On the hottest day of the summer last year in New York City, a white roof was measured to be 42 degrees (F) cooler than the traditional black roof it was being compared to by NASA scientists studying the city's unprecedented effort to brighten rooftops and cool down the city.
Intel's new $1 billion chip factory in Vietnam, about 10 miles from downtown Ho Chi Minh City, embraces environmental and sustainability measures far beyond those required by Vietnam's laws. Intel didn't have to go to these lengths, but the motivation for these measures is simple, said the complex's general manager: "It turns out, what's good for the environment is also good for business."
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.
More and more, we're seeing brilliant uses for household items once discarded as trash. You will never look at coffee grounds the same way.
High School seniors Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao want to continue pursuing a solution for how to make plastic decompose using natural bacteria already evolving on the planet. The two were finalists for Canada's top student biotechnology award, the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge, where their project was judged to have the greatest commercial potential of any project entry, valued at $10 million. Now they are bringing their ideas to the TED stage.
Simple yellow Post-it notes with the message "When not in use, turn off the juice," pointedly left on classroom computers, printers and air-conditioners, have helped New York public schools save $350,000 annually on utility bills. Other ideas have also achieved greater and greater energy savings.
A U.S. Green Building Council partnership released its third annual report listing the greenest colleges nationwide. The online-only guide, available as a free download, includes brief summaries of sustainability initiatives at each of the top 311 school, as well a dozen or so data points on things like renewable power use, energy efficiency and waste disposal.
Perhaps we can take a lesson from the innovative entrepreneurs of India when it comes to recycling plastics. Alka is the inventor of a process that clears our environment of plastic waste, creates a million jobs in waste management, adds useful, profitable bi-products, like fuel, to our economy and makes India a technology leader in taming plastics.
The British branch of PepsiCo, the umbrella corporation that makes Tropicana, Quaker Oats, chips and soda, has made an ambitious promise to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2023. They're also shooting for zero landfill waste; packaging that is entirely renewable, recyclable, or compostable; and zero water intake at their main manufacturing sites.
Would you bike to work or recycle more often if it meant you got free stuff at stores? Recyclebank offers rewards for recycling, and gives London commuters fresh incentives to walk or ride. Recyclebank has reached millions of people with its environmental social platform, awarding points that can be exchanged for deals and discounts at nearby stores.
This week the Ford Motor Company announced impressive results in efforts to cut waste produced in its factories. Since 2007, the car company has slashed by 44 percent its global waste output -- a total of 100 million pounds. Expanding on the success, Ford plans to further reduce the amount of waste it sends to landfills by 10% per vehicle by the end of the year.
When two college students in Oakland discovered they could grow mushrooms in used coffee grounds, they started a company to recycle the waste from local cafes. Each morning the Back to the Roots team picks up 8,000 pounds of grounds in the back of a van and are on track this year to divert 3.5 million pounds of coffee grounds from landfills.
It's been almost three years since a grand experiment began in a dog park in Ithaca, N.Y., and the results are finally in. Dog dung poses public health risks if left on the streets, hurts the environment when left near trails and takes centuries to decompose in plastic garbage bags that end up in landfills. Now, the poop is being composted along with yard waste to produce valuable soil.
A plant in Oslo, Norway began converting household food waste into liquid biogas last week, enough fuel to run a clean fleet of 135 city buses. As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will be reduced by some 10,000 tons each year, and particulate matter cut as well.
My wife and I recently realized that we have a lot of stuff collecting dust. Instead of saving it all in case we need 10 years hence, why not give it to someone who needs it now? In case you feel the same way, here are some useful places to donate all types of things
GE has begun a partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency to work on refrigeration appliance recycling best practices. It doesn't sound sexy, but GE estimates that its new recycling technology could cut refrigerator landfill waste by 85%.
In a sign that Egypt's people are ready to rebuild, thousands filled Cairo's Tahrir Square, carrying brooms, shovels, and trash bags Saturday. They're removing barricades, burned out cars and debris from the 18 days of protests that toppled Mubarak.
With the new Hawaii Hydrogen Initiative, that state may be the first in the US to successfully build a fueling infrastructure that will support thousands of hydrogen fuel cell cars. expected to come on the market in 2015.
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