Here’s an idea so cool and eco-futuristic that it looks like it must be a hoax. Because of the explosion of cell phone users and the maddening upgrade cycle for new features, there has been a problem with the number of old phones being dumped into landfills. An R&D company contracted by Motorola has come up with a creative solution: turn the phones into flowers. That’s right, when you’ve had enough of the phone, you can dig a shallow grave for it. The phone will biodegrade, and a seed implanted in the faceplate will sprout into a beautiful sunflower. As CNN.com reports:
Pvaxx Research & Development…has come up with a polymer that looks like any other plastic, but which degrades into soil when discarded. Researchers at the University of Warwick in Britain then helped to develop a phone cover that contains a sunflower seed, which will feed on the nitrates that are formed when the polyvinylalcohol polymer cover turns to waste.
[Read the full article]
So, I guess if CNN said it, it must be true. It definitely gets my vote as coolest technology of the year.
I hate to be a killjoy, but how about all the electronic components inside that biodegradable polymer cover?
Hmmm, maybe that’s in the phase 2 spec…
oh my, i fully expect sara’s mother to stand by me, as a fellow gardener, and say that the chances of that sunflower growing are probably about, oh, i don’t know, 0%. in a lab setting, perhaps. with a person who must plant the darn thing properly (what would that be?) in their home garden? 0%. in a landfill? 0%. that concept is the same garbage (sorry) as reading about any product touting its biodegradability — which then gets thrown into a no-oxygen, no sun, no elements environment in a landfill. live on!
cool concept, though. it appeals to my inner-hippie. may their efforts yield fields of sunflowers gracing inner city wastelands. peace.
Thanks, Diane. I had an “A-HA” moment. I never heard her called ‘the inner hippie’, but I have one too!