The latest products, services and cleantech applications and how they are tackling some of our most pressing social and environmental issues.
Stanford researchers announced today that a study in Senegal, West Africa, has found that freshwater prawns can serve as an effective natural solution in the battle against schistosomiasis, a potentially deadly parasitic disease that infects roughly 230 million people. The prawns prey on parasite-infected snails, while providing a marketable, protein-rich food source. Because prawns cannot support schistosomiasis' complex life cycle, they do not transmit the disease themselves.
Hyundai Heavy Industries, a leading shipbuilder, and Accenture are collaborating to design a ‘connected smart ship’ that will enable ship owners to better manage their fleets and achieve potential operational savings through the application of digital technologies. The collaboration is part of Hyundai Heavy Industries’ plans to expand its business, moving from manufacturing to services.Using a network of sensors that will be built into new vessels, ship owners will be able to capture a range of ship voyage information including location, weather, and ocean current data, as well as on-board
Cross-Posted from Chemistry, Materials & Packaging. For the 20th year in a row, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is recognizing landmark sustainable chemistry technologies developed by industrial pioneers and leading scientists that turn climate risk and other environmental problems into business opportunities, spurring innovation and economic development.
Boeing and Japanese aviation industry stakeholders have partnered to develop sustainable aviation biofuel for flights during the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, when millions of people are expected to visit Japan. The Initiatives for Next Generation Aviation Fuels (INAF) — a consortium of 46 organizations including Boeing, ANA (All Nippon Airways), Japan Airlines, Nippon Cargo Airlines, Japan's government and the University of Tokyo — laid out a five-year "roadmap" to develop biofuel by 2020 as a way to reduce aviation's environmental footprint.
If you think about air travel and sustainability, a couple of things might occur to you: First, that you are not involved or interested; second, that since airlines are so dependent on liquid fuel, reducing their carbon emissions is a lost cause. But, you probably are involved, and flying can become less disruptive of the planet’s systems.
Perhaps one of the silver linings of the climate crisis is the continued emergence of innovations from both the private and public sectors to avert impending disaster while creating new growth and development opportunities.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency are competitive resources in today’s marketplace that will not only be cost-effective mechanisms for compliance with EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) but should also be expected to grow strictly on the basis of cost, according to a recent report by the Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) Institute.
Toyota Motor Corporation, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. have shared details regarding a new joint support project for the development of hydrogen station infrastructure in Japan. In addition to partially covering the operating costs of hydrogen stations, the three automakers have also agreed to help infrastructure companies deliver the best possible customer service and create a convenient, hassle-free refueling network for owners of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs).
The emerging Internet of Things (IoT) space represents one of the most disruptive, yet lucrative, forces in the business world today. Research by McKinsey & Co estimates that IoT technology offers a potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. At the top end, that level of value would be equivalent to about 11 percent of the world economy.
This week, startup Measurabl, a provider of sustainability data management and analytics software, announced a partnership with Optoro, a technology company focused on supply chain sustainability for retailers. The “We Are Measurabl” pilot program allows Optoro and other companies to track and validate their corporate sustainability performance to their stakeholders.
Welcome the latest innovation that might up the ante for “smart” in-home electronics: The Aspirational Lamp is a solar-powered desk lamp that, in addition to shining light, aims to generate its own return on your investment. The truly smart lamp has the ability to twist toward the sun to gather — and store — the maximum amount of energy; when not in use, it then sells excess energy back to the grid, and invests earnings in the stock market, with the goal of earning itself enough money over time to pay for upgrades and new parts for itself (but not enough to enable early retirement).
If changing the world for the better was easy, we'd all be doing it. But thinking that you can make a difference is audacious. It takes a sort of beneficent arrogance to set out to push humanity in a positive direction. To believe you will succeed is madness, but to believe otherwise is to surrender. I think of giving up as a form of death, so I'll gladly side with the crazy ones who are trying to make things better.But the world needs change as we’re headed toward multiple planetary boundaries, so someone needs to take the wheel and point us in a better direction.I was invited to an intriguing event last week, where I learned about the plans for something audacious.Let’s start with the details:
Today we can access vast quantities of information from countless sources to help us make better decisions quickly.My cell phone can help me find a restaurant with the type of food I like, at a price I like, and with a customer satisfaction rating. I can get directions to the restaurant, including current traffic conditions. And if I don’t want to drive myself, Uber can take care of that.All of this is possible, yet when I go to my grocery store I’m still unclear as to what’s in the products I buy and where they came from.Is this can of soup lined with BPA? Are there GMOs in it? What’s the environmental impact of this product? Can I recycle it?
Few things are more disruptive to a processing facility than losing power – especially if several weeks’ worth of work is lost each time it happens. Facing this risk helped drive Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. to embed sustainability into the way it does business.
As previously functioning urban areas fall into disrepair, urban blight increasingly is afflicting cities across the United States. Characterized by high local unemployment and crime, political disenfranchisement and depopulation, in some of these areas the endless blocks of abandoned buildings seems like scenes out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
California is experiencing a significant paradigm shift around water and energy, and the 2015 Water/Energy Nexus Hackathon, coming to San Francisco in mid-August, intends to bring some of the smartest minds together to help address these complex issues. This two-day event will allow students, professionals and enthusiasts to experiment, improve and unveil new methods to help manage, interact and understand the growing relationship between water and energy, which is ever more critical given the current drought situation.
Carnival Corporation & plc, the world's largest travel and leisure company, announced Monday it has signed a multibillion-dollar contract with German shipyard Meyer Werft to build four next-generation cruise ships with the largest guest capacity in the world. The four new ships will also be the first in the cruise industry to be powered at sea by Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) — the world’s cleanest-burning fossil fuel.The company said two of the ships will be manufactured for AIDA Cruises at Meyer Werft's shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. Additional information about the ships, including which new ships will be added to each brand, will be made available at a later date.
In a world where more people have access to mobile phones than to safe water, how can technology help scale up sustainable supply chains? Here are four suggestions from an expert panel at the Sedex Global Responsible Sourcing Conference, held in March 2015.
Ceres has released a new search tool that enables users to access water risk disclosures in company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).The SEC Sustainability Disclosure Search tool allows users to find disclosures in 4,500 U.S. companies’ annual filings relating to water availability, scarcity, quality, pollution, regulation and innovation. The tool covers 10-K filings from 2009 to the present and helps stakeholders, including investors, companies, academics and analysts, better understand how businesses are measuring, managing and disclosing material water risks and opportunities.
If you’ve ever wondered about the energy powering your favorite websites, a new tool from Greenpeace is here to help. On Thursday, the advocacy group released a new browser extension tool that shows which of the most popular websites are moving most ambitiously towards renewable energy use. Users that download the extension (compatible with Google Chrome) can distinguish leaders from laggards by the color of a cloud icon that appears green, yellow, or red whenever they open a new site.