Product, Service & Design Innovation
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.
The Urban Sun: A Light at the End of the COVID Tunnel?
Combining art, creativity, architecture and science, Daan Roosegaarde and his team of designers, experts and scientists have found a radical way to clean public spaces of coronavirus — with light.
The Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on People’s Needs, Expectations in the Office
The ongoing pandemic has changed fundamental patterns in our lives, accelerating existing trends and revealing new unmet needs. Since the onset of COVID, Steelcase has conducted ongoing research to help organizations understand its impact on their people and business.
Forget Selling Products. Change Lives, Instead.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. The happiness of buying new shoes is a short-lived dopamine kick, whereas finding better ways of living in balance with yourself adds lifelong value. It’s time to create a new offering: Who can you help people become?
Target Unveils Plan to Co-Create an Equitable, Sustainable Future for All
Cross-Posted from Walking the Talk. Among the retailer’s goals are to achieve 20% Black team member representation across the company by 2023; and reach net zero in both waste to landfill and value-chain-wide emissions, and 100% owned-brand product circularity, by 2040.
Trending: Burberry, Gucci Strut Ever Closer to Sustainability
The luxury fashion giants continue to lead the industry toward a cruelty-free and climate-resilient future — Gucci with its new, biobased, animal-free textile; and Burberry with its bar-raising goal to be climate positive by 2040.
Healthier Supply Chains Supporting Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health’s Healthy Lives Mission
Cross-Posted from Our Healthy Lives Mission. Achieving Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health’s Healthy Lives Mission requires its supply chains to be healthy, as well. Here, Worldwide VP of Supply Chain Meri Stevens shares insights gained from collaborating with suppliers to achieve agility in complex supply chains.
With Aggressive Expansion, Too Good to Go Doubles Down on Commitment to Address Food Waste
Cross-Posted from Waste Not. Beyond being the world’s largest business-to-consumer marketplace for surplus food, Too Good to Go is a movement. Not only does it offer a win-win-win solution for food, people and the planet — the company seeks to inspire and empower individuals around the world to take action against food waste.
Tree Water and … Goose Droppings? Cheers to New, Creative Uses of Waste Streams
Cross-Posted from Waste Not. Asarasi has turned sap water — a waste byproduct of maple syrup production — into a delicious, carbonated beverage; and for intrepid beer lovers, the city of Lahti, Finland has turned the blight of local parks into a line of ‘Wasted Potential’ brews.
For Peat’s Sake: Back to the Roots Equips Home Gardeners with Climate-Friendly Soil
While peatlands cover only 3% of our land, they store 30% of the world’s soil carbon. And the popularity of peat in commercial potting soils means that peatlands, or bogs, are rapidly disappearing. Back to the Roots aimed to give conscientious home gardeners a solution.
Aleph Farms’ 3D-Bioprinted, Cultivated Steak: A Sustainable Future for Meat Production?
Innovators such as Aleph Farms could change the meat industry for good: Your steak can now be grown in a lab — offering the same texture and taste of a conventional steak, without the environmental and ethical consequences.
Designing for Humanity: New Possibilities for Plastic
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. Ensuring recyclability starts with putting people at the forefront to develop new systems and materials to create a continuous lifecycle for plastics. We need to design systems for humanity. By harnessing design thinking, it’s possible to make human-centered recycling systems a reality.
HSBC, WRI, WWF Partner to Scale Next-Generation Climate Solutions
Cross-Posted from Cleantech. The US$100M initiative builds on the organizations’ individual efforts to accelerate a shift to a net-zero global economy.
As Travel Resumes, So Does Focus on Decarbonization of Aviation
After a lengthy pause, tourism stands on the precipice of restarting again. But even as many travelers prepare to take to the open skies, aviation continues to grapple with its oversized carbon footprint compared with the rest of the industry.
Amidst Industry Boom, Brands Find More Sustainable Solutions to eCommerce Logistics
From rethinking sourcing to shipping, here are some of the key carbon- and waste-reducing strategies brands big and small are using to better balance sustainability and business goals.
10 Nature-Inspired Innovations Compete for 2021 Ray of Hope Prize
Sustainable building materials, textiles, cooling systems and water-filtration technologies are among the top 10 nature-inspired solutions participating in the Biomimicry Institute’s 10-week accelerator program and in the running for the annual $100K prize.
Trending: Fashion, Beverage Industries Continue to Advance Solutions to Plastic Waste
Cross-Posted from Chemistry, Materials & Packaging. The $1.2M Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize seeks scalable, alternative solutions for thin-film plastic; while Paboco has eliminated plastic from Absolut’s bio-based beverage bottle, making it fully recyclable.
Are 3D-Printed Buildings the Sustainable Future of Construction?
The construction industry must adopt technologies that increase productivity while mitigating the impact of our growing housing needs on the climate crisis. Mighty Buildings’ technology may be ‘one of the only in existence’ that could unlock the needed productivity alongside reduced emissions.
How to Empower the Next, Diverse Generation of Inventors
Cross-Posted from The Next Economy. For those who cultivate innovation and invention, it is our responsibility to provide opportunity for those historically marginalized. Our society must take the harsh realizations uncovered by the pandemic and use them to fuel ambition and drive, to ensure access and opportunity for every student.
Atlanta’s Food Forest Pioneering Potential Solution to Urban Food Deserts
The Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill caters to one of 35 food-insecure communities in Georgia’s capital — and provides a scalable model for other cities to begin to address this all-too-common systemic inequity in US cities.
Mattel PlayBack to Give Old Toys New Life
Cross-Posted from Waste Not. With new takeback program, families can now send old toys back to Mattel, which will recover and reuse materials for use in future Mattel products.
