If one your principles is "No to wasting paper materials", then you'll surely love this 3D printer. Mcor Technologies, one of the well known developers when it comes to three dimensional printer equipment, has unveiled a new model of 3D printer called the "Iris". Back in 2008, the Matrix 3D printer which was also developed by Mcor Technologies, created a buzz in the printing industry by creating 3D models made from a stack of regular old copier paper.

By unveiling a new model, new innovation comes along, with Iris, colors and variations are now brought into your creations. The mechanism from the original Matrix still remains, this new model slices and glues layer after layer of paper together to exquisitely build up a three dimensional model of an object. But like I've said, color is now introduce with the new model, through an additional process the final model will have a visible design and color.

What concerns me more is it's capability of using paper materials instead of plastic polymers in order to create three dimensional models. You see, paper waste is still a problem we should be concern of, the amount of paper materials we used is somewhat double the size of the paper products being produced. Not to mention that a huge percentage of these old and used papers are improperly disposed. Printed papers as an example are one of the great contributors of paper wastes, those newspapers, magazines, books, and all other sorts of paper material that are not being reused.

Paper recycling is a great activity, that helps reduce the amount of paper materials that end up in the landfills and incinerators. Also when practicing green printing, it's a good habit or rather a nice way to avoid printing copies of unnecessary files that you can still save as a soft copy. And don't forget to use eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges for your printer, not only to save money but also to help save the environment.
 
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It takes time, more likely about a year to collect tons of waste and debris from Mount Everest, but for the artists from Nepal, who have gathered enough trash specifically 1.5 tons from the mountain, it only took them about a month or two in order to turn these waste into wonderful art displays.

During the Saving Mount Everest Clean-Up Expedition, the amount of trash pulled from Mount Everest was used for the art and culture workshop and symposium on transforming trash into art works which was held at The Art Club Nepal, one of the art branch of Da Mind Tree. Since there are debris of all kinds, the artists had an array of choices to use as their medium. Some of the trash that were cited are broken tent poles, used cooking utensils and pots, containers of various sizes, oxygen tanks, and several debris of crashed helicopters and other aircraft.

The said workshop and symposium was themed "Journey Towards Our Future", it aims to promote the environmental awareness campaign of saving mountains from Nepal particularly Mount Everest and to uphold the value of waste materials through recycling and upcycling.

All the art pieces which are made by 15 artists from Nepal are displayed in Kathmandu. All in all, 75 sculptures were aesthetically created including a yak, wind chime, Hindu God Ganesh, and Buddhist prayer wheels that were made from empty oxygen cylinders. The yak sculpture was made to commemorate the efforts of the yaks to carry down the porters and trains filled with the collected waste from that 8.850 meter high mountain.

According to Republica, one of the English-language newspaper distributor in Nepal, the 15 artists from the symposium are collaborating in order to create one of the largest sculpture piece that will be displayed for the IMM-International Mountain Museum in Pokhara, Nepal.

In spite of all the efforts and several programs that promote and encourage people around the world to practice recycling, waste is still an issue that remain unresolved. Nepalese artists are hoping that through their sculptures, locals and people from different countries become more conscious of the situation we are facing about waste management. Recycling is a noble job, you can even make a living through reusing and upcycling used materials. As an example, remanufactured toner cartridges are made from recycled empty printer cartridges. If you would wonder, maybe the one who came up with this idea of recycling empty and used printer consumables is living wealthy and green right now.


 
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Since Microsoft released their newest OS the windows 8, most PC users are upgrading and switching to what is in trends or what is latest. It's quite normal besides who would want to be left behind by the hype, unless you've pack your personal computer with lots of stuffs, files and documents that you don't have enough of the time creating back ups. Or let's say you're the type of guy who can't easily let go of the stuffs and memories, then I guess it'll be a bit hard for you to step forward and upgrade your printer. But for geeks who have dedicated their lives on living in the most updated and most recent trend in technology, having the latest is simply just an achievement.

If you're familiar to upgrading then you might also know that switching to a higher version means that you also need to remove what's not appropriate and replace it with the one that's compatible to your new OS. But replacing several parts will give you a lot of old hardware and junk parts, leaving you blank of what to do with those. Perhaps you could consider recycling, instead of the first idea of throwing or disposing them, why not use all of that junks to create something you can use or display that you can be proud of yourself doing it.

Steven Rodrig, the Inventive and Environmentally conscious artist behind these array of magnificent PCB Art creations, shows everyone how to create fashionable displays by reusing old circuit boards. His ideas are truly superb, creating fancy sneakers, shoes, city miniatures, book covers, as well as figures of insects, animals and plants. E-waste are totally awesome in making chic and jaw dropping works of art.

From his creations, although there are sneakers and stilettos, I bet you can't even use them as a normal shoes to walk and flaunt around. But considering them as displays or use them for exhibits, I'm sure you'll make a hype. Aside from the fact that you made a magnificent piece of art out of e-waste, you also save the environment by excluding those junks from getting dumped on the landfills, which as we all know it, it will surely take hundreds of years before it degrades. PCB nowadays are made of laminates, copper-clad, resin (B-stage cloth), and copper foil, which just like plastic materials, they'll stay longer on our planet before degrading. Thus, recycling only proves it's worth, and that we should really practice reusing all the materials that can still be use just like those recycled eco-friendly toner cartridges.



 
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"E-waste like computer peripherals are such a nice thing to tinker. You'll find great ideas to create, art works to shape, and bring new life to these old but reusable stuffs. Technology has rapidly evolve in the recent years, it is undoubted that with these fast changes and innovations, the amount and type of waste accumulated every year greatly increased.

The more we introduce new products and inventions throughout the year, the more it adds up to the amount of waste from which we already had more than enough. One good solution that combats this issue is through recycling. Reusing and upcycling these e-wastes mainly computer parts  can somehow reduce our problem regarding waste.

Scraps of metals, as what others see it, but for Lee Woo, a mixed media artist, he created the cyborg sculpture series entitled "Boundless Body" through the use of these e-waste materials. Perhaps not all of us may notice the effects of technology on our daily system, or even in our body, but indeed there are these aftermaths. It's not only us that were affected by the growth of technology, even the environment suffer repercussions. Observing the crisis of identity in the virtual world, the artist imagines mechanical modifications on human-like forms comprised of recycled computer parts.

Lee Woo explained, “This sort of evolution, as it evokes biological mutations from a phenomenon of interbreeding that erases the distinction between human and animal, foresees new forms of life—born from the hybridization of gender and species—as a natural thing in this future’s cyborg society.

Like the artist behind this great work, we should also try to express our recycling ideas by creating wonderful art works and masterpieces that are made through the use of recycled materials. Aside from creating art, we could also make recycled items or consumables from which a lot of people will benefit from our creation. Like for example, product consumables from the market can still be recycled such as plastic and paper materials, if you're not that imaginative to express your recycling ideas, then why not develop products from these used materials that can be sell in the market as an alternative. An example of which are remanufactured toner cartridges and recycled ink cartridges, a good alternative for budget and quality wise consumers.

It's not necessary to have a creative mind in order to create wonderful works of art, remember that your mind has all the power and you just have to learn how to express it the way you wanted.

 
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Everyone loves to have a great cup of coffee every morning, to give us energy for the whole day, or just to warm up our body as the sun shines bright to an early day of work. From a cup of coffee members of the family gather, colleagues meet up, workers relax, and a lot of different groups of people really enjoy drinking coffee while having chit-chats. A coffee table isn't just a simple table where we sit and sip a drink, it's often considered as a spot from where we create better bonds with the people we love.

That's why a coffee table from where we often gather to have some drink, was reinvented or rather made futuristic by Benjamin Yates. An exquisitely designed coffee table with a futuristic looking cityscape, all made from used and worn out  electronic components. E-waste isn't just a junk at all, who would have thought that your old circuit boards can still be used to make a wonderful miniature of the city. A diminutive yet astonishingly amazing, decorated with LED lights to add sparks and glow on every streets, plus small human figures to make it more lively. It also contain VCRs that were unused, as well as digital frames that act as the billboard displaying commercial products. All these are housed inside a clear acrylic glass (perspex) arrange and constructed as a coffee table that displays the miniature city inside it.

