Coming soon to a closet near you, clothes that clean themselves. That reality is inching closer with new research from Australia’s RMIT University, where scientists have been testing nanotechnology that eats away at grime on fabric.
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Ikea is planning to use packaging made with mushrooms as an eco-friendly replacement for polystyrene.
The furniture retailer is looking at using the biodegradable mycelium “fungi packaging” as part of its efforts to reduce waste and increase recycling, Joanna Yarrow, head of sustainability for Ikea in the U.K., said.
If we continue as “business as usual”, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, as stated in a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published Tuesday. To combat this projection, the report also recommends applying “circular economy principles” to global plastic packaging flows, which could “transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans,”.
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The first solar powered airport in South Africa, George Airport, has officially been opened making it a first of its kind in Africa.
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Residents of Copenhagen, Denmark, can cut their grocery bills by as much as half thanks to a new supermarket that opened in the city this week. WeFood, started by the nonprofit DanChurch Aid, gets all its products—from dairy to meat to dry goods—from supermarket chains that would otherwise throw the food away.
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“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” as the saying goes. For TerraCycle founder Tom Szaky, it was more than a saying—it was also his business plan. Founded in 2003, TerraCycle takes your garbage—everything and anything you could throw away or recycle—and transforms it into consumer products like cutting boards, reusable grocery bags, and even yard fencing.
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Toyota moves away from designing cars just for style and adds utilitarian complexity. Its new lime green paint is designed to be safer on the road while saving energy as it is “packed with tiny reflective titanium oxide particles and doesn’t contain carbon black, a common ingredient in paint that tends to absorb lots of heat.”
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Robin Chase, social entrepreneur and founder of Zipcar, discusses the creation of Zipcar by transforming the excess capacity embedded in old inefficient ways of using cars and constructing a platform that enabled the direct participation of their members in the “co-creation” of the new efficient service. This structural triad of excess capacity, platform, peers has been adopted by hundreds of companies since, creating what is now called the collaborative economy. This structure, that Robin refers to as Peers Inc, elevates and celebrates an asset previously under appreciated: the value of individuals to localize, customize, and specialize products and services according to their unique assets.
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The city of Madrid, Spain is spending millions to expand existing parks, while covering as many roofs and walls as possible with greenery in order to decrease rising summer temperatures in the city. Twenty-two vacant lots will also be turned into urban gardens while paved squares will become parks that can suck up rainfall. Planting gardens on roofs, and adding plants on outdoor walls, helps insulate buildings so they can save energy, and helps reduce street noise. But it also helps bring down local temperatures by shading pavement and by releasing evaporated water that can create clouds.
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The remains of 14 women believed to be of high status and importance have been found at Stonehenge, the iconic prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England. The discovery, along with other finds, supports the theory that Stonehenge functioned, at least for part of its long history, as a cremation cemetery for leaders and other noteworthy individuals, according to a report published in the latest issue of British Archaeology. During the recent excavation, more women than men were found buried at Stonehenge, a fact that could change its present image. In almost every depiction of Stonehenge by artists and TV re-enactors we see lots of men, a man in charge, and few or no women,” archaeologist Mike Pitts, who is the editor of British Archaeology and the author of the book “Hengeworld,” told Discovery News. “The archaeology now shows that as far as the burials go, women were as prominent there as men. This contrasts with the earlier burial mounds, where men seem to be more prominent.” Pitts added, “By definition — cemeteries are rare, Stonehenge exceptional — anyone buried at Stonehenge is likely to have been special in some way: high status families, possessors of special skills or knowledge, ritual or […]
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