Filed under: energy, sustainable design, sustainable manufacturing, sustainable products, technology | Tags: industrial development, MIT, sustainable manufacturing, sustainable product design
Modern manufacturing methods are spectacularly inefficient in their use of energy and materials, according to a MIT research study of the energy use of 20 major manufacturing processes.
“The seemingly extravagant use of materials and energy resources by many newer manufacturing processes alongside claims of improved sustainability from products manufactured by these means is alarming,” Gutowksi and his colleagues announced, now published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).
Filed under: innovation, open source, sustainable business, sustainable design, sustainable products, technology | Tags: corporate sustainability, intellectual commons, nike, sustainable design, sustainable manufacturing
Nike recently partnered with Salesforce, Yahoo, Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-Op and others to form the GreenXchange, a web-based marketplace that will allow companies to collaborate and share intellectual property that leads to new sustainability business models and innovation.
The idea, launched by Wikinomics author Don Tapscott and Nike’s Sustainability Innovation team, is similar to the Eco-Patent Commons, an initiative started by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and IBM in 2007. The Eco-Patent Commons (EPC) created a conglomerate of IT/tech companies in Silicon Valley that were willing to share intellectual property related to solving environmental and corporate social responsibility problems. The EPC also supports sharing IP for sustainable growth in developing countries.
Nike will share more than 400 of its patents for research. One of these include their Environmentally Preferred Rubber, which contains 96 percent fewer toxins than traditional rubber. It could, for example, be used by MEC for a new line of bike tubes, helping the company bring a greener product to market cheaper and faster.
Filed under: government accountability, human rights | Tags: censorship, china, government transparency
Google is potentially cutting off all business with China after the government had ‘Chinese dissident’ Google accounts attacked.
“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Filed under: innovation, sustainable design, technology | Tags: data center, energy efficiency, innovation, sustainable design
Google claims to have the world’s most efficient data centers, yet just one of their hundreds of centers uses enough energy to power over forty thousand US homes. Finland just put them to shame with their latest design for an underground data center that will redirect heat captured from computer servers to heat the city’s homes. As data centers have been a long-standing concern for the IT industry as servers only grow larger as business increases, it’s a relief to see such creative and practical innovation for the design of new centers. Silicon Valley, please take note.
Filed under: climate change, conflict resolution, human rights, poverty alleviation | Tags: africa, agriculture, armed conflict, climate change, water scarcity
A team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and New York University just released the first qualitative study linking climate change and the risk of civil conflict. Global temperature increases could increase the likelihood of armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa as much as 50% over the next two decades. The link between conflict over food scarcity and water related to global warming has been a long-standing theory- especially for agriculture-dependent countries- but held little evidence until now. “If the sub-Saharan climate continues to warm and little is done to help its countries better adapt to high temperatures, the human costs are likely to be staggering,”, the team reports.
Filed under: climate change, corporate transparency | Tags: climate change, International Energy Agency, oil lobbyists, peak oil, transparency
The International Energy Agency, one of the last few credible resources for reliable global energy statistics, revealed Monday that it has been inflating oil statistics under pressure from US oil lobby groups. Global oil reserves are disappearing at a much faster pace than recorded, and the threat of over-reliance on fossil-fuel energy sources is much more dangerous than represented by IEA officials.
The IEA and its annual ‘World Energy Outlook’ is a compass for many country’s energy policies, depending on numbers from IEA to make decisions on future energy sourcing and security. Many national governments use IEA statistics in lieu of their own experts.
Filed under: climate change | Tags: climate change, Copenhagen, economic policy, failure to lead, international trade
In a stunning failure to lead in a time when we need it most, world leaders met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and agreed to postpone the challenging issues of climate change and use Copenhagen to set non-binding agreements. With Congress unable to pass any binding climate change legislation, Obama couldn’t take a strong stance, and without US leadership, other nations followed suit. The delegation also failed to move forward on any decisions regarding international trade and economic policy.
It’s always encouraging to know that our global leaders, when faced with a challenge, can be relied upon to do absolutely nothing.
Filed under: biomimicry, community, rethinking waste, sustainable design, sustainable living, sustainable products | Tags: biomimicry, community-supported agriculture, natural building materials, sustainable design, sustainable harvest
Debating building materials for a new house? A whole, unmilled tree can support 50 percent more weight than the largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree, and also sequesters carbon. Architect Roald Gundersen shapes live small-diameter trees- passed over by loggers as too small- into gorgeous building frames. A combination of arched trees and trunks of larger trees felled by wind, disease or insects provide naturally strong housing structures, claims Gunther and his business partner Amelia Baxter.
Pulling small trees from a high-density forest allows remaining trees and undergrowth to receive more light, air and nutrients. Their firm, Whole Tree Architecture and Construction, works in coordination with a USDA-supported community forest project that sustainably harvests lumber, firewood, herbs and mushrooms and manages a living inventory of the area.
Why synthetically design when nature already provides the answers? The strength and flexibility of tree crooks and arches “have been time-tested by environmental conditions for 200 million years”, Gunther states. Whole Trees can keep construction costs as low as $100 a square foot, and the resources used are renewable, with careful stewardship of surrounding forests.
Filed under: base of pyramid, finance, sustainable products, technology | Tags: base of pyramid, electricity, emerging markets, rural electrification, solar, sustainable technology, technology transfer
The solar industry is booming, yet its leaders have completely bypassed their largest potential market: the 1.6 billion people without access to electricity worldwide. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Eckhart at Solar Power International in LA last week, at a panel on emerging markets with the Alliance for Rural Electrification, SolarWorld, and the American Council for Renewable Energy. When asked about the industry’s ignorance of emerging markets, Eckhart replied, “This is a scandal for our industry”. Less than one percent of global production of solar panels are installed in developing countries, yet the potential markets here could prove to be the world’s largest solar markets by 2020.
Filed under: climate change, sustainable products, technology | Tags: smart grid, solar
Early October, Obama signed an executive order mandating a sustainability officer for each federal agency. Last week, he visited the country’s largest solar power installation in Florida, and declared that 3.4 billion would be invested in updating our national electricity grid. All I can say is it’s about time.
