It’s recycling day, time to take the empty bottles to… where we already are.
Where I live, I will soon be taking all the empty bottles and cans and old papers in the house and putting them out on the curb for the recycling truck.
We’ve seen some discouraging reports lately about how much of the recycling we put out there actually gets recycled, but for now it’s the best I can do.
Which is why a report from the site designboom caught my eye: there’s apparently a project to create a system to recycle your recycling at home.
It’s called Lasso, and the concept is that the machine will clean and then break down glass, plastic and metal into the rawest forms possible, the tiny bits that companies buying recycled material are looking for.
And because it scans each item before breakdown, Lasso is supposed to be able to keep the different types of recyclable plastic apart from each other, too.
Users would be able to send their raw materials back out about once a month and would get money back for doing the recycling work that’s normally done further down the chain.
The company is still in the development phase; you can’t buy one of these just yet.
And users will have to decide whether they want to do the extra work – not to mention take on the extra energy and water use – to do recycling at home.
But if a lot of what we hope to recycle isn’t actually being recycled, maybe recycling becomes one of those things that if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself?
And if technology is making our homes greener, maybe it can also bring the other colors to where we live.
When I was growing up I’d always see TV ads for “starving artists” paintings, selling art for your walls at affordable prices.
Here’s the modern high-tech version of that: AI Art House is selling old-school looking paintings that are designed by software that scans classic works and then tries to emulate the style.
Lasso Is A Robot That Will Recycle Your Recycling At Home (designboom)
Adorn Your Walls With AI-Generated Art (UrbanDaddy)
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Sign/sculpture photo by Matt Gibson via Flickr/Creative Commons