Stories About Technology
Found 1125 stories. Page 45 of 57.
This Bio-Knit Shoe Will Be as Easy to Recycle as Plastic Bottles
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - A new shoe based on textile biomimicry promises easy recycling and soft, robust textures with a single heat-treated material and 3D printers.Designer Amno Liao from the Royal College of Art in London has created the Bio-Knit shoe, which is knitted on a 3-D knitting machine and then treated to harden its various parts. Heat is used to change the stiffness of the threads, so a semi-rigid heel and sock-like textures are produced from the same material. Creating a shoe without composites, as most footwear contains, will dramatically reduce recycling costs.
New AT&T Program Aims to Help California Drought, Support The Nature Conservancy
WASTE NOT - AT&T announced a new program today that will help California customers minimize a major source of water waste: leaks.Customers that sign up for AT&T Digital Life and add a Water Detection Package will receive alerts on their mobile devices when a sensor detects the presence of water in a designated area in their home. In addition, the AT&T Digital Life Water Control service not only detects water leaks, but allows users to shut off the water source remotely from their mobile phone or tablet.
Domtar Leads Pulp and Paper Industry in Self-Generated Energy
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - This week, Domtar Corporation released its 2015 Sustainability Report, highlighting its environmental leadership in fiber-based product production and its support of sustainable harvesting.Among its most notable accomplishments, the company self-generated 74 percent of the electricity used in its pulp and paper mills through cogeneration technologies and hydropower, outpacing the US pulp and paper industry average of 59 percent. Nearly two-thirds of this self-generated energy came from renewable fuel derived from its pulping chemical recovery process and from wood residuals left over from log debarking.
Tech Giants, NGOs, Warren Buffett Campaigning to Wipe Out Wildlife Trafficking
COLLABORATION - The uproar over the recent poaching and killing of Zimbabwe’s beloved Cecil the Lion has thrust wildlife hunting and trafficking back into the international spotlight.On the heels of President Obama’s recent visit to Kenya, he announced on July 31 the formation of the United States Wildlife Trafficking Alliance - a voluntary coalition of non-profit organizations, companies, foundations and media interests that will be working closely with the U.S. government in a collaboration to reduce the purchase and sale of illegal wildlife and wildlife products.
UK Trialing 'Electric Highways' That Will Wirelessly Charge EVs
CLEANTECH - Highways England and Under Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Jones MP announced today that off-road (test track) trials of technology needed to power electric and hybrid vehicles on England’s major roads are due to take place later this year.The trials are the first of their kind and will test how the technology would work safely and effectively on the country’s motorways and major A roads, allowing drivers of ultra-low emission vehicles to travel long distances without needing to stop and charge the car’s battery.
Startup Develops Solar-Powered ‘Smart’ Garden Watering System
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - Agriculture consumes close to 70 percent of water demand, but a significant 10 percent goes to domestic applications, such as maintaining lawns and other landscaping.Arguably, the best and most sustainable course of action is to let your lawn die and plant indigenous landscapes but, realistically, not everyone is going to do that. The next-best thing, however, would be to find a way to maintain non-native landscaping using as little water as possible.A company called Blue Marble hopes to help people do just that by leveraging Internet of Things technology to conserve water during domestic irrigation.
GE Says Predix Cloud Will Save Industrial Data, Analytics Operators Billions Annually
CLEANTECH - As a digital industrial company focused on answering the unique needs and scale of customers across aviation, energy, healthcare and transportation, GE has announced plans to enter the cloud services market with Predix Cloud. The world’s first and only cloud solution designed specifically for industrial data and analytics, this platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will capture and analyze the unique volume, velocity and variety of machine data within a highly secure, industrial-strength cloud environment.
16-Year-Old Scientist Finds Scalable Solution to Pharmaceutical Pollution in Water
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING - For many of us, our high school science fair likely involved creative experimentation that may have yielded one more baking soda and vinegar volcano. Not so for 16-year-old Maria Elena Grimmett, a student at the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Fla., who is already an accomplished scientist tackling serious water quality issues that threaten the health of rivers, streams and groundwater.
Nestlé Launches Global R&D Center to Balance Taste With Nutrition
LEADERSHIP - Nestlé has opened a $50 million global research center dedicated to transforming the way the world consumes frozen and chilled foods.Located in in Solon, Ohio, the new 144,000 square foot Nestlé Research & Development Center will balance consumer-centered innovation with technology leadership.Although the center’s mission is to sustain global needs, its location in Ohio reflects the growth in size and complexity of Nestlé’s frozen and chilled foods businesses in the United States. That growth made an expanded and collaborative research and development effort necessary, the company said.
