The definition of what it means to be sustainable in the 21st century needs to be broadened to include a skyscraper's ability to sustain the human spirit, says a design director at Gensler. Imagine energy efficient towers whose walls might slide open, allowing office workers to step outside, into the sky, for a breath of fresh air. Towers where seasonal gardens grow vertically and where friends might meet by a kumquat tree on the 68th floor for a cup of coffee on a beautiful spring day.
A young start-up called Mango Materials has won a Green Challenge prize of $630,000 for its plan to use bacteria to turn the most abundant organic compound on earth, methane, into a biodegradable material that would be a low cost substitute for plastic.
Since 2003, the United States Postal Service has reduced its energy use by 26 percent. Energy efficiency improvements at the USPS's 33,000 buildings have saved enough energy to meet the power needs of 90,000 households for a year. In 2011, alone, the USPS saved $22 million with its 1 trillion BTU reduction in energy use.
The small city of Kalundborg, 64 miles west of Copenhagen, was the first municipality to have engineered a symbiotic relationship between all its industries so that the excess heat, water, waste and other resources leftover become feedstock for other industries and farms, creating a closed loop system.
In a milestone Saturday for sustainable aviation, China became the latest nation to transport passengers on a commercial airline flight powered by used cooking oil.
3M announced this week a new sourcing policy that ensures all the virgin wood fiber going into its paper-based products and packaging comes from sources that protect forests and respect human rights.
Keurig coffee fans might love the convenience of the single-cup system, but the amount of plastic being thrown into landfills was worrying the rest of us. Now the coffee-selling giant has announced a recyclable coffee pod that may ease customers' guilt.
Instead of buying a whole new outfit for a wedding or graduation, fashionistas can visit a 'fashion library' and take home their favorite threads on loan.
43 leaders of huge corporations joined together as Ambassadors for Climate Action. They challenged governments and big business to do more on climate change.
Nick Ruth has been playing the Lottery for just over a year, but this past Friday, he said it "just felt right." Following that intuition made him $250,000 richer. The young winner, who has been in remission from leukemia for seven years, said: "As a cancer survivor, it is really important for me to give back. I want to ‘pay forward' what some wonderful local organizations did for me.
A diving team was shocked to find a fisherman who had survived for three days trapped beneath 98 feet of water - 30 meters beneath the Atlantic ocean. In the incredible video footage a member of the dive team can be heard saying He's alive! He's alive!
A 67-year-old man found alive by his kids six days after his car plunged 200 feet off a mountain road built a makeshift camp, ate leaves and drank water from a nearby creek to survive, when he couldn't climb the ravine with his injuries.
College football star Mark Herzlich was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in his left leg in 2009. But, the 2008 ACC Defensive Player of the Year beat the disease, and now, that the Giants have officially hired him to join the team, he is the feel-good story of the summer.
At 108 years old, Alice Herz-Sommer is the world's oldest survivor of the holocaust. During WWII she survived a Nazi concentration camp in Prague while most of her family was exterminated. But through it all she was smiling and thankful and looked for the good.
New York high school senior Samantha Garvey appeared Thursday as a guest on the Ellen talk show, where she received a $50,000 scholarship from AT&T to the college of her choice. Last week, Garvey was named a semifinalist in the prestigious Intel science contest, just weeks after her family was forced to move into a homeless shelter and attracted media attention.
A Yugoslavian-born custodian at New York's Columbia University will be trading in his uniform for a cap and gown this weekend when he graduates with honors after working on his degree for 12 years.
For 13 years, Bryan Martin kept the book hidden from his daughter, dutifully taking it to her teachers, coaches and school principals every year to have them append it with positive comments and messages. Finally, on the day of her graduation from high school, Brenna Martin received a special copy of the Dr. Seuss classic "Oh, the Places You'll Go!'' At first she just smiled and said, I love that book. But then he told her ‘No, open it up.'
A Georgia college student who walked 15 miles each way to attend classes was seriously injured while on his way to school by a hit and run driver. That unfortunate event caused an Atlanta woman to donate her Cadillac so the young man never again has to risk his life to make the five hour trek to school.
