Aldous Hicks, CEO and Co-founder of ReCircle Recycling Ltd, predicts which products every new home will have in as little as 10 years.
One of the biggest threats to our planet is us humans. We mine and exploit resources. We burn coal, oil, gas and wood for energy. We throw plastic debris into the oceans and tear down forests.
We now know that changes are necessary. The question is: what and how?
Ultimately, we need a circular or ‘closed-loop’ economy, where the minimum amount of new materials is needed to make new products and existing products are reused and recycled indefinitely, if possible. The circular economy will decrease the amount of extracted and processed raw materials needed reducing per capita both the energy required and the damaging and costly emission produced.
I expect that the technology and devices that will facilitate necessary changes will increasingly make their way into people’s homes. Empowering individuals to take responsibility for their environmental impact will lead to a tipping point – a critical mass of people all individually delivering a new paradigm.
So, with that in mind, what eco-devices will we see entering homes over the next 10 years?
Energy
It’s estimated that 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. Cities will account for 80% of the increase in energy demand by 2030, according to research by LSE.
Fortunately, new storage batteries currently in development promise to unlock a variety of in-home energy production methods. Batteries will then store power at a locally and perhaps even distribute power across a community. But how will we generate the power?
New Wind Turbine Design
Wind turbines have proven contentious. Many argue that they spoil the natural habitat, create disruptive noise, and can be dangerous. Individual wind turbines for houses are safer and quieter, yet they often aren’t attractive and can’t generate all the required energy output.
New designs, however, could change this. For example, take the Liam F1 Urban Wind Turbine from Dutch tech firm, The Archimedes. The spiral design produced in a number of colours and shapes, resembles a big rotating flower. At 80% efficiency, it is a forerunner of the high-efficiency turbines of the future.
I expect new, high-efficiency wind turbines will play an important role in energy generation, even if they need to be supplemented with other energy generation devices.
Solar Tiles
Solar panels are constantly improving in efficiency and a number of companies are now developing solar tiles, such as Resilience Energy, which is a startup promising to cut energy bills by as much as 80%, and, notably, Tesla who are also producing the batteries capable of storing this renewable energy.
The tiles will form the roof of your house, collecting energy from the sun while looking attractive. They can be retrofitted onto any property with a roof. A drawback is the low energy production in less sunny countries.
Bio-fuel Synthesiser
Most modern bio-fuels rely on the basic principle: collect flammable gases and liquids from organic sources and burn them for energy. But burning anything is likely to lead to more CO2 emissions, which feels like a step in the wrong direction.
Fortunately, scientists are working with species of bacteria and algae to make the process cleaner.
Microorganisms can break down organic material and CO2, passing the energy straight into a battery. Food waste and human excrement will feed the machine, providing energy-free sewage treatment and no need for composting. What’s more, the gases released by food and human waste can be captured before it’s released into the atmosphere.
I anticipate that within the next 10 years, we’ll all have one of these biofuel synthesisers fitted to our toilet and waste disposal pipe, turning our organic waste into clean energy.
Recycling Appliances
Enabling a closed-loop economy means processing products and packaging back into their original form, or equivalent. The reason we can’t do this at the moment is the high cost and low-reliability of separating out different materials. As such, typically over 50% of what we put into the recycling bin is dumped in a landfill or the ocean.
However, if we can bring the guaranteed correct used-material separation and processing of products and packaging into the home, or place where the use-material is last used, then we can produce close to 100% pure materials ready to sell back to manufacturers.
ReCircle is currently working on a home and business appliance which will do just that. It will use a sensor to ensure different materials are never put together. Then the near-pure used-materials are washed, ground or compacted to contaminant-free sized-reduced pure products ready for storage. The pure close-loop recyclable products will then be collected on-demand from homes, when the storage containers are full. The pick-up service will be similar to the current Amazon styled home pickup service of returned goods. The products will be delivered straight to manufacturers to make back into products.
Using Materials in 3D Printer
While still in their infancy, 3D printers promise all kinds of efficiency savings as well as the construction of new energy-efficient products. Imagine being able to download a product blueprint and simply print it out. Such a system would reduce the energy needed to transport products to shops and homes, would reduce the industrial production of plastics to almost zero, and bring the responsibility of managing a product lifecycle into the hands of individuals.
What’s more, it may be possible to combine technologies like a recycling appliance and a 3D printer, ensuring that everything you print can be reprocessed into future ‘ink’ to make more products. Individual homes can instantly become closed-loop in themselves.
Progressing towards a closed-loop economy will require innovative, smart technology so individuals can see the advantages. For example, once there is domestic appliance recycling used-materials in the home, perhaps delivering a cash reward in addition to the convenience, time saving and environmental benefits, people’s attitudes to their used-materials will be the same as for their clothes; wash them and re-use them, again and again.
Within 10 years I expect we’ll be using these eco-friendly devices and helping us all to do more to protect our beautiful planet.
