Regruntled.com

I was reading Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business.  Here’s how it works: Kraft Foods makes Capri Sun, many varieties of “juice drinks”, “flavored water beverages”, and  “100% juice”.  Things that can’t legally be advertised as “fruit juice” because they aren’t, but which can be advertised as “wholesome”, because, well, just because.  Kraft markets Capri Sun to kids, who pester their parents into buying the drinks.

The drink pouches are mixed plastic and metal foil, so they can’t be recycled as either plastic or metal.  Billions of these pouches end up in landfills every year.

TerraCycle organizes the kids into “drink pouch brigades” (I am not making this up).   and donates 2 cents to charity for each pouch sent in.  TerraCycle then remanufactures the pouches into things like pencil cases and messenger bags.  In other words, consumer products that can be marketed to kids!

Every year BILLIONS of drink pouches end up in dumpsters and landfills across America. TerraCycle, Capri Sun and Honest Kids are working together to put an end to this awful loss of resources. As an eco-friendly innovator, TerraCycle converts the used drink pouches into unique fashion bags, tote bags, pencil cases, and other items for kids and adults! TerraCycle is proud to team up with the largest producer of drink pouches in the country, Capri Sun, and a young organic entry into the market, Honest Kids, to help address this problem! Together with your help we CAN make a difference!

Meanwhile, there are at least two blindingly obvious design solutions to the landfill problem.  One is that Kraft, perhaps out of a sense of civic responsibility, could make recyclable or biodegradable containers.  OK, maybe that’s too preposterous, but there’s an even simpler solution: parents could buy half-gallon cartons of actual fruit juice and pour it into reusable, lunch-sized bottles.  Sure, it’s a lot of work, but, ounce for ounce, actual fruit juice in half-gallon cartons  is about half the price of individual servings of flavored water beverage. 

Playing with Genetica.

This is pretty cool. I was actually able to follow the instructions and make something that worked on the first try. I used 4-inch squares of paper and 2-inch packing tape, just about right.

It’s not clear from the video, but you end up with 6 tetrahedrons joined edge to edge in a circle, sort of an angular torus that turns inside out.  The faces of the tetrahedrons are colored so you see 6 same-colored faces at the same time, and the color changes as you turn the torus inside out.

This particular effect leaves a blurry mess at the center, so I cover it up with a seed pod.

An open seed pod gets a background from Paint.net’s “polar inversion” effect.

Starting with More digital crystals, I added a sixth color and switched to a hexad color harmony, with the six colors spaced around the color circle at 60-degree intervals.