The artist called it as Electri-Cities and he planned to redesigned it by adding a feature that can play music and let people plug it through the internet and enjoy checking emails and possibly web browsing. Futuristic as it may seem, but with the technology and artistic point of view we have, it only proves that  there's nothing impossible when it comes to science. Also with recycling, nothing is wasted with a bright mind that has the concerned for the environment.

E-waste has been a great problem from the recent years, and recycling has made a lot of solutions and contributions to diminishing these waste. Computer peripherals, printed circuit boards and other components that it composed, they can all be use to create a wonderful and futuristic art work, but a furniture would be much better. Recycling and upcycling have brought a lot of innovations, and products that nowadays, most of the consumers prefer more to purchase. Printer consumables are considered as e-waste, but with through recycling and producing eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges, consumers get an option to whether stick with the expensive brands or try the alternatives. Perhaps recycling can create more of what we can expect from it.


 
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Thanksgiving will soon be celebrated after a few more hours, with all the tasty meals and turkeys awaiting for all the guests and relatives to partake. But how about checking the menu, maybe there's something missing from the list, it can be a sweet desert, a warm appetizer, or it could be fish. You see, November 21, is the only day dedicated to celebrate and raise awareness about the significance of our world's fisheries through World Fisheries Day.

Before we raise our glasses for cheers and give thanks to everyone, let's try to give some of our spare time looking down on the factors why our fisheries are threaten. They always say too much is not healthy and so it applies with fishing, too much of it might lead to marine resources scarcity, fish habitats being destroyed, and the never ending plastic pollution that contaminates the coastal areas and coral reefs from where marine animals live.

Based from a study by the United Nations, they confirmed that 2/3 of the whole world fisheries have already been over-fished. The annual fish catch increased, based from the fish demands that consistently inclined from the recent years. Though it is ironic to believe that we need more fish to eat, yet we exterminate them with all the toxins and waste contamination that we throw on the rivers and oceans.

Would you believe that 90% of all the trash floating from the large bodies of water are mainly composed of plastic materials? SaveMyOceans affirmed that there's approximately 46,000 pieces of plastic materials that can be found per square mile in the ocean. These waste are often mistaken by fish as their food, it gets eaten by marine animals and what else could happened to them after digesting these toxins. Especially those small pieces of plastic garbage and containers that contain chemicals like printer cartridges. It's such a relief to know that these consumables can now be recycled and reuse to produce remanufactured toner cartridges or as we called it eco-friendly toner cartridges. Plastic wastes threaten the entire water bodies, thus we need to take further actions to these problems before it gets worse.

Let's all gather not only to celebrate and bring cheers to everyone, also let everyone participate not only with the happenings but also to an act for a good cause. Besides who else will benefit more if we succeed from saving the world's fisheries, it could be us and the next generations.

 
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Every year, we celebrate the World Fisheries Day during the 21st of November. It is a worldwide celebration that fisher-folk communities gather and commemorate this event through various programs, workshops, events, entertainment shows and exhibitions, all to highlight the significance of preserving the fisheries worldwide.

Global warming is just one of the factors why the abundance of our fisheries worldwide decline. Through celebrating World's Fisheries Day, we pay importance to all the factors that affects the water bodies found all over the world, as well as the whole community that thrives and survives through its sustainability. Water gives life in several ways, not only to the organisms and animals that lives in the water, but also to us humans. With that, it'll be more comprehensible that destroying all that is left, will only cause us more trouble.

Aquatic animals such as fish, somehow became a staple food for some local people who live nearby oceans and rivers. Water bodies also sustain jobs for the locals, that is why most of the settlements chose to situate on such areas where oceans, rivers and coast are in close proximity. Water also serves as a means of transportation, not only for small boats that fishermen use, but also for large cruise ships that travel all around the world to export and import goods.

