Last night on “60 Minutes,” Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled to Charlie Rose the company’s latest advancement in customer convenience — Amazon Prime Air, which will promise package delivery by tiny, unmanned drones that Bezos called "octocopters" within 30 minutes of order placement.
Ryan Kushner and his wife, Amanda Ravenhill, launched their non-profit start-up, Hero Hatchery, whose mission is to “wake society up to the imminent threat of climate change, and illuminate the possibility it holds as a call to reinvent current unhealthy systems,” in October. They hope to raise $30,000 for the world’s first crowdfunded fellowship to support a climate-change activist who will bring out the climate change hero in us all and work to ensure climate change maintains its relevancy in the cultural zeitgeist.
LEGO Group recently announced a partnership with WWF centered around improving performance on a range of environmental priorities — including greater focus on collaboration with suppliers to reduce total carbon emissions — and committed to becoming net positive through the use of renewables by 2016.
The toy maker joins the likes of Natura, HP, Volvo, Johnson & Johnson and Sprint as the newest member of the WWF’s Climate Savers program.
Notoriously hated by children, Brussels sprouts will be doing something a little more exciting this year than lining the edges of plates on Christmas day.
A team of scientists and engineers from The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair has created the world’s first battery made entirely of Brussels sprouts, which is being used to light an 8-foot Christmas tree.
Buying organic tomatoes may not be a big deal. They taste better and they’re better for both your health and the planet; enough reasons to justify paying a price premium. No wonder organic food is leading the growth of sustainable consumption.
But it isn’t always that easy to make the more sustainable lifestyle choice. You may have found yourself feeling bad for using your car instead of public transportation. While staring at an organic cotton T-shirt, you may have wondered if you should buy it or go for the cheaper standard cotton version a couple racks away. It's often an uncomfortable struggle between collective and private benefits: the planet versus your wallet.
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Tokyo and the Business Call to Action (BCtA) last week hosted the first BCtA event in Japan to encourage the Japanese private sector to participate in innovative business approaches that create development impact.
The BCtA forum in Tokyo featured a number of innovative business practices, showcasing how companies can overcome market challenges that can benefit the poor and create social and economic impact in local communities. The event also highlighted the work that UNDP and the BCtA have initiated to promote public-private partnerships.
Nike, Inc. today celebrated the opening of a water-free dyeing facility featuring high-tech equipment that will eliminate the use of water and process chemicals from fabric dyeing at its Taiwanese contract manufacturer, Far Eastern New Century Corp (FENC). Nike has named the innovative process “ColorDry” to highlight the environmental benefits and unprecedented coloring achieved with the technology.
A new Green Coffee Carbon Footprint Product Category Rule (CFP-PCR) was published this week, providing the first CPR for the calculation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coffee production. The Green Coffee CFP-PCR rule was initiated by SAI Platform’s Coffee Working group members, including illycaffé, Nestlé, Tchibo, Mondelez and Lavazza, and standard-setting bodies 4C, Fairtrade International, Rainforest Alliance and UTZ Certified, in collaboration with the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH).
Nestlé has announced a commitment to helping reduce waste and boost responsible disposal in Chile by supporting a new recycling network.
The company has backed the “Collective Recycling Project,” which aims to recycle about 1,200 tons of waste per year through the installation of five recycling centers in the capital city of Santiago.
The project is a joint collaboration with Walmart Chile, Coca-Cola Chile, PepsiCo and Unilever, with the goal of improving waste management in the country.
Fenugreen, the company behind the revolutionary FreshPaper— an inexpensive, compostable, recyclable, organic paper insert that reduces food spoilage — this week announced The Fresh Prize, a $15,000 award to support similarly brilliantly simple solutions.
Sponsored by Fenugreen, along with Toyota and the Women in the World Foundation, the Fresh Prize is now accepting nominations for “fresh ideas that are changing your life, your community, your world.” The site insists there are no requirements or limits and lists no other criteria for qualification.
“Like a flamingo among chickens” is the cool version of “a crane among chickens” from the Chinese expression: hè lì jī qún 鶴立雞群; an appropriate description of sustainable business practices in the Asia region. It states the practices as pioneering but necessary.
Oakland, CA-based software company Lucid and utility data management provider Urjanet today announced they are teaming up to solve one of the largest barriers to deploying energy efficiency: the cost of acquiring and managing building performance data.
Through the new partnership, Urjanet’s utilityCONNECT service will automate the collection and delivery of electricity, water and natural gas billing, history and rate-plan data for Lucid’s BuildingOS energy-management platform.
From Unilever’s ‘five levers for change’ to Volkswagen’s ‘fun theory’ and Nike’s Fuelband, behavior change has become a key concern for businesses re-orienting their goals around the promotion of sustainable lives. This represents an opportune moment for drawing on the latest thinking from behavioral sciences.
Delta Air Lines, through its refinery unit, Monroe Energy, has joined other oil industry trade groups to fight the U.S. biofuel mandate requiring refiners to meet an annual biofuel quota either through production or through the purchase of credits.
Through Monroe Energy, Delta has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that challenges the EPA’s 2013 renewable fuel requirements, according to Fuel Fix.
On the same day the EPA is holding its public hearing on the proposed rule 2014 Standards for the Renewable Fuel Standard Program and the same week that Delta Air Lines takes its stand against it, Americans United for Change today announced it has created a TV spot that will soon hit the airwaves in Iowa in defense of the RFS.
We’ve all faced this great moral dilemma whenever we stay in a nice hotel. The little sign in the bathroom reads, “Please help us protect the environment and conserve water by reusing your towel.” Even those of us who consider ourselves environmentalists often balk; we’re paying hundreds of dollars to stay in their hotel, and, darn it, we really want a clean towel.
