In a society that has gotten used to disposing of the last-greatest for the latest and greatest, there is one thing most Americans forget won’t be replaced by the newest, fastest gadget or application. Something as incredible and beautiful as planet Earth. After all, it’s the Earth that provides the food that we eat. What we need to consider is how we produce this food. Sustainable agriculture is the answer to a world that commonly uses pesticides and pollutants to produce the crops that we take for granted. Unfortunately, the price may be too high for the planet to pay.
Continue reading... →What if you could turn your dishes into dirt? Well, thanks to Susanna Carson, you can. She tell us all about her game-changing work at the upcoming Women As Game Changers: Creating a New Game Conference: Creating a New Game on October 13-14 in Santa Fe, NM. Maybe that’s why this video is so green! Susanna Carson is an entrepreneur building her personal and corporate legacy through the business of sustainable / compostable packaging. She is the founder and CEO of BSI Biodegradable Solutions, a compostable packaging distribution company, and more recently BESICS Packaging Corporation, a compostable retail products company.
Continue reading... →For years, architects have flirted with the idea of tall buildings made from mass timber, an engineered wood product that some argue is more sustainable than resource-intensive, nonrenewable steel. Now architecture firm, SOM, is working with Oregon State University to develop and test new mass-timber structural systems, hoping that the research will help mainstream what’s currently an alternative and novel construction methodology. Early findings from the this research, show that reinforced wood framing can be just as robust as conventional building techniques, which is the latest step toward making mass timber more commonplace in the U.S.
Continue reading... →People go to music festivals for a lot of reasons: to see their favorite bands, to burnish their Instagram feed, to sweatily camp out under the stars. But a group of volunteers came to the recent Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee for a fairly unique reason: to save uneaten food from being thrown out and sent to landfills. A group of 300 volunteers managed by Clean Vibes, a waste management company that works with dozens of music festivals to make them more environmentally friendly, spent the four days of the June festival helping to compost 230,000 pounds of food that was left over from caterers or that vendors were unable to sell. The volunteers received free tickets in exchange for their work.
Continue reading... →The Paris Agreement adopted at COP21 last year placed unprecedented importance on climate adaptation and resilience. Five emerging trends have been identified from learning how countries, cities, researchers and others are putting adaptation priorities into practice.
Continue reading... →Columbia will reveal a new rain jacket free of perfluorinated compounds, better known as PFCs, in spring 2017. The rain jacket will feature a technology the company calls OutDry Extreme ECO and will sell for $199. The jacket’s eco-friendly traits don’t stop at the use of the new technology. Its main fabric is 100 percent recycled polyester, which will come from approximately 21 recycled bottles. Trims and other components will also contain recycled content. The jacket’s fabric will not be dyed which will reduce water, energy and chemicals.
Continue reading... →16-year-old climate activist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is petitioning the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates to take a strong stance on ending climate change. In a Care2 petition and a corresponding video letter, Martinez is urging the candidates to pledge to end fossil fuel use in the U.S. by 2026. The petition attracted over 100,000 signatures in its first week online.
Continue reading... →One of the first companies to start making products out of carbon pollution is an automaker. For the last four years, Ford has been working with a manufacturer to develop a captured CO2-based foam, and soon a plastic, that can eventually replace parts made from petroleum.
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