PRESS RELEASE -
By: Nicole AndersonThrough technology, we’re able to deliver educational content to more people, in more places, no matter their background. With new tools emerging every day, it’s an exciting time to be involved in this field and to work for a tech company that is helping to transform education.Through AT&T Aspire, we’ve committed $350 million to help students succeed in school and beyond. And we are always looking for new ways to engage our network, employees and collaborators to improve learning.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Having racked up over 10,000 deliveries and 30,000 members in its Scandinavian motherland since its 2013 launch, Norwegian social delivery service Nimber is set to plug a sustainability gap in the UK delivery sector, making use of unused capacity by using real people who are going somewhere anyway to make deliveries.The company estimates that to date its service has helped cut carbon emissions by 198.24 tonnes through the use of existing capacity to bring and send items to individuals and businesses.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Rapidly falling costs and clear benefits have led to a sharp increase in the number and scale of light-emitting diode (LED) and smart streetlight projects in the past year, according to a new study published today by Northeast Group.There currently are more than 2,000 LED and smart streetlight projects globally. By 2025, cities around the world will invest $64 billion in LED and “smart” streetlights.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Aquion Energy, Inc., developer and manufacturer of Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI™) batteries and energy-storage systems, has announced that its AHI S20 and S20-P Product Lines are the first batteries in the world to be Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Certified™ Bronze. The product lines were evaluated by MBDC, creators of the Cradle to Cradle Certified Products Program, across five quality categories.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
When Airbnb and Uber burst on the scene a few years ago the business world was abuzz with the potential for a new “sharing economy.”Advocates explained how these services would provide people with new ways of making money by utilizing their homes and vehicles to their full potential, while offering a service that could save energy, reduce waste and bring communities together by sharing their resources and time.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
With Earth Day this week, it’s a great time to reflect on the challenges we face and the advancements we’ve made. Last week, Microsoft released a whitepaper describing the progress made with our carbon fee since its inception in the hope to inspire other organizations to take similar action.
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Christopher Hall, AVP- Product Marketing, AT&T Mobility
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
With California suffering one of its most dire water shortages on record, the Golden State’s political leaders are scrambling to find solutions to shore up an ever-diminishing supply of this precious resource. Some analysts suggest California only has about one year’s reserve of water left within its reservoirs.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Apple has announced plans to invest in a new Chinese solar power project and help preserve some 36,000 acres of forests in the eastern United States.The tech giant is partnering with solar company SunPower to build two solar power projects totaling 40 megawatts (MW) in China — more than the amount of energy consumed by Apple’s 19 corporate offices and 21 retail stores in China and Hong Kong.The projects are expected to provide up to 80 million kilowatt-hours per year while also protecting the ecosystem. They will feature SunPower's "light-on-land" approach to solar photovoltaic power plant design and construction, which allows pasture farming to continue while power is generated.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Driven by consumer demands, and greater concern for resource scarcity and productivity, more companies are tracking and reporting performance in an effort to meet corporate sustainability goals. But once the low-hanging fruit is picked, further improvements can require sophisticated tools, such as emerging big data and geospatial analytics, to help companies make more informed decisions about sustainability goals, according to a new report from Lux Research.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
On April 24, the first annual Risk and Value Creation Forum, a finance innovation conference focused on evolving the concept of risk (as a key constraint in achieving sustainability goals), new risk frameworks, and biomimetic technology innovation as a sustainable value creation opportunity (at the startup and public company level), will take place in Mountain View, CA.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
This week, JetBlue Airways announced it is once again partnering with the Carbonfund.org Foundation to offset the carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (CO2e) generated by all scheduled flights from April 1 to April 30, in honor of Earth Month. Now in its eighth year, this partnership has allowed travelers to offset part of the carbon footprint from their flights by making a donation to support carbon-reduction projects. To date, JetBlue says it has purchased offsets totaling more than 350 million pounds (158,000 metric tons) of CO2 and CO2e emissions.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Today, Wells Fargo announced its selection of four clean technology startups for the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a five-year, $10 million program to foster leading-edge environmental technologies. The program is funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This marks the first philanthropy program of its kind within the financial services industry.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
A new report released today from Arizona State University indicates that the development of online education programs can be a significant component of an institution’s sustainability strategy, based on greater socioeconomic impact for a smaller environmental footprint per degree.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
New York City-based tech startup Project Exergy is one step closer to developing a technology capable of heating smart homes using computers, following a successful crowdfunding campaign.The concept involves transferring the computation done in data centers into millions of home and office computers and putting the normally wasted heat to use through a liquid cooling system that can efficiently extract and thermally store the high-temperature heat.
PRESS RELEASE -
By: Susan DiegelmanThe Second in a Series About Machine-to-Machine Technology and Water Management.Lake Mead provides up to 90 percent of Las Vegas’ water and experts estimate that since 2000, an ongoing drought robbed the lake of 4 trillion gallons of water. With 584,000 residents and millions of tourists each year, the Las Vegas Valley Water District brought its distribution system into the 21st century; it had to. A fragile combination of groundwater, water reuse systems, and desalination and banking systems make meeting the daily water needs of Las Vegas possible. For Las Vegas, every drop counts.
PRESS RELEASE -
Atlanta, March 26, 2015Program with UNHCR enables faster and more accurate distribution of supplies to refugee campsThe UPS Foundation, the philanthropic arm of UPS (NYSE: UPS), today announced the launch of the UPS Relief Link program to help improve the lives of displaced refugees around the world through optimized distribution and tracking of critical supplies in crisis-affected areas.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
A lightbulb with lower energy emissions, longer lifetime and lower manufacturing costs, and made with graphene — said to be the first commercially viable consumer product using the super-strong form of carbon — is poised to hit the market this year, thanks to a University of Manchester research and innovation partnership.The bulb’s developers — a Canadian-financed company called Graphene Lighting — expect the dimmable bulb to use 10 percent less energy than conventional bulbs, last longer and be priced lower than some LEDs, at roughly $20 each. It was designed at the University of Manchester, where the revolutionary material was discovered. The University’s National Graphene Institute was opened this month.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
If you doubt the mainstreaming of mindfulness, look no further than a key session at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, called Mindfulness Meditation.It’s a new era, where technology can directly measure and influence our moods, attitudes and behavior, which when woven together into a societal tapestry, could be a Trojan Horse for a more sustainable ethos.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
A common misconception regarding fiber-reinforced plastics is that the material’s performance cannot be predicted, as with steel or aluminum. But BASF says its ULTRASIM® performance-prediction technology routinely delivers 90-95 percent accuracy when predicting the performance of parts molded using BASF materials, creating new opportunities for lightweighting products while minimizing design and development costs.Using sophisticated material characterization methods and analysis techniques, the company says the tool now enables designers and engineers to account for the influence of the injection molding process of a thermoplastic and study: