Group items tagged

The U.S. will have to use a variety of renewable energy technologies, like offshore wind, to transition from a carbon-based energy economy to a renewable energy-based economy, according to Andrew Myers, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University. In the U.S., "offshore wind energy is a vast, largely untapped resource of renewable energy with enormous potential," said Myers. "[T]he potential resource is estimated to have a capacity close to the existing electricity capacity of the entire nation." CleanTechnica (8/5) 

The fashion and textile industries continue to make strides towards circular models with the emergence of new resources and technologies that make a sustainable shift easier than ever before. The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute's Fashion Positive Initiative has unveiled a set of online resources designed to rapidly increase environmental and social outcomes in the fashion industry, while the H&M Foundation and The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel have uncovered a new hydrothermal process that fully separates and recycles fabric blends that can then be reused directly without any quality loss.

"The Elephant in the Boardroom" is a new working paper from the World Resources Institute that can guide discussion within companies about an uncomfortable truth: Many of today's business models are not fit for tomorrow's resource-strained world. Current consumption patterns put the global economy on an impossible trajectory. Yet few companies are fundamentally rethinking the models by which they meet customer needs. Normalizing the conversation will set the groundwork for the pursuit of new business models that allow growth within the planet's limits and generate stakeholder value in new ways.

oday marks Earth Overshoot Day - the day by which the human race will have used more of Earth's natural resources than the planet can renew in the whole year.

BSR, Rocky Mountain Institute, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund created the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, which combines the strengths of their respective programs to help corporations deploy an additional 60 GW of renewable energy capacity in the United States by 2025.

Due to skyrocketing consumer demand, particularly from Asia, today's wildlife traffickers have the resources to outfit their henchmen with weaponry and equipment that often outmatches that of the local park rangers. The poachers doing the most damage in Africa today are employed by professional trafficking syndicates, and they enjoy a level of support and financial backing unimaginable during earlier poaching crises. The poachers' arsenal includes the expanding use of military-grade equipment like helicopters, machine guns, infrared scopes, and heavy armored vehicles.

The World Resources Institute released a recommended methodology for measuring and disclosing the potential emissions from fossil fuel reserves held by coal, oil, and gas companies.

The Natural Capital Coalition launched the Natural Capital Protocol, a framework for harmonizing natural capital valuation across business sectors. The framework was developed over the last two years with input from more than 450 organizations and has been piloted by companies including The Coca-Cola Company, Dow Chemical, Nestlé, and others.

The Consumer Goods Forum, UNEP, and the World Resources Institute were among a group of organizations to launch the Food Loss and Waste Accounting and Reporting Standard-a set of global definitions and reporting requirements that enable companies and countries to measure food waste, identify its origin, and implement measures to reduce it.

After months of consultation with stakeholders, the Natural Capital Coalition has published the first draft of a suggested framework to help businesses account for the value of natural resources such as water, soil, forests and even clean air in strategic decision-making.

"Water is the ultimate shared resource," according to WWF's Lindsay Bass, and collaborative solutions to its depletion are crucial. WWF is working with companies to manage their water use through its Water Risk Filter tool and its strategic alliances with the private sector. I spoke with Bass about the opportunities for companies to improve their water management and become "positive actors" in shared watersheds. 

Worn Again has developed a first-of-its-kind textile-to-textile chemical recycling technology . the aim is for this unique process to enable the 'recaptured' polyester and cellulose from cotton to be spun into new fabric, creating a circular resource model for textiles. H&M and Kering's PUMA brand will monitor the testing.

New research points to more bad news for the state of China's water supply, as its booming economy continues to heap pressure on natural resources, according to scientists.

From a real-time view into deforestation to an innovative approach to delivering fresh food while minimizing waste, here are sites to watch this year.

We are on the cusp of a new growth era, one where growth is driven by the interaction between rapid technological innovation, sustainable infrastructure investment and increased resource productivity. Ambitious climate action across key economic systems-energy, cities, food and land use, water and industry-can lead to higher productivity, more resilient economies and greater social inclusion. It is the growth story of the 21st century.

World Resources Institute launched the Better Buying Lab, a joint initiative with Google, Hilton Worldwide, and others to develop behavior change strategies that foster increased consumption of sustainable foods.

The Coca-Cola Company, which uses about 300 billion liters of water a year - a quantity so big it's as if every person on earth donated 40 liters of the shared resource of water to its operations -  announced Monday that it reached a goal it set a decade ago: To "replenish" or restore the equivalent quantity of all the water it uses in a year in its global operations to produce, bottle and sell Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Minute Maid orange juice and hundreds of other beverages.

EUROPEN and 35 other associations representing major consumer goods brands, packaging producers, material producers and extended producer responsibility organizations are calling for a long-term, ambitious EU policy framework that enables and facilitates sustainable resource use from a full life-cycle perspective, incentivizes economies of scale and takes into account value chains at all levels, each with their different functional needs, supply and demand realities.

Washington is suing Monsanto over widespread PCBs contamination, the first U.S. state to take such an action. Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, at a press conference in Seattle on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Washington is seeking damages on several grounds, including product liability for Monsanto's alleged failure to warn about the dangers of PCBs; negligence; and trespass for injuring the state's natural resources.

The Rockefeller Foundation will collaborate with the USDA, EPA, and 10 private sector and non-profit organizations to create "Further With Food: Center for Food Loss and Waste Solutions," an online information exchange that aims to provide best practices for preventing, recovering, and recycling food loss and waste. The website will officially launch later this month (January 2017).