Misc Visuals

What Really Happens When You Recycle?

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Most of us do our best to recycle when we can. From cardboard boxes to plastic drink containers, doing our part to recycle reduces waste and helps protect our planet. Is what we’re doing enough to offset the impact of wasteful materials on the environment? And how does single-stream recycling really work?

The visualization below created by O.Berk outlines what happens after you put paper, plastic, aluminum, and steel in the recycling bin.

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what-happens-when-recycle-chartistry

The graphic utilizes a flow chart to visualize how different materials are recycled based on a single-stream recycling process, which is where recyclables of all different types are placed in the same bin and sorted later at the facility. There are a number of processes that help sort materials at the recycling center:

    • Rotary screen separators help to sort paper products by pushing them up to wheels with air. The paper products stay up while the heavier objects fall to another conveyor belt underneath.
    • Cross belt magnets attract steel and other iron-containing metals to separate them from the rest.
    • Air classifiers are fans that push light products (such as plastic and aluminum) towards a conveyor belt above. Glass products fall to a conveyor belt below where they are then recycled.
    • Eddy current separators are spinning drums that create magnetic field that helps magnetize aluminum and push it towards a conveyor belt.
    • Infrared sensors use light reflection to determine different types of plastics. Then, a puff of air helps push them onto the correct conveyor belt based on the number indicated on the product.

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Charts

How Many Crayola Crayon Colors Are There? A Lot.

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This may be the most colorful visualization of history we’ve ever seen! This chart shows every single color of Crayola crayon ever made. Given the company’s long history, that’s an impressive and long list of colors! Over the years they’ve made many special and limited editions sets of crayons, so you may not have realized that the company has made over 400 crayon colors. And yet, it’s true! Since the first set of crayons was made back in 1903 with a simple set of 8 colors, the company has become a childhood staple and experimented with all kinds of different colors, styles, and twists on the wax crayon. You can see it for yourself on the visualization:

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how-many-crayola-crayon-colors-chartistry

Scanning over these colors is a real trip down memory lane. Crayola doesn’t have all these colors in circulation anymore. You might remember glitter crayons from childhood or the neon set. Or what about scented crayons that smelled good enough to eat? Many people feel nostalgic over the smell of Crayola’s which comes from a substance called stearic acid, which is derived from beef fat. Unfortunately, you can’t buy every color in the graph fresh and new (though plenty of people sell them used for collectors.) Crayola does sell a huge set of 120 crayons for a well-rounded set of what they offer. Only the most avid collectors might experience all 400 colors, but we can come close with the colorful visual of the long history of Crayola!

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Misc Visuals

Everything the Luxury Giant LVMH Owns in One Chart

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Today I learned that LVMH is Louis Vuitton’s parent company. Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH for short) is a luxury goods conglomerate originally born from the merging of the very luxury goods that are its namesake. However, Moët, Hennessy, and Louis Vuitton are just the start. The company owns a multitude of luxury goods in a variety of different categories including fashion and leather goods, wines and spirits, perfume and cosmetics, retailers, watches and jewelry and more. This chart from LLC Attorney lists every luxurious brand under the LVMH umbrella in one gorgeous chart.

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LVMH’s chairman and CEO, Bernard Arnault, is the richest person in the world as of 2024 with a net worth of $223.4 billion at the time of this writing. In 1987, it was his idea to form the LVMH merger and he has been acquiring luxury brands from around the world ever since.

Their list of brands is beyond impressive. Nearly every name in the list is a world-renowned and well-known luxury brand. Christian Dior, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Fendi; the list reads like a who’s who of the luxury world. We were actually surprising to learn that some of these are owned by LVMH:

  • Fendi (Luxury goods and fashion)
  • Emilio Pucci (Fashion and leather goods)
  • Tiffany & Co. (Watches and jewelry)
  • Bulgari (Watches and jewelry)
  • Hennessy (Wines and spirits)
  • Dom Perignon (Wines and spirits)
  • Sephora (Perfume and cosmetics)
  • Fenty Beauty by Rihanna (Perfume and cosmetics)

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Misc Visuals

How 33 Colors Got Their Names

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As both a color lover and a word origins enthusiast, I was thrilled to discover this vibrant chart called “how colors got their names” while browsing r/coolguides! It was created by Adam Aleksic who goes by @etymologynerd on Instagram and etyomology_nerd on Twitter (I still refuse to call it X). He also has a website where provides an incredible interactive world map where you can learn about how any country got its name!

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how-colors-got-their-names-chartistry

This splashy guide caught my eye at first because it reminds me of how professional colored markers are displayed at craft stores. The name origin for crimson sparked some intrigue because it states that it is from a Persian word meaning “worm-colored” in reference to how it was made. Vermillion, another red hue, means “small worm” in Latin. So how were these pigments made originally? Turns out it has nothing to do with worms but rather a scale insect called Kermes vermilio. Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians, Greeks, Romans, and Iranians crushed the dried bodies of these insects into a richly pigmented red dye.

Here is a fun little nugget of trivia from the comment section by pshokoohi: “Fun fact, in Pharsi, when we refer to someone as “khaki” it generally means they’re “down to earth.”” The word Khaki traces to the Persian word khak, meaning “dusty” or “earth-colored”. I would absolutely love to see another guide like this with entirely different colors! Here are a few I got curious about:

Yellow: “The word yellow is from the Old English geolu, geolwe (oblique case), meaning “yellow, and yellowish”, derived from the Proto-Germanic word gelwaz “yellow”. It has the same Indo-European base, gel-, as the words gold and yell; gʰel- means both bright and gleaming, and to cry out.”

Green: “From Middle English grene, from Old English grēne, from Proto-West Germanic *grōnī, from Proto-Germanic *grōniz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- (“to grow”).”

Pink: “The color pink is named after the flowers, pinks,[7] flowering plants in the genus Dianthus, and derives from the frilled edge of the flowers. The verb “to pink” dates from the 14th century and means “to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern” (possibly from German picken, “to peck”).”

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