China's emissions of carbon dioxide fell last year for the first time in 13 years - a drop of 2 percent during a year when their GDP was still growing by 7.4%. This decoupling of economic growth from emissions is significant and should buoy clean energy efforts around the world.
The Hamm's Brewery in St. Paul, Minnesota closed in 1997, and now one of the vacant buildings is being renovated into an urban farm. A group called Urban Organics wants to bring more jobs, fresh vegetables and fish to restaurants and markets in the Twin Cities.
Clothing company Patagonia is asking people not to buy its outdoor sportwear and gear unless the really need it. The company may be the first ever to ask customers to formally take a pledge to reduce consumption and be partners, along with eBay, in the effort to keep products out of the landfill or incinerator.
Illegal logging has practically been eliminated in the western Mexico wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly, according to a report released in August. The successful anti-logging patrols and payments to rural residents may help solve other forestry conflicts throughout the country.
A university student has invented a bottle that turns humid air into a half liter of water every half hour.
This plant will turn trash into coal replacement, reducing West Virginia CO2 emissions by 28,000 tons every year.
Larsen Jay is a man who knows the power of flowers and the joy they can bring. After being confined in a hospital and sharing his many bouquets with patients whose rooms were empty of color, he created Random Acts of Flowers to repurpose leftover and discard flowers in Knoxville, Tennessee.
After reading an article in the local newspaper, Cassandra Lin of Westerly, Rhode Island discovered that many residents could not afford to heat their homes. Inspired to do something, she formed a team of five seventh graders to recycle waste cooking oil and turn it into biofuel for distribution to needy families. Started in 2008, TGIF (Turn Grease Into Fuel) works with local biofuel companies to recycle the grease from residents and restaurants, and refine it into biodiesel. The award-winning project has been collecting more than 36,000 gallons of waste cooking oil a year, bringing an estimated value of $60,000 of alternative energy that keeps 92 needy families warm in the winter.
The PaperLab can create a ton of new paper from waste documents in your office every month, while saving up to 12,000 gallons of water.
A breakthrough design out of Egypt could dramatically cut the cost of purifying water—and make the process easy enough for individuals to do themselves.
Syrians left without electricity in a Jordan U.N. camp, can light up their homes in the coming dark days of winter, thanks to IKEA.
Some of the world's richest people are putting their money on innovation as the best bet to roll back climate change.
Packing peanuts may protect your fragile shipments, but they can damage a fragile environment. Now, scientists have found a way to crush them, bake them and recycle them into fast-charging, long-lasting batteries.
Bhagwati Agrawal tapped a "river from the sky" to supply water year-round to 10,000 people in the driest part of India.
Researchers acknowledge that any rechargeable battery from an electric car will gradually lose its capacity to store energy a time. That's why a number of projects and new ventures (by Nissan and GM) are already under way to explore second-life applications for lithium-ion batteries
The U.S. added more solar power capacity than natural gas in 2015, for a record 7.3 gigawatts of electric power.
Heifer Project International (HPI) provides income-producing animals to people in nearly 40 countries. Shoppers buy an animal in honor of a friend or relative and send the recipient an attractive card describing the gift of hope being given in his or her name.
This 24-year-old hero left his job at J.P. Morgan to start a nonprofit that has saved 100,000 pounds of good food for delivery to homeless shelters in NYC.
China's richest man is spending millions to preserve 28,000 acres of pristine wilderness in the New York Adirondack Mountains.
H&M has pulled inspiration from three centuries of haute couture to offer brides the chance to be as beautifully dressed as they are socially-conscious.
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