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Karma chameleon
Made from 75% recycled glass,
Karma is Trend GB’s most eco-
friendly mosaic tile. The hand-cut
transparent tile is the basis for the
company’s Liberty, Metropolis and
Subway patterns, as well as being
a range in its own right. It comes
in a choice of 40 saturated colours
and a range of tile formats up to
4cm x 8cm (or 48cm x 96cm on
request). Inspired by the stained
glass windows of Gothic cathedrals,
Karma has a slight unevenness of
colour that produces an irregular
flame effect. It costs from £206 per
square metre.
Turning back the
clock
EnduranceWind Power says its
new turbine design is so much
more efficient than other
models that it will enable
farmers, landowners, small
businesses and community groups
to generate returns equivalent to
those available under the 2012
Feed-in Tariffs. It points out that
the 35% jump in productivity more
than compensates for the 30%
drop in Feed-in Tariffs over the last
18 months. The greater efficiency
of the new 85kW E4660 wind
turbine also improves generation
at lower wind speeds, making wind
power viable in more areas.
Chop and change
Chop-Cloc received a ‘Highly
Commended’ commendation
in the Innovation of the
Year category at the 2014
BusinessGreen Leaders Awards.
The retro-fit home heating
device saves users an average of
16% on home heating bills by
inserting 15-45 minute ‘chops’
into heating cycles. The ‘chops’
make no difference to comfort
but significantly reduce energy
consumption, in some cases by
as much as 30%, The Chopping
Company says that Chop-Cloc
pays for itself within a year,
delivering an average saving of
£120 per annum.Westminster’s
leading housing provider, CityWest
Homes, has pledged to fit a
Chop-Cloc with every new boiler
installed on its estates over the
next year in an attempt to reduce
residents’ heating bills. CityWest
Homes manages over 21,000
properties across Westminster.
Recyclable paper coffee cup
Green Your Cup is claimed to be the world’s first easily recyclable paper
coffee cup. Paper coffee cups are 95% cardboard (non-recycled under
EU rules) but they also have a polyethylene lining to stop the cardboard
from getting soggy. In conventional cups, the plastic lining is bonded so
tightly to the cardboard that special equipment is needed to separate
the two. As a result, almost all recycling plants send paper cups – 2.5
billion are disposed of in the UK every year – straight to landfill. Green
Your Cup is different. Its polyethylene lining is designed to come away
easily during the recycling process, enabling the cardboard to be recycled
into newsprint up to seven times. Martin Myerscough, chief executive of
3Boys Limited, which developed Green Your Cup and is now looking for
partners to commercialise it, said: “People will be shocked to find out that
the paper cups they use rarely get recycled – it is a scandal! We hope that
Green Your Cup will become standard in the booming coffee industry so
that we can put an end to this shocking environmental shame.”
Cartridge recycling without the fuss
Print solutions provider
Automated Systems Ltd (ASL)
has introduced a vendor-
neutral toner cartridge recycling
scheme. The ASL Green Cartridge
Scheme provides customers
with a free recycling bin for the
collection of all used printer
toner cartridges regardless of
make or model.When the bin
is full, the customer just need
to make a call and the bin will
be collected and an empty one
put in its place. ASL managing
director Mark Garius said:
“We were looking to avoid the
‘6 different bins’ syndrome
that causes friction in the
treatment of waste recycling.
Each manufacturer has different
or sometimes non-existent
recycling schemes. Our goal was
to have one simple solution that
deals with all cartridges used
by a customer, regardless of
the machine they come from.”
Based in Cambridge, ASL has
offices in the Midlands, London
and Milton Keynes and 5,000
customers across the UK.
