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At London's Fashion Week, designer Rachel Friere unveiled a dress made of 3,000 cow nipples lovingly stitched together into evening wear. Unsurprisingly, this dress went over as well as you could expect a dress made out of 3,000 cow nipples to go over. More »
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What do you do with an oil platform after it has outlived its usefulness? You've got this giant structure, set up for people to live and work on it, and it's solidly sunk into the ocean floor. More »
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Coating concrete with residual ash from burning coal can make it strong enough to withstand hellish conditions — and save governments millions of dollars. Fly ash is an industrial byproduct from coal power plants, which used to be pumped into the atmosphere, but is now collected.

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An inventor in Japan is betting that you will. Akinori Ito has made the world's first home plastic recycling contraption. It takes commercial plastics, like bags and bottles, and burns them to generate oil. More work is needed to turn the oil into gasoline for a car, but it can be burned in heating systems or on stoves. More »
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For generations of kids in Britain (and elsewhere) Elisabeth Beresford's creations, the Wombles, were a palpable presence that you suspected were always burrowing just underfoot, waiting to put all our rubbish to good use. Beresford died last week, aged 84. More »
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For the Artissma International Art Fair last weekend, German design firm raumlabor built the House of Contamination, an indoor structure made of garbage and appliances. The village isn't built to last, but it resembles some post-apocalyptic dwelling out of WALL-E. More »
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A group of MIT students have found ways to turn shock absorbers into power generators. Salvaging energy wasted by others may be the modern small-business gold rush. Can you cash in? More »
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This amazing sculpture of horses emerging like ghosts from a wall is made entirely of junk plastic. In this gallery, you can see bits of dolls, wires, and discarded cooking utensils rescued from the trash and made into something alive. More »
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Those aren't missiles. They're actually used beverage containers, made of rubber, which these mid-century factory workers are recycling into devices for fighter pilots in World War II. More »
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Now you can use a microwave to transform old tires into energy. Here you see Jay Gill, an employee of New Jersey company Global Resource Corporation, doing just that using an awesomely homebrew-looking setup. The process is completely revolutionary, and the company has just announced it's about to get a ton of money to expand. But of course all we kept thinking about was how that gas chamber looked like a bong. Photos by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images. Energy from Tires [Minnesota Post-Bulletin] More »
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Alex Andromeda calls himself a science fiction artist who wants to connect the far future with the mystical past. He uses recycled computer parts to make lamps, sculptures, eyeglasses, and ancient Inca symbols. Here is just one of his amazing creations, a ceiling lamp made from old hard drive cases, called Spaceship Sirius. Another view after the jump. More »
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Plastic flip flop sandals discarded in the oceans off the coast of Asia have formed a new kind of fauna on the coast of Northern Kenya. So many sandals wash ashore that over the past decade locals have begun harvesting them, turning them into colorful toys, and selling them for more money than they could make from fishing, the area's former main industry. After a 2003 documentary, Flip Flotsam, called attention to Kenya's flip flop harvests, a small nonprofit called UniqEco began methodically helping locals ply their craft via the Flip Flop Recycling Project. More »
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