Tracy Lynn DelValle of Gardner, Massachusetts posted a story and photo on Facebook proving that (in her words), Not all kids nowadays are thoughtless. It only took them 30 seconds to respond to an elderly lady laboring to shovel snow.
A start-up in Northern California is working on creating solar windows that could act as solar panels while also blocking sunlight from entering office buildings to reduce their energy needs. The company, Pythagoras Solar won a $100,000 prize last week in the GE Ecomagination Challenge, for its idea.
An innovative financing mechanism for achieving the green jobs and carbon cuts mandated in New York was passed last week by the state legislature. The Power NY Act funnels energy savings from individual electric bills to the cause of financing energy efficient retrofits on one million buildings and homes.
Are you tired of misplacing your keys, remote control or iPad? A clever invention called Stick-N-Find can help you find anything within 100 feet using your smart phone and Bluetooth. The application uses small tokens that you can affix to anything -- a device, a child or an animal -- for instant location using your Apple or Android phone. 4,500 people on the internet were impressed enough with the device that they've funded the project to the tune of $340,000.
What does an NFL player do during months of forced lockout and unending labor disputes with football team owners? Some athletes are spending the time working out with teammates, but Denver safety David Bruton has set himself on a different path — he's spending the lockout as a substitute teacher at his old high school in Ohio, teaching social studies.
Math. The very word conjures painful memories: long division . . . Square roots. Take that unpopular academic subject, a dedicated visionary, and $23 three million, and what have you got? Glen Whitney's Museum of Mathematics (MoMath for short) which opened December in New York City.
A 10-year-old boy was moved to tears when he saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour fly over his school on its way to its new home at the California Science Center and even more excited when he could walk around the gargantuan space craft at the museum, touching the tires that flew in space. Suddenly he saw the possibilities of a career in math, science, technology and engineering.
Mrs. Flexer has been a first-grade teacher for 41 years, and on her final day, a giant surprise was waiting in her classroom. Students through the generations had returned to let her know she was their favorite.
Kansas businessman Kevin Perz stunned his home economics teacher from 37 years ago, Marilyn Mecham, with a $10,000 thank you check.
A group called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength came to Washington, DC this week to ask the debt reduction Super Committee to raise taxes on millionaires so that everyone can pay their fair share. Emphasizing community responsibility over greed, 200 millionaires signed a letter that calls for Bush-era tax cuts to end for those earning more than a million dollars a year.
Nike's World Cup jerseys for the 2010 South Africa games were made of 100 percent recycled polyester, with each jersey taking eight plastic bottles out of landfills. The net result of that one project alone was reusing 13 million plastic bottles, and showed what was possible with the company's new ethos.
In two recent feasibility experiments, European airlines KLM and Thompson Airlines have integrated cooking oil-based biofuels into their passenger routes, in a 50-50 mixture with jet fuel.
The new World Trade Center in New York currently under construction promises to be the most environmentally advanced structure ever built at this scale. In a project of this size, a LEED Gold certification would be a first of its kind, said Eduardo Del Valle, Director of Design Management, who has incorporated dozens of green strategies like hydrogen fuel cells into the skyscraper's design.
Landfills are a constant reminder of the waste we produce, but a new innovation could throw out the notion of a "dump" by turning them into productive solar power dynamos. In Georgia, a landfill generates renewable energy while covering nine million cubic yards of municipal solid waste with solar panels.
An innovative project called The Green Schoolhouse Series is on a mission -- with the help of volunteers, school officials, community members, and corporations -- to build healthy and efficient green schoolhouses on existing, low-income, public school campuses.
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.
A new breed of cowboy is changing how ranching is being done in the American West, and managing the land in benevolent and environmentally sensitive ways because they think it will help them survive – and make money.
Africa produces 70% of the world's chocolate and 60% of the world's vanilla crop, yet the continent makes just 1% of finished chocolate bars, which leaves very little profit for the essential farming communities. Now, an innovative company started by former Peace Corps volunteers is disrupting that market spiral to make the world's best chocolate bars -- and make a difference -- in Madagascar.
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.
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