3D-Printed With Ocean Plastic: The Running Shoe Making Big Strides

A group of scientists from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute have compiled the world’s first ever comprehensive database containing information on the location and environmental effects of litter in our oceans. Their findings are published on Litterbase, available in both German and English, and complete with easily comprehensible maps, charts and infographics. 

Pollution cycle: every time you wash your laundry, synthetic fabrics shed tiny particles of plastic which end up in waterways. The recyclable laundry bag “Guppy Friend” could prevent this from ever happening again.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. And in this particular case, that couldn't be more true. In the middle of a forest, on an island off the coast of Panama, an entirely new kind of village is springing up, with each house made of tens of thousands of recycled plastic bottles. 

Thanks to 3D printed turtle eggs with GPS trackers, researchers can follow the trafficking routes of poachers who steal eggs from turtle nests.

For the majority of amputees worldwide, a prosthesis is not an option. For people with disabilities, particularly those living in developing countries, the limits to what they can achieve in life can be insurmountable.

There are an estimated 30 million waste pickers globally, trying to make a living in very harsh conditions, ultimately providing an important waste management service for very little in return. How can their work be more fairly valued so that it can continue to bring both environmental and social benefits to all? This social enterprise has been working it out.

Plastic is practical - but it's also more or less indestructible, environmentally unsustainable and generally all round a bit of a problem. One Japanese inventor has come up with a unique way to tackle the world's ever-growing plastic waste mountains, developing a machine that converts discarded plastic back into oil.

Protoprint uses recycled plastic to construct filament for 3D printing. The best part? It provides a stream of income to the urban poor by sourcing the plastic direct from waste pickers at a fair price.