What do you do with a ship that is considered to be out of date? Sell it to a Turkish company, over the internet, to be recycled into pots and pans.

Walmart generates tons of recyclable waste. So instead of sending it all to recycling plants, the retail giant has decided to divert some of it Worldwise, a sustainable pet products company.

60,000 pounds
Average amount of excess fabric, trims, buttons, zippers, thread, and the like produced at a midsize garment factory each week.

$18,000
What a rag sorter got for a pair of collectible Levi's at an auction in Paris.

11.9 million tons
The weight of textiles put into municipal solid-waste streams in 2007. Of that, just 16% was diverted to textile recycling facilities.

6.3%
The portion of municipal solid waste derived from textiles in 2008, up from 2% in 1960.

Upcycling paper into household products is simple enough. Turning newsprint, paper, and seed packets into red carpet-worthy gowns is a challenge even Project Runway contestants might find difficult. But that's exactly what "papier couturier" Linda Filley has done at Paper Trail, a paper shop in Rhinebeck, NY.

The Southern California architectural firm Marmol Radziner is upcycling waste materials from their prefab factory into pieces of jewelry.

Good news for anyone who has old records but no record player: you can make your own record player pretty easily--just add cardboard. Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay Productions (GGRP), a Vancouver-based sound design studio, exploited the idea in a direct mail marketing piece.

Don't like that office memo from the boss? Think the latest report to come across your desk is utter BS? Or do you just have way too much old paper lying around in recycling bins? The White Goat can save you. The shredder, developed by Oriental Co. Ltd, turns office paper into toilet paper. All users have to do is add water to the mix. The paper is turned into pulp, dissolved in water, dried, and rolled-up into a nice roll of toilet paper. 40 sheets of office paper will produce a single roll of toilet paper in approximately half an hour. Read More »