The latest products, services, design approaches and business models that are helping organizations of all sizes deliver on their sustainability ambitions and establish a new business as usual
World leaders have shaken hands on the new Sustainable Development Goals that will hopefully be shaping global and local agendas and policies over the next 15 years. The UN Sustainable Development summit coincided with the 7th edition of Climate Week, which was jam-packed with well-timed announcements and strong messages in favor of a low-carbon economy.
Solar combined with energy storage systems (solar+storage) can help protect vulnerable populations during power outages in multifamily affordable housing and provide an economic return to building owners, according to a new report by nonprofit Clean Energy Group.
Tesla “Powerpack” battery systems will be used to power part of 24 office buildings in California, according to a recent announcement, as reported by Edie.Real estate firm The Irvine Company, which has properties throughout California, will install Tesla battery systems the size of five parking spaces. It is expected that these will reduce peak grid energy consumption across the company's entire portfolio by 25 percent.
Food production dominates fresh water use and is a primary driving force for soil and biodiversity loss – and food demand is on the rise. The good news is that while faced with such challenges and often considered to be lagging on sustainability, the food and beverage industry stands out as most-improved in a 2015 survey.
Equator Kenya, a food-processing company that produces African Bird’s Eye Chilies for export, has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to provide climate-smart technologies, training and market linkages to 8,000 smallholder farmers along the Kenyan coast.This business is designed to reduce the crop risks posed by climate change, which will help increase incomes among the farmers — 6,000 of whom are women — as well as improve crop yields and quality.
As more and more organizations with sustainability missions are discovering, getting a celebrity to help spread your message could be the difference between creating a tiny ripple and engaging millions around the world (see recent examples around deforestation, the Sustainable Development Goals, clean drinking water, and eating more produce, to n
Sustainable food startup Impossible Foods recently raised $108 million in Series D funding, bringing their total funding to date to $183 million. The Redwood City, California-based company is creating meat and dairy alternatives from plant ingredients that are remarkably similar to the real thing.
Out of 37 nominated startups, Skeleton Technologies won the Gold ECO15 London Award at the Ecosummit 2015 conference. The company manufactures high-performance, graphene-based ultracapacitors — energy storage devices with much higher power and longer life cycles than batteries.
“I want our new phone to be a storytelling product.” This was the exciting and daunting challenge laid down to us by Fairphone CEO Bas van Abel, just over a year ago, in the first briefing for their new ethical phone handset design.
Flipping the business-to-consumer (B2C) model on its head, San Francisco-based startup WUSIC wants to disrupt the retail industry through a “consumer-to-business” (C2B) model where consumers go straight to manufacturers for the largest savings possible. Consumer demand would dictate supply quantity and price from online marketplace Alibaba’s network of global factories, effectively cutting out big box middlemen such as WalMart and Target.
Frustrated by the amount of disposable packaging discarded at events and the amount of time it takes for disposable cups (including biobased plastics) to degrade, Chelsea Briganti and Leigh Ann Tucker created a “biodegredible” – biodegradable and edible – cup. Last week, the women pitched their startup, Loliware, on the ABC show “Shark Tank” and secured a $600,000 deal for 25 percent of their company.
U.S. reliance on wind, solar and other renewable sources of energy has reached historic levels and is poised to make even greater gains in the near future, according to new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).A Tectonic Shift in America's Energy Landscape finds that the energy sector in the United States emitted less dangerous carbon pollution last year than in 1996, with a full 10 percent reduction over the past decade. Meanwhile, coal and electricity consumption are down nationwide, while oil use today is lower than in the early 1970s, the report shows.
JetBlue Airways and TERRA® Real Vegetable Chips today revealed the T5 Farm – a blue potato farm and produce garden at Terminal 5 (T5) at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. An experiment in ‘farm-to-air’ innovation, the farm will promote New York agriculture and enhance the JetBlue customer experience with more green space.
Cross-Posted from Consumer Behavior Change. Royal Dutch Shell PLC CEO Ben van Beurden promoted a carbon-pricing plan at the Oil & Money conference in London on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal reports that the plan will encourage investment in renewables and favor cleaner-burning natural gas over more carbon-intensive coal.
Wind power is now the cheapest electricity to produce in both Germany and the U.K., even without government subsidies, claims a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). This is the first time that threshold has been crossed by a G7 economy.Much of this is due to wind and solar power’s improving capacity factor, or the percentage of a power plant's maximum potential that's achieved over time.
On a blazing hot Saturday in Los Angeles last month, the Venice High School Garden, also known as The Learning Garden, hosted the latest in a years-long string of community events – this time, a “Tomato Late Harvest Summer Tasting,” hosted by local startup Cropdots.
Levi Strauss & Co. has led the charge in dramatically reducing the environmental impact of its garments by improving the efficiency of its processes: As the company announced in March, it has saved more than 1 billion liters of water since the inception of its Water<Less™ process in 2011.
Energy shots such as 5 Hour Energy have proliferated in recent years as they have taken up an increasingly large portion of the multibillion-dollar energy drink market. The smaller, sugar-free energy shots often position themselves as a healthier alternative to full-sized energy drinks such as Red Bull and Monster.But can energy shots truly be healthy?They sure can, according to Lisa Curtis, CEO of mission-driven food startup Kuli Kuli.
A 2014 National Geographic article, “One-Third of Food Is Lost or Wasted,” reported that 3.5 billion acres of land, an area larger than Canada, was plowed in 2007 to grow food, support livestock and dairy production that was never consumed. As for water waste, nearly 70 percent is consumed by agriculture, more than twice that of industry at 23 percent, and municipal use bottoms out at 8 percent.As UNEP’s Nick Nuttall acknowledged in the piece: "Food waste is a stupid problem. But people love stupid problems because they know they can do something about it."
Startups that are innovating around nutritious, sustainable food are invited to pitch for a £3000 cash prize and a three-month mentoring program with the Unilever Foundry. The competition is open to innovators tackling food system challenges such as heart health, obesity, under-nutrition, food waste, and sustainability of the food chain.