Want more toilet paper in your office? Start shredding some paper!

How far can green innovation go? check out White Goat and you'll probably think the sky is the limit.



Here are some more details: At Eco-Products 2009, Oriental Co., Ltd. exhibited a revolutionary recycling machine called White Goat, which makes toilet paper from shredded paper. White Goat also has a shredding machine in it. The shredded paper first goes into a hopper, where it is untangled in small batches, and its then dissolved in a pulper. Any foreign matter is removed in a tank, and the pulp consistency is adjusted. Next, the wet paper is thinned out and dried. The dry paper is wound into finished toilet rolls, which emerge from the outlet one at a time. All of these tasks are done automatically.

This might not be the softest toilet paper you have tried, but it is still a revolutionary idea. I'm not how much water the White Goat needs for the process, but this is definitely an innovative thinking we need to see more of when it comes to paper!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!

Greenbottle - the green future of milk bottles is already here and its made of recycled paper

I really love milk, so I was very happy to hear about this new great idea that is coming from the UK: a milk bottle that is made mainly of recycled paper and can be recycled again. In one word: Greenbottle.

Greenbottle (http://www.greenbottle.com) has developed a much greener solution which can replace plastic milk bottles. The outer shell is made from recycled paper which can then be further recycled, or if left it will just decompose within a matter of weeks. The inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill, prevents liquid from contaminating the paper outer.

The GreenBottle, according to their website, consumes about a third of the energy required to make a plastic bottle and has a carbon footprint that is 48% lower than plastic.

The Telegraph reported last month that Asda, the big supermarkets chain, is stocking its Lowestoft store in Suffolk with the Greenbottle after a successful trial in a move that could herald the demise of the plastic bottle. According to the article the supermarket chain hopes to agree a roll-out of the packaging to stores across the east of England, with the potential to take it nationwide further down the line. Sounds like great news to all the UK green milk lovers!

Just to give you an idea what this bottle can save - according to the article, Britons drink around 180 million pints of milk every week, of which around two-thirds is bought in plastic bottles.
More than 100,000 tons end up in landfill each year - equal to 260 jumbo jets. They take 500 years to decompose.

One last fact that made me fall in love with Greenbottle - Its inventor, Martin Myerscough, came up with the idea in the pub. You can never be wrong with such ideas :-) of course, later on he worked on it for 18 months before Asda started a 'concept' trial last year.

Kudos to Martin and Greenbottle. This is the kind of innovation we need to move the green revolution forward. I hope to see these bottles very soon on the shelves of the supermarkets here in the U.S. (and actually everywhere) as well.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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