Terra Kind Cleaning Service

02/02/2024

04/22/2022

party like its your EARTH day, all year long!
and then clean up after yourselves of course. Or you can call us & we can do a spring cleaning to celebrate!

03/21/2022

Be like this man…

03/01/2022

MINING RARE EARTH ELEMENTS FROM TRASH
The world’s increasingly electronic and green economy rests on 17 metals known as rare earths, which are becoming increasingly scarce, especially since political turmoil has slowed production out of Myanmar, the world’s third-largest exporter.

Since 2020, the price of the lithium carbonate used to make batteries for everything from smartphones to smart cars has shot up more than 400 percent. The cost of praseodymium, essential for the magnets in electric motors for electric vehicles and wind turbines, has almost doubled, and terbium oxide, needed for LED lights and lasers, is more than 75 percent more expensive.

Rare earths aren’t actually rare; all 17 are more abundant than gold. The metals are just difficult to extract and purify: they tend to be widely scattered in small deposits and often are mixed in with radioactive materials, meaning the water used to mine and process them has to be disposed of in special and costly ways.

China now dominates the world’s rare earths market.

Chemists at Rice University have come to the rescue by finding a new source of these critical materials: trash.

A few years ago, engineers there developed a special heating process to turn coal, coke, and any kind of waste carbon into graphene, those sheets of carbon one atom thick that have been found to be not only the world’s strongest material, but also excellent conductors of heat and electricity.

Now the same lab has applied its heating process to recover rare earths from coal ash, electronic waste, and residue left over from processing bauxite into aluminum.

Conventional processes to reclaim valuable materials from these wastes involves a time-consuming process of soaking them in strong acids, creating a slurry of toxic waste.

In contrast, the Rice process flash-heats the wastes to 3,000° C, or more than 5,400° F, in a second, turning them into easily dissolvable compounds that need 150 times less acid to extract twice the amount of good stuff from the same amount of trash as the old way can.

TRENDPOST: The process means that no industrialized country needs to be entirely dependent on foreign sources or environmentally damaging processes to boost their supplies of rare earths.

This easier, faster way of reclaiming rare earths will be adopted quickly. Rice already is commercializing its heating process for making graphene; little adaptation is needed to apply it to the millions of tons of coal ash, bauxite residue, and discarded computers and smartphones the U.S. alone creates each year.

, TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE, feb 22 2022

09/19/2021

here are some tips for using bon ami around the home:

kitchen & bath
Hard kitchen & bath surfaces such as sinks, tubs, tile, pots & pans, cookware, bakeware, utensils, most countertops, faucets, chrome, and coffee pots: Wet surface. Sprinkle on Bon Ami. Rub with wet sponge or cloth. Rinse.

Delicate kitchen & bath surfaces like fiberglass, polished or glossy surfaces, imitation marble & plastic: Always test first in an inconspicuous area, then sprinkle Bon Ami onto a wet sponge, use plenty of water, rub gently, and rinse.

garage & outdoors
Wet surface. Sprinkle on Bon Ami. Rub with wet sponge or cloth. Rinse.

patio furniture
Always test first in an inconspicuous area, then sprinkle Bon Ami onto a wet sponge, use plenty of water, rub gently, and rinse.

02/26/2021

H**p houses low-impact, fireproof, termite-proof and cost-effective, says couple

When Alexia Jankowski and her partner Ben Whitaker decided to build a low-impact house in the hills, they turned to h**p — and say they hope one day their "very alternative building product" will be seen as mainstream.

The Western Australian couple hand built the three-bedroom home on a five-acre bush block in Kronkup, 30 kilometres west of Albany.

They say h**p, a plant product, has been used in numerous countries as a building material for thousands of years but it is relatively uncommon in Australia.

Ms Jankowski, an environmental scientist, said their goal was to build a house that was as low impact on the environment as possible.

"[H**p] is an amazing insulator, it's fireproof, termite-proof and it also absorbs water vapour, so you don't get mould or dampness building up in your house," she said.

"Over the life of a building, it actually gets stronger. It feels like it turns into stone."

The couple's home is also solar passive, with its windows, walls and floors designed to collect, store, reflect and distribute solar energy in the form of heat during winter months and deflect heat in summer.

Couple gets hands-on with build
Most of the couple's h**p came from leftovers at the Denmark DecoVillage community housing project.

The h**p was mixed with lime and water to form h**pcrete blocks, which were then used to make the walls of the house.

Margaret River builder Brendan Kelly put down the slab and erected the timber frame, the h**p walls and the roof. Ms Jankowski and Mr Whitaker did the rest.

"When it was the middle of winter, camping in the cold and compacting sand for the fifth week in a row, we definitely questioned whether it was worth it," Ms Jankowski said.

"But standing here now, enjoying the views and seeing everything we designed and imagined coming to fruition, it was definitely worth it."

A budget-friendly choice
For a building constructed from natural materials, the h**p house is surprisingly minimalist and modern in design.

A polished concrete floor is adorned with rainbow stones, shells and even s***m whale teeth to add unique character.

The internal walls have been left as exposed h**p, featuring cross sections of marri tree limbs.

"People might think of h**p as a very alternative building product, but it doesn't have to be like that," Ms Jankowski said.

"It can be a budget-friendly choice to have a house that is really modern looking ... It's not just hippy."

H**p to become 'cheaper'
Ms Jankowski said the total cost of the build was about $300,000, which put it in the ballpark of conventional building products like double brick.

However, she acknowledged they had reduced the cost by building much of the home themselves.

"If anyone is exploring the idea of using an alternative building product they should definitely look into it [h**p]," she said.

"There are a lot of builders exploring doing h**p in panels that can speed up the process and make the labour less intensive.

"Every year there's more people building h**p houses and I'm sure it will only get cheaper and more accessible."

By Tom Edwards 9/02/2021

05/07/2020

Build a cob house for roughly $200...sounds fun!

Ancient building technique known as cob uses natural materials

04/22/2020

Earth day 2000 launched Terra Kind Cleaning service and has successfully maintained its commitment of providing an 🌏 earth-friendly solution to safely clean your home or business without compromising your health! 🙏 A big thank you to all of you who have supported us or continue to use our service! Your our biggest fan!