In an earlier post, I commented on how Japanese children at the school where I worked were taught to pitch in with recycling. But I failed to mention a rather strange counterpoint, emblematic of that country's bewildering contradictions: One day a horrific smell wafted over the campus. I went outside to investigate, and discovered that a farmer in the lot adjacent to the school was burning an enormous pile of tires. The wind carried the vile, black smoke all over the school and the playing grounds. I asked a teacher about this and he shrugged. "There is no place to put them," he said.
I've since learned tires can of course be re-molded and re-treaded. But I had no idea how labor- and energy-intensive it was until I saw this video. Those of you who are into molding will enjoy seeing how the mold comes apart/together around 3:15. I also dug watching how they remove the flashing, and that inflatable thingy that serves as the mold's core:
The amount of man-hours that goes into each tire, not to mention the one-hour-plus molding time, is staggering. But what I found most surprising was that despite all of that energy burned, re-molding is still 30 to 60% cheaper than creating the tire from scratch.
Remember that crazy CO2 Scraper Concept? It called for a towering structure filled with trees, to scrub the surrounding air of carbon dioxide. Well, it turns out there's a very common manmade material that, with the right tweak, could serve a similar function and literally kill pollution. The material? Cement.Smog-eating...
This Wood Species series comes to us from guest writer Rob Wilkey, an Atlanta-based woodworker and industrial designer whose expertise is in small home goods, furniture, and large installations.* * ...
An Olympic gold medal is already a difficult, rare item to attain. And next year, winter Olympians will have an opportunity to win a gold medal that's even more rare. Come February, the seven finalists standing on the tallest part of the podium in Sochi, Russia will be awarded medals...
In Part 1, we covered materials and hardware. In Part 2, we covered tools. In Part 3, we showed you how to set those tools up for webbing. In Part 4, you learned the crucial Box X stitch.Now it's time to put it all together and create your own projects. To demonstrate a...
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