CVS Health Taps IBM's Watson to Develop Care-Management Solutions for Chronic Disease
CLEANTECH - CVS Health and IBM have announced they will use predictive analytics and Watson cognitive computing to transform care management services for patients with chronic disease. The partnership will enable health care practitioners to use Watson to advance care management beyond programs and services typically available today.
Google Tests Air Pollution Monitoring With Street View Cars
CLEANTECH - Google and environmental sensor networks firm Aclima announced this week that they have partnered to map and better understand urban air quality.Three Google Street View cars equipped with Aclima’s mobile sensing platform took measurements of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) — air pollutants which can affect human health or climate change.
BASF, thinkstep Scaling Collaborative Approach to Sustainable Product Portfolios: Part 2
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING - At SB ’15 San Diego last month, chemical giant BASF and sustainability software and consulting company thinkstep announced their collaboration in making BASF’s Sustainable Solution SteeringTM method — for management of, and transition to, a sustainable product portfolio — available for wider use.
UPS Halfway to Driving 1 Billion Miles With Clean Fuel Fleet By 2017
NEW METRICS - UPS logged 154 million miles in 2014 toward its goal of driving 1 billion miles with its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet by the end of 2017 — an almost threefold increase from 2013, according to the company’s 13th annual Sustainability Report.To put this into perspective: it took 13 years for the company to drive the first 350 million miles with its alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet, but in just one year UPS was able to build dramatically on that number and is now more than halfway to its 2017 goal.
3D Printing: How the Personalized Power of Production Could Lead Us to a More Sustainable World
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - We live in an era of such dramatic, technology-enabled change that it’s hard, sometimes, to get a real handle on just how important the latest new platform or digital business trend will be.When it comes to 3D printing there is no longer any doubt. After all this is a technology that has been employed, on a specialist scale, within industry for decades. But, much like the way the modern personal computer grew out of, and disrupted, the mainframe computing industry, the advent of personal and portable 3D printers is set to radically change the world of manufacturing, fashion and even medicine.
Low-Cost, Energy-Efficient 'Rain Tunnel' Technology Creates Drinking Water from Moisture
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - A new technology from a Bangalore-based scientist promises a cost-effective way to deliver clean drinking water by harnessing moisture from the atmosphere. The patented ‘Rain Tunnel Technology’ has been integrated into a household plug-in machine that will be available for commercial use in the next two months, according to inventor Dr. Rajah Vijay Kumar, Chief Scientific Officer at the De Scalene Research Organization.
Startup ‘Democratizes’ Sustainability Reporting Software
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION - Sustainability reporting isn’t easy, and it’s rarely cheap. Large companies may have the finances and dedicated staffs to develop custom sustainability software, but small businesses often must make do without — relying on “old-school” technologies such as Excel spreadsheets.As one might imagine, this makes it difficult for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to practically track their sustainability performance.That’s why a company called Rapport created a cloud-based software platform that allows SMBs to more easily collect and track their own sustainability metrics, such as water usage or the number of commuter miles their employees drive each day.
TruValue Labs Expands ESG Monitoring to NYSE and NASDAQ
CLEANTECH - Information technology company TruValue Labs has announced a major update to Insight360, a technology-based platform offering real-time environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability data.The new release allows the tool to substantially increased its coverage, from the 500 largest companies to now over 5,000 publicly traded companies in the United States, representing all companies that are traded on the NYSE and NASDAQ exchanges.
US, Brazil Agree to Source 20% of Energy From Renewables by 2030
LEADERSHIP - At a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff committed Brazil to an agreement for both countries to obtain up to 20 percent of their electricity from renewable power by 2030, The Guardian reports.In an effort to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change, Brazil also committed to restoring close to 30 million acres (12 million hectares) of forest — an area the size of Pennsylvania.
Tech Startup Helping Costco Cut Water Use by 22%
CLEANTECH - As water-dependent companies seek to cut their usage and survive through punishing droughts, Costco is finding solutions with the help of the latest computing technologies – the cloud, data algorithms, wireless tech and low-cost sensors. Through a partnership with Washington-based startup Apana, the retail giant is employing innovative water-conservation technology to cut water use and generate significant cost savings.Costco first tested the Apana technology on several of its buildings in Mexico. After saving thousands of dollars at each facility, the company has now expanded its use of the technology to over 50 buildings in North America.
Tradeshift, EcoVadis Partner to Bring Reliable Supplier Sustainability Ratings to Global Platform
SUPPLY CHAIN - Tradeshift, the fastest-growing supplier collaboration platform, today announced its partnership with EcoVadis, creators of the first collaborative platform providing Supplier Sustainability Ratings for global supply chains. The partnership will give Tradeshift customers access to EcoVadis’ trusted supplier sustainability ratings to solve their supply chain CSR performance monitoring challenges and advance their Sustainable Procurement programs.
