Monday
VR Adventure:
Nothing so far. We continue to run, and this time, take diet more seriously.
Food: 29 Weight Watchers Points
Weight: 190.3
Oh no. That is quite a setback.
Today’s Awesome:
I love the idea of recycling. It’s so dang hard to implement though. Can we ever get to a place where we just reuse 90 percent of the things we make? Let’s dive into recycling tech!
For starters, we’ve come a very long way.
Over time, recycling and composting rates have increased from just over 6 percent of MSW (municipal solid waste) generated in 1960 to about 10 percent in 1980, to 16 percent in 1990, to about 29 percent in 2000, and to about 35 percent in 2017. It decreased to 32.1 percent in 2018.
I believe we’ve had some setbacks since then, including stricter standards from people we were sending recycling to (i.e. China). Here is where the world stood in 2020.
For Your Consideration:
Tuesday
Food: 28
Weight: 189.0
Oofff, still going to be a while.
Today’s Awesome:
Here are a handful of cool recycling trends. RFID bins to help sorting, just less consuming because of entertainment in the metaverse (questionable as a recycling trend), and a new way to recycle plastics.
For Your Consideration:
Wednesday
Food: 29
Weight: 186.7
Ah, finally something more normal.
Today’s Awesome:
Of course, we’ve got robots trying to help the recycling process!
For Your Consideration:
Thursday
VR Adventure:
This is maybe audio VR? I went running outside while playing this audio game, Zombies, Run!
You collect things on your run, and at different intervals, you speed up when zombies chase you or else you lose things you collected. All the while a story is happening from time to time. People radio in and talk to you and exposit plot points. And you use the items you collect to build a base in the app. Pretty cool.
Food: 36
Weight: 186.0
Nice!
Today’s Awesome:
A less impressive self-driving garbage can, and the memes that ensue.
For Your Consideration:
Friday
Food: 37
Weight: 185.4
Yay!
Today’s Awesome:
For Your Consideration:
Saturday
Food: FAIL DAY
Weight: 187.6
Not the worst.
Today’s Awesome:
Backing up a bit, here is an article on the whole state of recycling and a bunch of general solutions, tech included.
For Your Consideration:
Sunday
Food: FAIL DAY
Weight: 185.4
Yay!
Today’s Awesome:
Just to highlight some of the awesome companies from that previous article, in the innovation section:
Oregon-based Agilyx breaks down hard-to-recycle and contaminated plastics to their molecular level; it can then be made into high-grade synthetic oils, chemicals and other plastics. The company says all the recycled plastic can be reused an infinite number of times.
A Seattle recycling service called Ridwell collects hard-to-discard items such as plastic wrap and bags, light bulbs and electronics, which Seattle no longer collects. For a fee of $10 to $14 a month, customers get a bi-weekly pickup of these items. Ridwell then distributes the items to other places for recycling, reuse or destruction. In 2019, the company diverted 170,000 pounds of waste from the landfill.
PureCycle Technologies has patented a process to remove the color, odor and contaminants from polypropylene plastic (used for bottle caps) and turn it into a “virgin-like resin.”
Until now, only one percent of polypropylene has been recycled, even though it is the second most common plastic in the world. It has mostly been recycled into black or gray products, such as benches or car parts, but once purified, it has the potential for many more applications.
Loop creates reusable and returnable packaging for consumer products. Items in the Loop store are shipped to buyers in containers for which they pay a deposit; when the containers are returned to Loop in the reusable shipping box, buyers receive a full refund. Carrefour grocery stores are using Loop in France, and Kroger’s and Walgreen’s in the U.S. will soon sign on.
For Your Consideration:
Bonus!
Outro:
I was really worried that all my bad eating the past few weeks since I got off track was going to decimate my progress. However, we went from 190.3 down to 185.4. Next week, the big question: can we get down to 184 and hit that coveted 20 pounds down?