective, among other things, is to characterize defects in mixed metals during recycling, with unparalleled precision.

Recycling remains essential, but not always without consequences. Some materials, if they are poorly sorted and therefore end up mixing during recycling, are no longer as efficient as when they were first manufactured. The internal architecture of the material resulting from these involuntary mixtures is not always easy to determine, any more than the failures it generates in terms of properties. To avoid these pitfalls, researchers at the Science and Engineering of Materials and Processes laboratory (Simap) at the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (member of the Grenoble-Alpes University), are relying on a exceptional equipment : a state-of-the-art tomographic atomic probe.

On December 15, 2022, Grenoble INP-UGA announced the first french project acquisition of such a machine: a Leap 6000 XR ordered from the French company Cameca, a subsidiary of the American company Ametek, accompanied by the focused ion probe (or focus ion beam , FIB), to prepare the material samples to the desired size (i.e. a few tens of nanometers). The Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes Region financed this project, to the tune of 4.2 million euros, as part of its 2021-2027 State-Region plan contract (CEPR).

The Leap 6000 XR tomographic atomic probe.
© Cameca / Ametek

This probe, which is scheduled to be installed in May 2023, will be able to determine, in a few hours, the spatial distribution of ten hundred million atoms in a material. By combining electric pulses with laser pulses of the order of a femtosecond (i.e. a millionth of a billionth of a second), it applies an electric field to the surface of the material which tear off the atoms one one according to their chemical nature, explains Alexis Deschamps, professor at Simap and leader of this acquisition project. This operation makes it possible to know the position of each atom and to reconstruct in three dimensions their configuration in the material. It thus illustrates not only the exact composition of the latter but also, consequently, its faults.

Diagnosing Recycling Poisoning

Armed with this technology, Simap researchers will soon be able to continue and improve their work on characterizing the poisoning rate recycled metals – work already begun, for some, with the Materials Physics Group at the University of Rouen or the Max-Planck Institute in Germany. This notion of poisoninvoked by Alexis Deschamps, reveals the mechanical or thermal harmfulness of defects and impurities accumulated by metals, such as aluminium, iron and copper, mixed inadvertently during their sorting, then their recycling. Determining as finely as possible the structure of such materials will allow us, on the one hand, to identify the exact nature of this “poisoning” and, on the other hand, to evaluate the acceptable limits of these mixtures in terms of degradation. properties and performance. It is essential to act ensuite on recycling methods but also on the safe reuse of these materials.

If research on recycled metals seems to be a priority, the Grenoble researcher also aims to use this tomographic atomic probe for other purposes, in particular concerning the impact of hydrogen at the crystalline scale. The size of a proton, this element infiltrates everywhere, even into the structure of the metallic conduits that contain it.recalls Alexis Deschamps. To identify ways to improve their sustainability, we need to study the damage caused by hydrogen on the smallest possible scale.

Article published on January 18, 2023

January 18, 2023 0 comments

Business

Banks are asking companies, foundations and churches to contribute to money laundering investigations

by Chief editor of world-today-news.com December 27, 2022

written by Chief editor of world-today-news.com

ANNOUNCEMENTS•today, 06:00

Banks quickly introduced a new surcharge for business customers. Businesses, charities and churches, among others, now have to pay a monthly amount for the costs incurred by banks in monitoring money laundering and terrorist financing.

ABN Amro, ING and SNS have introduced the so-called “customer cost survey” in recent months. Rabobank will be the last major bank to start next week.

It means that associations, foundations and people with a BV see a few euros disappear from their account every month due to the expenses incurred by the banks. Someone with multiple accounts has to pay per account. This generates tens of millions of euros for the banks every year.

“In recent years we have seen that costs for banks have increased considerably,” says Helène Erftemeijer of the Dutch Banking Association. “13,000 people in banks are doing this customer survey. Now we can find these higher costs in customer bills as well.”

“Bizarre and ridiculous,” says a spokesman for VNO-NCW and MKB Nederland of the new levy. “Entrepreneurs are already suffering a lot from the banks’ anti-money laundering measures because they are stricter than they should be. And now the bill is also for the entrepreneurs”.

Even religious confessions complain about the costs, because they have to pay more than the foundations of some banks. “All the extra costs are too much for parishes, which must consist largely of voluntary contributions from church members,” said Roman Catholic Church spokeswoman Anna Kruse. “It is undesirable that churches, despite their value to society, should have to pay more, partly because of legislation that doesn’t really apply to them.”

I got a little angry, and that’s an understatement

Jacques Lansbergen with a pension bv

Persons who have their own pension managed and have set up a limited company for this purpose must also pay anti-money laundering checks monthly. Jacques Lansbergen of Berkel en Rodenrijs received a letter from Rabobank about the higher costs. He filed an objection. “I got a little angry and that’s an understatement,” says Lansbergen. “I have to pay almost 120 euros more a year to a company account that I only use for my retirement.”

“As a Dutch pension company, what do I do with money laundering? If a bank employee looks at my bank statement once a month, he will see a pension line on it. And then I have to pay for customer research “.

His objection was rejected. She is considering closing his account, but has now seen that other banks are also charging for these costs.

Identify

Helène Erftemeijer of the Dutch Banking Association says it makes sense that people with a BV pension would also pay extra. “We have to identify the client, verify the purpose and nature of the relationship and various risk factors. This includes the origin of the funds. There are many questions that need to be asked by banks and sometimes need to be repeated.”

Banks are calling for more flexible rules for sectors where money laundering risks are lower. “This way we can reduce costs and this in turn benefits the customer,” says Erftemeijer. The banks are talking to regulator De Nederlandsche Bank, among others, about ways to reduce check costs.

December 27, 2022 0 comments

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