Your home is full of technological miracles, devices that your ancestors would have regarded as near magic because of the life of relative ease they provide us with. However, something is changing. In the past, we got richer by owning more stuff; but in the future, we will have more by owning...

If you're the kind of person who carefully sorts out your recyclables from your trash, cleans it, and puts it out in the blue bin for pickup, you probably don't realize that as much as 90% of that material either just ends up in a landfill or, worse, is dumped into the ocean. Indeed, much of the...