Sheila Shayon
Focus on Women in Communication, STEM, Finance ‘the Biggest Bang for the Buck’
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Building on the inspiration and energy from day one, day two of the International Women’s Day Forum kicked off with a panel on The Power of Communication and Perception. Beth Colleton, SVP of CSR at NBC Universal, posed the question: “We reach 97 percent of all people in any given month. But how do we get people to care?” - 6 years ago
Nascent's Modular System Enables Shift Towards Sustainable Consumer Electronics
Product, Service & Design Innovation / According to the UN’s Global E-Waste Monitor, roughly 46 million tons of e-waste was generated worldwide in 2014. Of that, just 7.1 tons were recycled or reused, and those numbers are expected to rise five percent annually for the foreseeable future. The recently launched Nascent Objects platform offers an alternative via a customizable system of interchangeable electronic modules that can be used to assemble a variety of consumer products. - 6 years ago
Could Growing Food in Gravel Be Pay Dirt for Sustainable Agriculture?
Product, Service & Design Innovation / A new age in gardening is dawning: Geological agriculture, aka gravel gardening — a completely soil-less way to grow all kinds of crops in sedimentary rock.Leading the charge is To Soil Less, a family business founded by former management consultant Richard Campbell in 2011. - 6 years ago
One Man's Trash: New Technologies, Partnerships Boosting Recycling Around the World
Waste Not / Among the key challenges to the burgeoning recycling market are lack of infrastructure, innovation at scale and funding. But a variety of initiatives — in developed and developing areas alike — are attempting to secure these factors to help spur the development of circular economic infrastructure.In Argentina, a new generation of trash pickers is helping to refine recycling at the street level. Buenos Aires has invested in recycling through the city government’s Ciudad Verde (Green City) plan and now more than 5,000 litter pickers (known locally as cartoneros) collect a base salary for emptying the city’s bell-shaped recycling bins. - 6 years ago
UK Lagoon Project Set to Harness the Changing Tides of Renewable Energy
Cleantech / As President John F. Kennedy so eloquently said in 1963, in response to critics of a proposed dam project: "A rising tide lifts all boats."A current case in point that could significantly benefit the clean energy space: Tidal lagoons — an ancient, natural source of potential power that can be harnessed sustainably for the 21st century and beyond. - 6 years ago
How the 'Internet of Energy' Is Helping the World Be More Efficient
Cleantech / The emergent field of energy analytics could soon be a boon to sustainability.Several companies are now selling energy analytics apps that are superior to manual, data-crunching spreadsheets. The new apps leverage smart grid systems plus data collected by sensors via the IoT. The size of these datasets requires cloud-scale computing.So business is investing in energy efficiency, not necessarily for altruistic reasons, but for smarter operational practice and efficiency as the tools available augment. - 6 years ago
How JPMorgan Chase Is Jumping Into the Conservation Game
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Construction machinery and equipment giant Caterpillar recently hosted the first major national summit on infrastructure restoration, with the clarion call that investing in nature is smart business. In the room was Matt Arnold, Global Head of Social and Sustainable Finance at JPMorgan Chase. Arnold said he was looking for deals and that “smart failure is okay.” - 6 years ago
Caterpillar, TNC, JPMorgan Chase Convene to Discuss Natural Infrastructure Restoration
New Metrics / Construction machinery and equipment giant Caterpillar recently hosted the first major national summit on infrastructure restoration, with the clarion call that investing in nature is smart business. As a major player in the manufacturing industry, Caterpillar reached the conclusion that moving beyond technical principles and establishing a broad coalition of stakeholders is required to bring the restoration conversation mainstream. - 6 years ago
The Plastic Bank: How 'Social Plastic' Is Giving Value to Waste, Improving Lives Around the World
Waste Not / At SB ’14 San Diego, the Plastic Disclosure Project, the UN Environment Program and Trucost unveiled the fist-ever assessment of plastic use in business, along with the business case for dealing with its global impacts: Among the sobering figures, the report calculated the total natural capital cost of pl - 6 years ago
IoT: The Solution to Sustainably Feeding 9 Billion?
Cleantech / 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." - 6 years ago
Monsanto Wants to Be the World’s Greengrocer
Product, Service & Design Innovation / Monsanto has set its sights on global vegetable dominance and its lead contender is Beneforté broccoli, which is described as “even more of a good thing.” The agribusiness giant is hedging its enormous bets placed on a corn-and-soy-driven business as consumer demand for healthier and less processed foods assails CPGs in all food and beverage categories from soda to cereal. - 6 years ago
Petition Asks Walmart, Whole Foods: What the Fork Are You Doing With Your Produce?
Waste Not / In 2013, 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 33.3 million adults and 15.8 million children, according to Feeding America, while nearly 26 percent of all produce is discarded before it even reaches the grocery store — solely for cosmetic reasons. Deemed "ugly," billions of pounds of edible, healthy produce goes to waste. - 6 years ago
Tronie Foundation Showing Companies How to Face, Eliminate Risks of Supply Chain Slavery Now
Supply Chain / This week, a comprehensive special report in The New York Times detailed the very bottom of a systemic epidemic of human rights violations in global supply chains.There are 35.8 million people enslaved worldwide in 2015. One in five is a child. Half are women and girls, according to WalkFree.org. - 6 years ago
To Till or Not to Till, That Is the Agri-Question
Supply Chain / Farmers have tilled the soil - turning it as preparation for planting - for millennia. But that legacy is under scrutiny today as “soil health” has entered the vernacular – at least amongst people aware of prevailing agri-trends such as those recently discussed in the New York Times. - 6 years ago
Trending: Island Nations Poised to Reap Billions in Benefits Through Renewables
Cleantech / 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. - 6 years ago
Greenpeace: Still Mind-Bombing After All These Years
Marketing and Comms / Greenpeace is arguably the founder of modern environmental activism. - 7 years ago
Meet You in the AgriHood: Co-Housing Becoming Increasingly Attractive Option for Developers
The Next Economy / "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." ~Buckminster FullerSeems the hippies and the father of the geodesic dome were on to something sustainable in the 1960s when they modeled shared living spaces and bartered goods. Turns out those behaviors truly are easier on the planet and better for the soul. - 7 years ago
Multitude of Mindfulness Apps Making Mental Health on the Go More Manageable
Product, Service & Design Innovation / 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. - 7 years ago
Global Stewardship Required to Avoid Silent Spring, Summer, Winter and Fall
Chemistry, Materials & Packaging / It’s been 53 years since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a shocking exposé of chemical pollutants and their impact on the Earth's ecosystems. - 7 years ago
Lemons to Lemonade? Turning the Climate Crisis Into a Market Opportunity
Marketing and Comms / As much as climate change is now in regular rotation in the daily news, we’re still a long way from knowing exactly how it will change life as we know it. But as changes become evident, new business opportunities have already presented themselves – take, for example, extinction tourism: The concept surfaced in marketing campaigns in 2008 as companies began offering packages tied to global warming, “using climate change as a marketing pitch, a ‘see it now before it’s gone’ kind of thing,” said Ayako Ezaki, communications director for the International Ecotourism Society at the time. - 7 years ago