Motorola’s new W233 is all green.

Not only is the plastic housing made out of recycled plastic water bottles that is 100% recyclable, but it is the first carbon neutral phone in the world (Motorola has pledged to offset the carbon dioxide used in manufacturing, distribution and operation of the phone by investing in renewable energy sources and reforestation); the size of the box has been reduced by 22% and the phone comes with a manual and other printed materials made from recycled paper.

Whilst PC World, still stuck in the consumer driven mindset of ‘new feature’ fixation, has declared it ‘boring’ and accuses Motorola of playing ‘the green card’, we’re suitably impressed… [msnbc.com] [pcworld.com]

Footprints have now officially closed (very unfortunately for those who recycle in the southern suburbs of Cape Town). No alternative premises have been found, and the city council has yet to step in with an alternative…(the mind boggles).

If, like us, you used to take your paper, tins, cardboard, plastic and other recycling to Footprints, you now have two options. You can hire someone to pick up your recycling (top 6 recycling collectors ) or you can take it to Oasis Association personally . Oasis is based in Claremont and Elsies River. You could also try Ladies Mile dump, as they have recycling facilities too, but we're not sure at the moment just what these are...

Oasis only takes plastic numbers 1 & 2. They do not take

This was an amazingly uplifting documentary to watch. A Convenient Truth is about a city in Brazil called Curitiba, which is one of the most livable cities in the world. They look at various aspects of the city and show how they made them not only environmentally friendly and people friendly but also without using much money. Their ideas have since been used in various cities around the world.

I won't go into great detail but here is summary of some of the things I remember. The public transport system uses buses, which have their own dedicated lanes. This results in a bus stopping at the bus stops every minute (in the CBD). It's the quickest way to get around so 60% of the people travel only by public transport. The municipality pays people who live in the favelas (like our townships) for their (separated into recyclable and non) refuse with bus tickets. This has resulted in the whole city being cleaned up by people collecting refuse to hand in for bus tickets. They also employ homeless people to sort the recyclables which are then compacted and sold. The money is used to pay the homeless people and provide them with education and training so that they can find proper employment.

We just received this in our inbox. The Glass Recycling Company is looking for a name for their new hero and I guess Super-glass-recycling-man is just not cutting it. They've apparently been running a competition and have now extended the deadline to 30 Nov to coincide with a radio campaign. R5000 is up for grabs.

The Glass Recycling Company’s intrepid new hero is without a name. So the company would like you, yes you, to give this little guy a name. A name that he can be proud of! A name that he can wear like a badge, as he travels to all four corners of our colourful country on his recycling assignments.

While the company has had an overwhelming response to its call for entries, with several hundred submissions received to date, the extension has been coupled with the launch of a radio campaign. It’s expected the radio coverage will give the competition greater exposure and potentially reach an even broader audience than originally targeted.

Guests take a look at 'Science Fiction' by Lucio LupacchiniFirst year Multimedia Design Students at the CityVarsity School of Media and Creative Arts have created artworks from waste to promote recycling. Ten sculptures have been created out of the recycling materials collected from Wellness Warehouse's recycling bins at their store at Kloof Streets Lifestyle Centre and are on display until 11 October.

The sculptures include a replica of Table Mountain, made out of glass bottles, a lamp shaped like a life-sized male torso which was made out of scrap plastic and a metal bird created by one of the female students who taught herself how to weld.

According to Karl Fedderke, Head of the Multimedia Design Department at CityVarsity, "students were tasked to create anything that they wished out of scrap materials with the main goal being to see what the Wellness Warehouse and its initiatives were about. The main outcome of the project was to open student's eyes about the importance of the 'green theme' as well as learning more about the recycling initiatives along with social responsibility. Students have also learnt that creativity isn't limited to resources."

You’ve made the decision to recycle, as part of your ruthless determination to save the planet, but you haven’t the time to drop it off at the local depot, or there isn’t one close enough to you to make it viable.

Help is at hand. In both Cape Town and Jo’burg there are now a few companies, with names like Abundance recycling, Clearer conscience and Whole Earth, who can make recycling that much simpler. They’ll pick up recycling at your home and make sure that it all goes to the right places, for a nominal monthly fee. Some of them also offer this service to the business and industrial sectors, so there’s little excuse for not recycling at work anymore.

It’s a win-win situation all round, particularly as most of these...

Are you thinking about recycling? Like many South Africans you may have decided to join the other avid recyclers out there, who sort their rubbish into paper, cardboard, tin, glass, and plastic – more or less 5 ways – unless you’re particularly rabid about the plastic (like someone I know) who then sorts the plastic at least 3 ways. And you probably, if you’re kind, wash everything out before having it picked up by your friendly recycle-collector, or dropping it off yourself?

But spare a thought for the residents of the little town of Kamikatsu - set in the densely wooded mountains of Shikoku island in south-west Japan, about 600 kilometres from Tokyo. The 2000 people who live in the town want to end their dependence on incineration and landfill by 2020, and lay claim to the title of Japan’s first zero-waste community...

According to a recent Nokia survey (6500 respondents, 13 countries) only 3% of cellphones are recycled and awareness that mobile phones can be recycled ranged from 80% in the UK to 17% in India.

According to Nokia, "up to 80% of any Nokia device is recyclable and precious materials within it can be reused to help make new products such as kitchen kettles, park benches, dental fillings or even saxophones and other metal musical instruments."

And if every Nokia user recycled just one unused phone at the end of its life, together we would save nearly 80,000 tonnes of raw materials.

Good news is that South Africa is included in Nokia's global recycling program which spans 85 countries and close to 5000 take-back sites.

Nokia has placed take-back bins in over 50 places around the country and devices collected in the bins will be forwarded to qualified recyclers for responsible reclaiming of the materials.

The campaign is not only calling for

The good news is that Pick n Pay is providing recycle bins for energy-saving light bulbs and rechargeable batteries. Philips, who have a recycling plant going up in Lesotho, have teamed up with Pick n Pay to recycle CFLs (compact fluorescent light bulbs). Without this facility, the mercury from these lamps would leach into landfill and our environment. Pick n Pay has teamed up with Uniross to recycle batteries, also responsible for leaching hazardous substances. You can now throw your rechargeable batteries into bins provided throughout Pick n Pay stores. Pick n Pay is mounting an awareness campaign to encourage people to buy rechargeable, as opposed to disposable, batteries – SA consumes some 50 million batteries a year, 95% of which are disposable.

No sooner do we write our green your recycling guide , then we read about a recycling bottleneck. Why? It appears that one of the country’s major glass recycling companies, Enviroglass, has stopped emptying bottle banks. They’ve decided to concentrate on recycling scrap metal rather than glass. Consol has estimated that there are about 1500 bottle banks across the country, mostly in Gauteng and

Recycling is the third component of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra – the “3R’s” of waste minimisation. Whilst this mantra has become commonplace, it is a cornerstone of saving our environment, and the recycling bit is the part we can easily get on top of.

Some experts have added “re-think” to the mix, questioning the entire manufacturing process and calling for a new approach. It’s also become fashionable for organisations to add their own R’s to the mantra, like replenish, renew, respect, responsible etc.

The obvious starting point however, is to reduce the amount we buy (we’ll have less to reuse and recycle), rather than avidly recycling. Finding constructive ways to reuse materials is next. Sorting and recycling is last.

But what is all the fuss about?

On paper, cans, glass & plastic:

• Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours