FINANCE & INVESTMENT -
The Ethical Markets Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS), which tracks private investments growing the green economy worldwide since 2007, found $4.1 trillion invested or committed as of Q4 2012, promising long strides away from the fossil-fueled Industrial Era in 2013.
ICT AND BIG DATA -
Salesforce, a company that pioneered and helped define the cloud computing market, announced yesterday a goal of becoming fully powered by renewable energy.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Aluminum company Alcoa is lending its support to a longstanding research partnership between Honda and Ohio State University that could innovate auto manufacturing.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Greyhound has begun integrating telematics program DriveCam across its entire fleet to optimize safety performance and increase fuel efficiency.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
With more than 2 billion cups consumed each day, coffee is one of the world’s most popular beverages. Most consumers of the black liquid hail from industrialized countries — over 90 percent of coffee production occurs in developing countries and out of the bulk of climate change regulations’ reach.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
The statistics are staggering: One in five children goes to bed hungry every night in America, while 40 percent of food in this country is sent to the landfill, according to a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council. There is an immediate solution to redirecting this excess wasted food to families in need, but fear is choking the supply chain.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
When Herman Miller engineers began using Cradle to Cradle thinking as part of their Design for Environment (DfE) process in 2001, the world of green design was less complicated than today.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Outgoing U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced 13 major U.S. employers and eight stakeholder groups have joined the Department of Energy’s Workplace Charging Challenge, which aims to increase workplace charging by tenfold over the next five years.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Facebook and the Cleantech Group have asked contestants to submit concept pitches for products, applications or services that utilize the social network’s billion-person user base to reduce environmental impact and engage in conversation over sustainability challenges.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Hewlett Packard has agreed to continue development of a database used by nearly three dozen car manufacturers to eliminate harmful substances from their automotive supply chains.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
A team from Seymourpowell, one of the UK’s most established design and innovation consultancies, were thrilled to spend an evening in the company of a select group of motivated Design & Technology teachers, at the recent Tunbridge Wells Teardown Lab led by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation. It proved a fascinating evening of new insight and practical hands-on learning.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The new Proctor & Gamble (P&G) “Everyday Acts” campaign appears to resonate with the $84 billion company’s customers.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
This article first appeared on edie.net on January 28, 2013.Industrial systems based on circular economy models will be constrained by end-of-life material availability, limiting future improvements in process efficiency, scientists claim. A wider materials efficiency framework is required, they argue — one which encompasses not just circular resource flow systems but mitigation options for industrial carbon emissions and consumer demand.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Three global automakers have signed an agreement to jointly develop a fuel cell system to power zero-emissions vehicles.
PRODUCTS AND DESIGN -
Designing more sustainable products requires both changes in how designers approach their work and quick access to information that can justify alternative designs and materials.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The Big Four accounting firms — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC — have the strongest brand preference in both the sustainability consulting and sustainability assurance markets, according to a global survey of 250 heads of sustainability. Independent analyst firm Verdantix found that in sustainability consulting, Ernst & Young leads with a brand preference score of 39%, relative to 37% for KPMG, 33% for Deloitte and 30% for PwC. Among the management consulting firms, Accenture achieved a score of 22% beating McKinsey on 21% and Bain on 15%.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
AT&T announced a March launch date for its long-awaited Digital Life platform, which will allow homeowners to take greater control of their energy consumption, among other features that are likely to become commonplace in homes of the future.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
This post first appeared in Grist on January 8, 2013.LEDs are already much more efficient than any other light bulb out there, but a group of scientists figured out how to make them a whopping 55 percent more efficient — by looking at fireflies.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
A group of companies calling itself The Paperless Coalition is promoting a collection of online tools that can reduce the need for paper documents in the workplace.
With nearly a billion people hungry, over a billion more suffering from the effects of obesity and roughly 40% of food in the U.S. wasted each year, our current food system is in dire need of an overhaul. Here are some examples of organizations, brands and technologies that are helping to drive much-needed shifts in the way we produce, distribute and consume food around the world — hopefully just a small taste of systemic improvements to come.