Sustainability Trends & News Worth Exploring — November 22
Sustainability alone cannot fix waste management woes, says expert.
Both sustainability practices and a circular economy can help maximize the world's resources. Still, the ideas are not interchangeable, according to a new brief from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
According to Rachel Meidl, Fellow in Energy and Environment at the Baker Institute, a circular economy (CE) aims to remedy "unsustainable production, consumption and waste generation" by encouraging innovations that reduce waste and increase reuse. Meidl is available to discuss the topic with the news media.
Bamboo has been used for thousands of years in Asia. Now, it could help solve construction's sustainability problem
Searching for new ways to build sustainable homes, Earl Forlales decided to look not into the future but into the past.
Like generations of Filipinos, his grandparents lived in a "Bahay Kubo" -- a traditional, boxy, single-story bamboo hut on stilts, indigenous to the Philippines. "Filipinos have been using bamboo (for housing) even before colonial times, for thousands of years," he says.
Strong and flexible, bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world: while soft and hardwoods can take between 40 and 150 years to mature, bamboo is ready to harvest in as little as three years. When treated and engineered, it can last for decades. Realizing the Bahay Kubo could be adapted to create a contemporary home, Forlales began designing his own bamboo houses.
Sustainability: The 22 next big things, from eco-fertilizer to 3D printed wood
With the planet in crisis, some of the most impactful technological advancements today are focused on lessening humanity's impact on the planet. The Sustainability winners of Fast Company's inaugural Next Big Things in Tech awards create batteries that can power a renewable future. They're reducing food waste (or turning it into fertilizer), making our appliances more efficient, and recycling everything from wood scraps and shingles to lithium-ion batteries.
See a full list of the Next Big Things in Tech across all categories here.
One farm tried to make sustainable food affordable. Here's what happened
In 2013, Chris Newman started Sylvanaqua Farms to raise chickens and pigs sustainably and become an example of a Black and Indigenous farmer who could make it work among the overwhelmingly white crowd of U.S. farm owners.
He encountered the great issues
First, meat in the United States is relatively affordable because of a large, centralized industry that processes livestock at scale. Livestock producers who go outside of the industry model have to charge more for their products. Newman has criticized the sustainable agriculture movement for producing food that is not accessible or affordable.
The second problem is that almost 97% of the people who run farms in the U.S. are white. Black and Indigenous people are far less likely to have inherited land or family wealth, so it is harder to get started as farmers.
Seafood sustainability top of mind for shoppers
Studies in early 2020 by GlobeScan, a Toronto-based independent research and strategy consultancy, for instance, revealed that 58% of North American seafood consumers agree that it is necessary to consume fish and shellfish only from sustainable sources to protect the ocean. In addition, 48% of North American shoppers are willing to pay more for seafood from a certified sustainable fishery.
Eaton names Harold V. Jones company's first chief sustainability officer
Power management company Eaton today announced that Harold V. Jones had been named chief sustainability officer and executive vice president, Eaton Business System (EBS), effective December 1. Jones will continue to report to Eaton Chairman and CEO Craig Arnold.
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