Zero Waste News: Second-hand IKEA and Extracting Copper from Toxic Wastewater
State of Waste News
Hello!
We’ve gathered all the exciting news from the past two weeks about the state of waste to present you with our favorite stories and innovations:
The world’s first second-hand IKEA store opens in Sweden
Earlier this month, IKEA opened their first second-hand furniture store stocked with used furniture returned by customers in exchange for a discount voucher and items that have been damaged and repaired. The first of its kind store in Eskilstuna, Sweden, is located in the ReTuna Shopping Centre, where all products sold are reused or recycled. The store aims to inspire people to buy reused and repaired furniture as part of the chains push towards a circular economy.
We love this kind of initiative from a major brand like IKEA and we love that we’re seeing more and more people move towards sustainable lifestyles, circular economies, and a widespread reduction in waste of all kinds.
Booming second-hand clothing sales could help curb the sustainability crisis in fashion
While IKEA helps to pave the way for second-hand furniture, websites like Poshmark and Tradesey are turning the tide on fast fashion in favor of buying and selling second-hand quality clothing and accessories.
The fast fashion industry is a major contributor to global waste with millions of tons of clothes sent to landfills each year when they are not bought or when they have been worn once or twice and discarded. Attitudes towards second-hand clothing are shifting, in no small part due to sites like Poshmark and Tradesey. Studies project that “while fast fashion is expected to continue to grow 20% in the next 10 years, second-hand fashion is poised to grow 185%” – just imagine how much waste that will divert from landfill!
ZIOS – The New Material that Extracts Copper from Toxic Wastewater
The ever-increasing human population places unprecedented demands on water supplies, while simultaneously increasing water pollution every day. Large scale water pollution occurs from human activities like mining and agriculture every day.
Copper in wastewater is associated with disease and organ failure in humans and animals. Recovering and treating the polluted water is a costly and complicated exercise but a team of scientists at Berkely has come up with a new technology that can ‘mine’ copper from contaminated wastewater 30-50 times more efficiently than the best methods we currently have. ZIOS (zinc imidazole salicylaldoxime) is a new material that targets and traps copper ions, specifically, which allows for their removal without removing other metals from the water.
A New Filter for the Removal of Heavy Metals and Radioactive Materials from Contaminated Water
In another breakthrough innovation, scientists have discovered a new method for producing ‘sodium titanate mats’ that are structured like seaweed, to filter heavy metal ions and radioactive materials out of contaminated water more efficiently. This innovation may lead to less expensive and more effective methods for filtering water that is currently unusable due to contamination with hazardous heavy metals or radioactive fallout.
That’s all for this week – we hope that our selection of stories will leave you hopeful that we can and will turn around the damage our waste and pollution do to the planet and that we leave you inspired to support second-hand as we head into the festive season!
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Liza & Johanna