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The P&P Office Waste Paper Processor’s name is not misleading.

By wrapping paper around a piece of led inside of the machine while fixing it with glue.

The P&P Office Waste Paper Processor’s name is not misleading. Insert old memos or notes and take out a pencil. How it works? By wrapping paper around a piece of led inside of the machine while fixing it with glue. It is real time recycling in action. Searching online I could not find a place that sells it. Designed by Chengzhu Ruan, Yuanyuan Liu, Xinwei Yuan & Chao Chen, the P&P Office Waste Paper Processor has won a Lite-On award. The Lite-On award, as stated on it’s own site

“Hopes to inspire a “Green Ocean” strategy, inspiring designers to tread lightly on the earth, co-existence with nature, and revitalize technology through ecological awareness. The Lite-On Award invites designers to get back to the basics. Let’s think about how to breath new life into our products through green thinking.” (Lite-On)

The Waste Paper Processor definitely encompasses that kind of thinking. I hope that the Processor, and technology like it, is accessible to a larger consumer base in the near future.

It is real time recycling in action.

Sources:

http://www.liteonaward.com/en/theme.aspx

http://inventorspot.com/articles/want_save_paper_pp_office_waste_processor_will_pencil_you

http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/09/15/paper-to-pencil-just-like-that/

Does this man look like he is serving hard time in jail? For the inmates at Bastoey, it is much more like a summer camp than a prison.

Imagine being locked in a small 8 x 8 foot cell. Your bunk occupies up half of the space, and your cellmate doesn’t like you. Dailey, you are allowed to go outside for 2 hours and are served three meals a day. You are forced to follow colored lines on the ground to your every destination. Any variation from this pattern is justification for guards to get into your face and make your situation even more miserable (if that is possible). After just weeks, any sane person would begin to go insane and resort to a more primitive stage, prone to aggression and out lashes of violence. Unfortunately we are not really putting sane people in prison. Rather, our jails host criminals, the outliers of society, ones expelled from the rest of the population. Someone who already has been raised with a lack of humanity can only get worse in confinement.

The environment is not the only thing that has ecology. The study of human ecology shows how humans interact with their surroundings. In the situation described above, the human environment only makes hard-core criminals harder. Locked up together, they are forced to demand respect with fist and shank*. Inmates in a typical prison have few responsibilities and are treated hardly better than animals (certainly worse than my dog).

In fact, in most prisons, there are special places for the worst of the worst. These rooms have many different names including: the hole, the box, isolation, solitary confinement, the choky or the white room. They are simply chambers to lock up inmates and cut them off from interaction with other people. While these may be the safest places for crooks it is proven that isolation can create a psychological imbalance, in other words, insanity. While in the Hole, inmates may experience hallucinations and voices as the brain attempts to compensate for lack of stimulation. The criminals, especially those who go into the Hole, are the last people you want going insane.

This kind of thinking has spurred a new kind of prison. Bastoey is an eco-prison, which incorporates environmental respect, responsibility and cooperation in an effort to stimulate rehabilitation. Inmates are not confined to cells, but houses. Houses are heated by wood fires not oil. All of the features requiring electricity at Bastoey are fed by renewable energy. Bastoey has a strict recycling policy.

Bastoey has a strict recycling policy.

“At Bastoey, inmates can study, seek counseling, play tennis, have their own TV and swim in the waters around the island.” (MSNBC)

“Is Bastoey the place for you?” This is the question all inmates must answer to request a transfer to Bastoey. It is a prison with no bars, fences or even cells. At Bastoey inmates care for lush organic gardens without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. In this way, the creators of Bastoey hope that “living in an environment that gives them [inmates] individual responsibility, challenges and demands … can motivate inmates to change their behavior,” Oeyvind Alnaes states, as well as.. “Our job is to create the best possible development opportunities for the individual, and lay the foundation for possible changes.” (MSNBC)

Murderers and rapists care for “200 chickens, eight horses, 40 sheep and 20 cows,” and are able to go fishing on the prison’s 30-foot boat (Associated Press). One inmate had killed his parents with a chainsaw and was allowed at Bastoey to work in the forest with a chainsaw.

Bastoey is located on an Island 11 miles off the shore of Norway. Unlike Alcatraz, inmates at Bastoey do not attempt to escape, for if they do they will go back to prison and not the ecological kind. For the inmates at Bastoey, it is much more like a summer camp than a prison. The only question that remains is; does this rehabilitation work?