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The Weird, The Strange, and The Green

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February 27, 2012

I have talked about numerous ways that you can green up your driving, green up your workplace, and green up your cleaning routine – now I want to talk about some of the “crazy” ways to go green. I recently read an article from EcoFriend on the Seven Most Weird Ways to Go Green and it got me thinking … So I searched and found my top 5 strangest ways to go green.

Environmentally Friendly Bombs

Yes you heard me correctly, we have now found a way to blow someone to smithereens in an Eco-friendly manner. Live Science explains for me:

TNT, RDX and other explosives commonly used in military and industrial applications often generate toxic gases upon detonation that pollute the environment. Moreover, the explosives themselves are toxic and can find their way into the environment due to incomplete detonation and as unexploded ordnance. They are also extremely dangerous to handle, as they are highly sensitive to physical shock, such as hard impacts and electric sparks.

To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do.

Tiny bombs were made from two promising tetrazoles with the alphabet-soup names of HBT and G2ZT. These materials proved less apt to explode accidentally than conventional explosives.

Okay, so we are removing the toxic gases released upon detonation so they don’t pollute the environment. This is definitely on the tops of my list of very strange “Eco-friendly” products. Now if only they could create a bomb that didn’t blow up the environment. I guess the environment that remains after the bomb will appreciate less fallout. Why don’t these same scientists work on a bomb that kills with kindness? Any takers?

Reusing Shedding Cat Hair

This is actually kind of a neat idea. I use the word neat loosely because it is also disturbing on many levels. There is a woman who owns a cat grooming facility. She was very ingenious and found a way to spin cat hair into a usable yarn. She then proceeded to use the yarn to make a variety of products such as purses. She surprised her clients with purses made of their cat’s hair she had removed during grooming. She said her clients were both surprised and excited to receive the gifts. This takes reducing waste to a whole new level. My personal favorite part about her products is the chosen tag line – Shed Happens. I guess if you have cat allergies you should steer clear of these bag, ladies.

The Biodegradable Cell Phone

The Je-Hyun Kim designed Natural Year Phone is made to naturally fall apart and biodegrade in about two years. How is this so? It is made out of hay and other biodegradable materials. Sans the keys and screen, the entire phone is made of essentially hay. After your phone literally falls apart in your hands, you can then take the screen and keyboard to a recycling facility.

Eco-Coffins

Even in death, an Eco-conscience and Mother Nature loving person can keep the process going. Ecoffins are  Fair Trade certified products made of renewable sources such as bamboo, banana, willow, and even cardboard. The coffins are hand crafted and detailed in a Fair Trade certified facility in China. For those that choose cremation, there are also hand-woven urns available for their remains. If you lived your life in an environmentally-friendly manner I see no reason to leave it in any other way. Though it is not traditional and a little strange, it is beautiful in many regards.

Poo Poo Paper

There is a company cleverly called PooPooPaper that literally turns poop into paper products. This is no joke. This company actually has a process that is capable of reusing old elephant, donkey, panda, cow, horse, or other veggie eating animal poo into paper. The process is pretty interesting, so here it is straight from the elephant’s mouth (well actually the other end).

Here’s the scoop about our poop:  elephants, horses, cows, donkeys, pandas and otheranimals eat large amounts of fibrous vegetation everyday.  They also have relatively inefficient digestive systems which means that when they poo (it’s not gross since these animals don’t eat meat, fish, cheese and other stinky things) it’s filled with lots of intact fiber.  Well, this fiber makes for great pulp for paper making and that’s where we come in.

We rinse and boil the poop to a pulp and bolster with about 15% other natural waste fibers that are seasonally available such as banana stock fiber, corn husk etc. and boil the pulp mixture.   To color POOPOOPAPER™ we use natural and edible food coloring mixtures.  We then make both raw sheets and rolls of paper from which we craft hundreds of different POOPOOPAPER™ products.  Go figure! —poopoopaper.com

For the record in case you were worried about the gross factor of your poopoopaper. Poopoopaper claims to take the “oo” out of poo, so that is refreshing.

So there is the scoop. These are my top five strange, weird, and surprisingly green new products and initiatives. Would you consider using any of these products to green up your household.

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