Slat Boyan, a 19-year-old student, has revealed his plans to design a clearing mechanism that can remove 7,250,000 tonnes of plastic waste from oceans all over the world.

His device consists of a network of booms and floating processing platforms that can be placed near patches of waste all over the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would act as a giant floating funnel going through the patch. The angle of the booms would force the plastic towards the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.

One of the ways of identifying a product is certainly by its packaging. Attractive packaging can be as important as the product it contains. Take a look at some bizarre packaging conjured up by some really creative designers.  Be inspired!

Paper water bottles, salt and pepper pots shaped like batteries, a tequila gun, packets of tea hanging on clothes hangers or egg boxes that are also puzzles are just a few of the weird packaging shown here.

The man dreams and the work is born. Chris Gilmour shows it is possible to build anything you like. You just have to want to. Paris (shown), London and Berlin have already been built by this British artist using just cardboard boxes and glue.

According to Gilmour, the biggest challenge was placing a city’s most emblematic monuments in the right place so as to give a sense of depth and an idea of the true size of buildings.

The replica of London, his latest creation, took two days to complete and is about 12 metres across.

This machine transforms office paper into toilet paper. Forty sheets are needed to make one roll. Could this be the future of paper recycling?

The machine, affectionately known as the White Goat, removes staples, shreds the paper, mixes it with water, smoothes the pulp, dries it and rolls it to make toilet paper.

On the negative side, it weighs over half a tonne and is almost two metres tall. To pay for itself it would need to make 200 000 rolls of paper, which means running for 11 years.

This photograph simulates the Paris nightscape if you could remove the light pollution that blankets the skies over big cities.

French photographer Thierry Cohen created the series, called Darkened Cities. The trick is to take a photo of the sky at exactly the same latitude as the chosen city, but in a less populated region, with the camera at exactly the same angle, to create photographs that could never be taken in real life.

Vancouver is planning to be the world’s greenest city by 2020. To help it achieve that aim, Canadians are starting to pave the city’s streets with recycled plastic mixed with tar. This new material melts at a lower temperature, meaning that it is produced using 20% less fuel, which is clearly an environmental plus.