But with the communities that reside near oceans, coastal pollution became more severe year after year. Industrial activities alone can extremely pollute large bodies of water, what more if we add all the waste that rivers and lakes carried out to the ocean. It can lead to the scarcity of fish supplies and all other marine forms from which fishermen find their source of income.

From large size trash down to the smallest ones which we improperly dumped causes water pollution. Recycling these materials instead of disposing them can greatly help on saving larger scales of water bodies. There are several ways and forms of recycling, some people are just too lazy to do it. But once you learned the benefits and good impacts of recycling, you'll certainly be using one of those recycled materials in the market, just like the eco-friendly toner cartridges, these consumables are inexpensive, quality tested and help the environment.

This coming November 21,2012, let's all gather and celebrate World Fisheries Day and outspread the facts and issues that should be address in order to create a proper solution on all these problems. Though we've been face to finding a rapid solution on the mounting amount of waste that we accumulate annually, in order to maintain the sustainability of aquatic resources we must move forward towards finding the right solution.

 
Sculpting and carving, two unique methods of creating art pieces. When both of these methods are applied on art recycling, what do you think will happen or rather produce?

Tires and truck wheels, both are too tough to consider as a medium of art, but for an artist the deeper and tougher the effort they applied, the more it pays off. Wim Delvoye, a Belgian artist and is one of the few artists who use tires to create art pieces. From his artwork he incorporated nature elements, such as flowers and vines, while maintaining the structure of the tires. This is to allow the viewers to be enchanted on the beauty of nature while keeping in mind that they're looking to a piece of industrial material. He doesn't even use any mechanical device to make this wonderful masterpiece, and as we all know tires are really tough to manually carve.

When you see a paper roll, the first thing that comes to your mind is to trash it, but that's not what an artist could possibly think of when he/she sees one. Yuken Teruya, a Japanese artist and the one that comes up with the idea of using paper rolls to create an artwork. With her masterpiece entitled "Corner Forest", these cardboard tubes will remind everyone of us that long before they were processed to be used as paper tubes, they're part of the forest from where trees and living things are harmoniously living. And these forests where all the living things dwell will soon be annihilated if we continue our use-once-and-destroy culture.

Who says sculptures can only be made with a single kind of material. Michelle Reader, an artist who made a lot of sculptured artworks from recycled materials since 1997. Her masterpieces were made from waste that comes from roadsides, city dumps, thrift shops, industrial and even from household. Michelle says, “I love the unpredictability of found materials and enjoy the inventiveness necessary to transform them into a sculpture, I try wherever possible to use materials that are reclaimed, things with a history that have been discarded and might otherwise end up in landfill.”

One of her famous artwork was known as the "Seven Wasted Men", made from household waste accumulated for about a month. According to her, each individual piece of waste tells the story of the one who discarded the trash, and it addresses the amount of waste each of us produces.

Whether that's an industrial waste, household waste, or even e-waste such as TV, radio, PC, keyboard, printer and all its consumables, they can all be reuse for a great purpose. Especially printer consumables, you see we've been complaining about the price of each cartridges we bought, but we never tried doing anything that can help reduce the production of expensive materials. Recycled consumables are totally inexpensive, just like remanufactured toner cartridges and ink cartridges that serves as a wise alternatives to all our printing needs and gives us great big savings.
 
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Every year, during the 15th of November, America Recycles Day is being celebrated from all parts of the US. To encourage recycling, that's one of its great purposes. Everyone from all walks of life and all ages can participate and join this event. We all know that just a single day wouldn't be enough to save our planet, to promote recycling and protect our environment. But it is this one single day from which everyone of us are gathered for a sole purpose, and that is to recycle.

Through this event, children of all ages are introduced to the green idea of recycling. Kids and young at hearts get their chance to be involved on various programs and activities about reusing, upcycling and conserving resources. But what else can we do to let our kids learn the importance and benefits of recycling? Simply provide them with books and other reading materials that focuses on reducing waste and pollution, as well as sustainability and conservation of our natural resources.

