How glass is recycled

I have been gone from this blog for a very, very long time, but I am back to show you this very awesome video. For a while now, I have been badly wanting to make a documentary of sorts about our recycling system. I thought of trying to work with my school-town’s waste management program, which seemed very helpful in the past when I made slideshow,  and follow their every move. From the time someone brought their trash to the curb to the recycling plants (Which depending on the type of recyclable, it could be taken by truck to places on the other side of the US. Yeah, the recycling system, I’ve learned, is very inefficient) and then I would follow the unrecycled trash to landfill. My dream is to someday make this journey a reality on film, but people are so touchy about their trash. Their ashamed and disgusted by it, so they hide. But the huge lengths we go to hide the trash also hides the problem and makes people so blind and unaware they need to do something to change their ways. All this, plus it’s even illegal to take pictures at a landfill, so I figured I should wait until I’m done with school with a clean plate and hopefully some more video experience before trying to tackle this project.

Now this little video is awesome to me because it shows part of the journey I wish document, but also because the market for recycled glass is microscopic. Most recycling programs don’t accept glass and if they do, it might still end up in the landfill, which sucks because glass NEVER EVER, not in a million years, decomposes. But I’m sure the market is small because it takes so much energy to melt down the glass, but this video gives me hope they can come up with an efficient system and it’s just plain cool.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/67692057″>Secrets From The Recycling Plant: How A Used Bottle Becomes A New Bottle</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user3572793″>Planet Money</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Garden Stepping Stones DIY

I do believe this will be my last garden related post for the time being. Sooner or later I’ll put photos of my mom’s garden up, but I probably won’t do that until next week.

Things you need:

Molds (one bag makes 13 or so 8×8 molds, so however many you want to make)

Sand Topped Quickcrete

A Bucket to mix in- we started out with a paint bucket and moved to a wheel barrel. (Make sure if you use something that you’ll need again to wash it out.

Something to mix with- we used with a shovel. (Again, make sure you wash this)

Creative medium- we used everything from glass to marbles to rocks to plastic. Most of the glass was broken at a thrift store so they gave it to us. The marble were given to us by a friend. Some rocks came from our yard or another friend. We did buy a couple of glass and plastic pieces from a thrift store, but we didn’t buy anything new. Don’t use metal, it will eventually rust.

If you decide that you want to make the patio you’ll need:

Sand-for our 10×10 block we need 20 bags of sand

Gravel-10 bags

Select an area, however big you want it. Mark it off and dig down four inches. Make sure that the area is as level as possible. Add your bags of gravel. They should be about one inch deep. Then add a few bags of sand. We needed 16. Lay out your stepping stones. Then cover the stones with sand. Take a broom (one that you don’t care if it gets ruined) and move the sand in between all the cracks. This is pretty hard work, so be prepared. Every few sweeps, spray it down with water. When it’s pretty spread out, you can continue to spray the sand in between the cracks.

Cheerio’s.

Melody and Harmony’s stone.

In the beginning we each did our own stones with our names and hand prints in them. The family unit would have, of course, not been complete with out the cats stones. You can’t see them very well because rocks have filled the holes, but their paw prints are in theirs, too. This one is Mr. T and Mystique’s.

Some of these have no rhyme or reason, but they are all beautiful in their own way. None are left plain, but not all of them have color. Some have indentions.

I really like that tree.

I like this group too.

That wanna-be spiral with a blob as a head was supposed to be my first snail. Obviously it didn’t turn out well.

There is a lot of colors and patterns that I like. After the first 10×10 block, we started running out of ideas so one weekend when our family visited us, we enlisted their help. Some of these throughout the pictures are there. The grapes in the right middle was made my grandma. She’s a creative genius. It’s too bad I wasn’t passed some of these genes.

Most of our stones are kind of random, but we did attempt to make some pictures. In the front row, the white with a blue clump in the middle I made. It’s supposed to be an eyeball. The purple spiral with a green head is also mine and it was supposed to a snail. The one to the right of the eyeball is a tree. I don’t remember who made that, but it sure is cute.

Step 4- Step 3 completed. Now just add which ever creative materials you wish. The world is your oyster! Let the concrete set in the molds for a week. After that week take them out. Wait another week before putting any weight on them.

Step 3- Shovel a couple of scoops into your mold and tap the mold so that the concrete smooths out. When it is completely smooth it should almost fill up the mold.

Step 2- Keep interchanging between adding water and mixing. You want it to be mushy, but not soupy.

Step 1- One bag of concrete makes 13 8×8 stepping stones. We got our molds from Hobby Lobby and some from the internet. I’ve also heard that you can use pizza boxs. Just reinforce the inside corners with tape and spray pam all over the inside so that the concrete will come out. Slowly mix water in with the dry mix. Keep mixing until there isn’t any dry left.