CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Among the dizzying array of potentially game-changing innovations on display this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, BASF — along with Haier, a global manufacturer of household appliances, and Astronautics Corporation of America — are presenting a proof‑of‑concept wine cooler refrigerated by a magnetocaloric heat pump.
CLEANTECH -
This week at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ford is showcasing its latest innovations — aimed not only at advancing its vehicles, but at helping to change the way the world moves.With the Ford Smart Mobility plan, the automaker is focusing on leading-edge work in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience and big data. Ford also announced 25 mobility experiments it’s conducting around the world this year, testing breakthrough transportation ideas to create better customer experiences, more flexible user-ship models and social collaboration that can reward customers.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Researchers have developed a new chemical method applied to a byproduct of cashew nuts that could make it easier to trap tsetse flies and open new revenue streams for nut producers in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new report.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Looking for something to hold you accountable on your New Year’s resolution to be more active? Changers — a German startup whose mission is to motivate behavior change by making sustainable actions measurable — has launched CO2 Fit, a new mobile app that measures the CO2 generated during various types of travel and rewards more active and lower-emitting options with Recoins, the world's first ‘green’ currency based on CO2 savings.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Tradeshift, which digitally connects enterprises with their suppliers via a cloud-based platform, announced on Tuesday that it will waive the 30 percent revenue share it receives, for organizations that use its platform to build apps that help to support the circular economy. Organizations that build apps supporting the circular economy will receive all profit from their app.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Eastman Chemical Company today announced it will join chemical giants such as BASF, AkzoNobel, Henkel and Clariant as a member of Together for Sustainability (TfS), a European initiative dedicated to the sustainable procurement of chemicals. Eastman and TfS have confirmed acceptance of Eastman’s application to the consortium as the first U.S.-based company to join, with plans to finalize Eastman’s membership in early 2015.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Drones have already disintermediated the aerospace/defense industry and have crossed the threshold from commercial to consumer, delivering to the average person the world’s most powerful personal computer. The potential for good in industrial agriculture, wildlife conservation and animal poaching, monitoring of factory farms, and prevention and early detection of forest fires is unprecedented.Drones can make granular crop maps for farmers, monitor illegal logging, track sometimes elusive endangered species in their habitats, and even drill down to track the sounds of animals as small as bats.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Nestlé UK and Unilever are among organizations coming together on a new project aiming to improve the recyclability of flexible packaging products, in the hope of pushing the resource industry closer towards a circular economic approach.
PRODUCTS AND DESIGN -
Amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Elements, a new line of everyday essentials with transparent origins. Beginning with signature diapers and baby wipes, Amazon Elements offers Prime members an unprecedented level of information — when and where items were made, why each ingredient was included, where the ingredients were sourced and more.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, has appointed Anthesis Group to develop and manage a single online sustainability community spanning the retailer’s supply base.
ICT AND BIG DATA -
After ongoing criticism from organizations such as Greenpeace for continuing to run on ‘dirty power,’ Amazon this week announced a “long-term commitment to achieve 100 percent renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint.”The world’s largest cloud-computing company said that its Web Services segment — which provides IT infrastructure to Internet heavyweights including Netflix, Spotify and Pinterest — will aim to be powered by 100 percent renewables, but didn’t set a deadline for achieving that goal.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
On Monday, Archroma, a global producer of textile dyes and specialty chemicals, launched a new range of products created from agricultural waste. In addition, the company is utilizing the latest in communications technology to enable transparency of the supply chain to consumers.
PRESS RELEASE -
EnerG2, a Seattle-based company manufacturing advanced carbon materials for next-generation energy storage devices, and BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, today announced a strategic partnership. EnerG2 and BASF entered into a comprehensive collaboration to improve and scale-up the production of EnerG2’s proprietary carbon materials for use in supercapacitor electrodes and as a performance additive in start-stop lead-acid batteries. Both technologies play an important role in short-term energy storage for automotive and industrial applications.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The Boeing ecoDemonstrator 787 has begun flight testing more than 25 new technologies aimed at improving aviation's environmental performance through every phase of flight.The program accelerates the testing, refinement and use of new technologies and methods that can improve efficiency and reduce noise. Boeing says this new round of testing, using 787 Dreamliner ZA004, will evaluate software and connectivity technologies related to operational efficiency; remote sensors to reduce wiring; aerodynamic and flight control improvements for greater fuel efficiency, and icephobic wing coatings to reduce ice accumulation.Technologies being tested include:
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
India-based social enterprise Spring Health has announced plans to join the Business Call to Action (BCtA) and provide safe drinking water to two million customers in rural India by 2017 to improve the health outcomes of more than five million people in Eastern India by 2019.Spring Health is the Indian counterpart of US-headquartered Windhorse International, founded by entrepreneur Paul Polak with Indian partner Jacob Mathew and CEO Kishan Nanavati.
CLEANTECH -
Microsoft, Siemens and FuelCell Energy have come together to build what they claim is the first zero-carbon, waste-to-energy data center in the U.S.Microsoft's data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming uses biogas produced at the nearby Dry Creek facility, which is a byproduct of municipal wastewater treatment. Anaerobic bacteria produce the biogas while stabilizing solids removed from wastewater. The fuel cell electrochemically converts the biogas into electricity to power the Microsoft IT server container. Virtually no air pollutants are released because of the absence of combustion.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The circular economy and water stewardship dominated the morning’s agenda on the final day of SB ’14 London. After leading us through a host of thought-provoking plenary presentations Tuesday morning, our two event MCs - Forum for the Future chief executive Sally Uren and The Guardian’s executive editor Jo Confino – expressed their enthusiasm for the ideology that underpins the circular economy.Confino felt it was a concept that could go mainstream. “Business can buy into it easily as it doesn’t fight against the current capitalist system,” he said, while Uren was optimistic about the level of brand innovation it could potentially unlock.
ICT AND BIG DATA -
U.S. companies are tracking sustainability data more than ever before, but according to a new report, the software tools they use are subpar.
The ReScore Project Group, a team of graduates from Columbia University’s Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, recently completed a study of the U.S. market for CSR data solutions in collaboration with Tennaxia, a cloud-based CSR software platform developed in Europe, and consulting firms 2020 Strategies, LLC and The Triana Group, Inc.
PRESS RELEASE -
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Deutsche Nanoschicht GmbH establish joint laboratoryResearch institute and BASF subsidiary cooperating to further develop thin film superconductorsKarlsruhe and Rheinbach, October 29th, 2014 – The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Deutsche Nanoschicht GmbH have made it their goal to develop tailored high-temperature superconductors for energy technology applications. The research institute and the BASF subsidiary New Business GmbH have signed relevant cooperation agreements.
ICT AND BIG DATA -
On Thursday, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) announced the launch of a new technology infrastructure region in Frankfurt — the 11th such region globally for AWS and the second region in the EU (the first being in Ireland). The company says Frankfurt is the third of its regions that will enable customers to run their cloud computing on carbon-neutral power.