Just to help you, here's some of the books I've found that talks about recycling and other related contents that are truly interesting.

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
This book explains how the leaves grew on trees and that the paper we use both come from the same thing. So instead of raking those leaves up and wasting paper bags to throw them out, children can see what fun great objects can be created with these leaves. This is an excellent book to read in autumn and a perfect way to introduce the concept of recycling.

Recycle!: A Handbook for Kids by Gail Gibbons
Gibbons introduces a wonderful array of vocabulary for the reader, along with useful facts about various recyclable materials including paper, which kids use every day. This book is a great help in preparing children to recycle and places emphasis on reusing materials instead of throwing them away.

I Can Save the Earth!: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle by Alison Inches
This book is great for making children more aware of their daily actions, like how something as simple as turning off a light when leaving the room can conserve a load of energy. Children can read how important it is to respect the planet we live on and be inspired to collect—as well as recycle—items in their daily lives. The book itself is made from recycled material, so be sure to discuss that with your kids as well.

Green Crafts for Children: 35 Step-by-Step Projects Using Natural Recycled, and Found Materials by Emma Hardy
This book helps children see how the materials we use in our everyday lives can be used for crafts and awesome projects. The directions are simple and the materials are low cost; most are items you can find right in your home. The activities encourage children to search around the house and think about which items can really be put to use.

A sustainable future : saving & recycling resources by Louise Spilsbury
You can save the planet by Jacquie Wines.
Recycle this Book Edited by Dan Gutman

Aside from these useful books, you can let them get a hands-on experience how to do recycling which can always be fun for kids. Create a family bonding by doing some upcycling projects and crafts and let your kids get involve with it. Let them realize the importance of recycling and make them aware of the negative impacts of human waste and pollution. Also you should be a good example to your kids through green practices, like using eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges when printing.

If you can't afford to purchase some of the books listed above which you can find on Amazon online, try to find a free copy of them over the net and use your tablets to store it on your library. Or if you can make a copy by printing, use remanufactured toner cartridges or ink cartridges when printing to help save your budget and the environment.

 
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Rejoice, for today is America Recycles Day, the only holiday acknowledge and dedicated for all the recycling ideas, activities and efforts that we made and will be making for our country. This prestigious event encourages a lot of Americans, as well as promote recycling awareness throughout the United States.

Just a brief background of ARD, it was started by the recycling sector organization National Recycling Coalition in 1997, America Recycles Day has been a program of national nonprofit Keep America Beautiful since 2009. As the managing entity of America Recycles Day, Keep America Beautiful provides promotional and marketing support and resources to a network of local event organizers.

All big things come from small beginnings, if you think a single piece of junk, let's say a bottle or can of softdrink doesn't make much of a difference, then think again. Every single effort you made counts. Do you know for a fact, that recycling a glass bottle can save energy just enough to light a bulb for more than an hour, while recycling a soda can saves energy enough to operate a 100-Watt bulb for about a day.

This event leads to a lot of recycling opportunity which not everyone of us are fully paying attention. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), solid waste stream increases by 25% between the holidays of thanksgiving and new year holidays. While according to Earth911, the rate of recycling for aluminum cans jumped from 58.1% to 65.1% in the year of 2011. Based from the waste reduction report of Princeton University, a total of 41% of printer toner cartridges were recycled in fiscal year of 2011. Thus, sustainability for eco-friendly toner cartridges doesn't even meet half the number of printer consumables that has been manufactured.

Now's the time to get involved and be a part of this kind of celebration. If you haven't sign a pledge, then make a move right now, and encourage as much people as you can, take the pledge at ARD to recycle more. Join any event that your community organizers have arranged on celebrating the feast of recycling this year. For the list of events in your area, visit America Recycles Day event page, enter your Zip Code and check all the available events and recycling program available.

    Author

    Fiel Mori Promotes Eco Friendly stuffs and creating environment friendly articles for everyone @PrintGreen



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