Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

Sara Neff, vice president for sustainability at Kilroy Realty, says an upcoming project in San Francisco will be the real estate investment trust's most innovative sustainability project. The site "will feature a living roof, use of storm water for toilet flushing, solar panels and bricks grown from bacteria," writes Sarah Borchersen-Keto

In response to cries of animal mistreatment, some winter-wear companies have sworn off live-plucked, force-fed down, while others have dropped it completely.

sustainable building ratings based on creating "good" buidlings not just less harmful. Ratings are also based on performance of a buidling as opposed to construction elements.

Just 12% of the global population lives in cities with acceptable air quality, and half of all urbanites are subjected to air pollution levels more than 2.5 times the recommended threshold, according to a new study from the World Health Organization. Mexico City, Karachi and Delhi are among the worst offenders, and researchers also found poor air quality in the U.S. and in European metropolises such as Paris and London

Between 1970 and 2010 populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish around the globe dropped 52 percent, says the 2014 Living Planet Report released today by World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 

The cost of doing business in California has risen for builders who, in the face of the severe drought, now need to find grey water to keep the dust down. In addition, many are building xeriscaping into home design to reduce water use. "We're addressing a social need -- that we have to find ways to live with less water," said Barry Grant, Northern California division president for Meritage Homes. American City Business Journals/Sacramento, Calif. (5/7) 

The Fashion Footprint app can scan clothing tags and provide ratings information on everything from factory safety to worker health. Fashion Footprint lets shoppers connect directly with the makers of clothes through an interactive, audio-visual experience, and learn how their purchase decisions affect the lives of people around the world.

Since 1994, the researchers have found increasing amounts of evidence suggesting that lion bones are starting to replace tiger bones in certain tonics and cure-alls. Records show the industry forming in fits and starts-a skeleton here, a live lion there. The real action, though, began in 2007, after the international community adopted stricter measures to protect tigers and other big cats in Asia. The following year, South Africa issued permits for the export of 50 lion skeletons. By 2011, that number had jumped to 573 skeletons.

Leaders of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and 16 other organizations sent an open letter urging the Green Building Initiative (GBI) to strengthen its Green Globes standard or state more explicitly that their standard is less rigorous than LEED or Living Building Challenge ones. The letter also urged GBI to stop attacking the credibility of LEED standards.

California could ditch fossil fuels altogether by midcentury at a cost of $1.1 trillion, and would earn back most or all of that price tag through climate benefits and fuel savings, a new report suggests. Going 100% renewable would also save 10,000 lives and $100 billion in health care costs due to reduced pollution, the report found

Millions of "invisible environmentalists" sift through trash for recyclable material. A rapidly growing program now provides them a living wage. 

While so much of our lives have veered toward the digital, many organizations' operations still rely to some degree on paper. Innovative solutions to help minimize the impact of continued paper use include print-optimization technologies and more "sustainable" fonts. Now, Seiko Epson Corporation has developed what it believes to be the world's first compact office paper-making system capable of producing new paper from securely shredded waste paper with minimal use of water.

While so much of our lives have veered toward the digital, many organizations' operations still rely to some degree on paper. Innovative solutions to help minimize the impact of continued paper use include print-optimization technologies and even more "sustainable" fonts.

They'll always have Paris. But what did the U.N. climate summit mean to these business leaders who lived it? Execs from H&M, BASF and others weigh in

New research suggests that millions of Americans currently live in regions that would be inundated by rising oceans if global temperatures continue to rise. The major remaining question isn't whether such change is coming, but rather how quickly it will come, says researcher Benjamin Strauss. "The question is, how long is the fuse and has it been lit yet?" he says. 

France's environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, abruptly resigned from his post during a live French radio interview Tuesday, citing "an accumulation of disappointments" in Emmanuel Macron's government.

For thousands of years humans have existed on Earth, but it is only in the last 100 or so that plastics have entered our lives. These days you can barely go a minute without touching something made from some kind of plastic. But while we've been getting all swept up in the convenience that synthetic polymers bring us, the trash has been piling up. Millions of metric tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, and no one really knows where it is and what damage it is causing. So ... what are we to do about it?

Live Zero is part of a growing movement of "zero-waste" supermarkets that aim to end packaging waste by doing away with packaging altogether. The concept began in Europe more than a decade ago, and has since spread globally. There are now zero waste supermarkets from Brooklyn to Sicily to Malaysia to South Africa.

Billed as a planetary health diet for both the Earth and its people, the set of guidelines put forward by the EAT-Lancet Commission gun for nothing short of a "Great Food Transformation," something they say would feed 10 billion people, save lives and avoid large-scale environmental destruction.

Our live chat explored what value consumers place on the sustainability of the products they buy. Here are 10 things we learned