(Michael Buholzer/Keystone via AP News) https://apnews.com/article/switzerland-climate-and-environment-83cc3ee9959e48301b98d68d15693b64 BERLIN (AP) — Swiss retailer Migros said on Tuesday that it is launching a coffeemaking system designed to replace capsules that produce thousands of tons of waste worldwide each year. The cooperative said its spherical capsules — described as “coffee balls” — are fully compostable, unlike the plastic and

Webinar –Click here to watch the recording. From the Climate and Sustainable Investment: Newsletter 2 The South African Financial Sector ESG Analytical Services’ Project presented its first webinar on 8 June 2022. The Webinar focused on Climate Finance for Sustainable Agriculture and showcased inspiring instruments that enhance environmental and socio-economic impact focused on regenerative agriculture by

Posted 3 May 21 By Design Indaba. From the WISA Newsletter – June 2021 An innovation designed to serve communities with no access to electricity, WaterLight makes use of an available natural resource. According to the United Nations, electricity demand is expected to increase by 70% by 2035. It’s also estimated that fossil fuel reserves will be depleted in the

Monday, June 14 2021 From GreenBuzz – Joel Makower If the circular economy is to scale beyond a relative handful of companies engaging in a relative handful of initiatives, it’ll need some pretty powerful tools to enable them to assess the impacts of their products across the full value chain: design, materials selection, sourcing, manufacturing,

9 June 2021 – From Verge Weekly – GreenBiz Over the past 4.5 billion years (give or take a few hundred million) the Earth has cultivated many perfect examples of circular economy principles — including the natural patterns through which water is withdrawn from rivers, springs, streams, lakes (and so forth) through evaporation and returned

May 2021 -Lauren Phipps Director and Senior Analyst, Circular Economy, has written an interesting article on redefining Good Design and some of the finalists in the Ray Hope Prize for nature-inspired designers. She writes: When most people think about good design, they might think of an Eames lounge chair, an iPhone or Frank Lloyd Wright’s

By Jesse Klein Greenbiz Group. As consumer products companies hunt for more sustainable packaging options, some — notably smaller brands — are turning to aluminum as an alternative to plastic. The big draw? Aluminum is touted by some manufacturers as “infinitely recyclable,” and it certainly has a much higher recycling rate in the U.S. compared to

 UNICEF have released a report entitled, “Thirsting for a Future – Water and Children in a Changing Climate”. The report can be freely downloaded from the UNICEF page. Climate change is one of many forces contributing to an unfolding water crisis. In the coming years, the demand for water will increase as food production grows,

Mexican researchers have developed a new adsorbent material, made from orange and grapefruit peels, that could help clean highly contaminated wastewater. The new process, called Instant Controlled Pressure Drop (ICPD) treatment, modifies the structure of the residues, giving them adsorbent properties such as a greater porosity and surface area. The researchers spearheading this project are

Palm oil is the world’s most common and versatile oilseed, found in products ranging from cooking oil to biofuels and household chemicals. Conventional palm oil production can be associated with illegal and unethical practices such as clearing of rainforest, land appropriations and the use of forced labour. These issues create regulatory, operational, and reputational risks

The Marselisborg Wastewater Treatment Plant in Aarhus, Denmark, produces over150% more electricity than is required to run the plant. The plant generates energy from the biogas it creates from household waste water and sewage. Carbon is extracted from the waste water and pumped into bio-digesters kept at 38°C. The bacteria on the bio-digesters produce methane

A new report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, World Economic Forum and McKinsey, suggests that by applying circular economy principles, the role of plastics and plastic packaging could be reshaped. The report, The new plastics economy: Rethinking the future of plastics, does not come up with a detailed proposal for the restructuring, but it does

A Cape town-based company, EWIZZ electric vehicles, is pushing electric powered scooters as the economic, environmentally friendly way of the future. They are selling a range of five electrically powered scooters which they claim cost R0.05 per kilometre for fuel and cut out many of the polluting components of a combustion engine vehicle such as

A new major road construction (the Tinsley Link) in the North of England, has used pulverized fuel ash for a bridge approach embankment.  The embankment, a 500m-long mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall on piled foundations, was constructed utilizing a geogrid reinforcement and enabling the beneficial use of pulverized fuel ash (PFA). The PFA, a waste

Land acquisition and resettlement is a sometime painful and emotionally charged component that often accompanies new development. Mining companies are frequently in the forefront of this component and it is for this reason that the ICMM released, in 2015, its publication, Land Acquisition and Resettlement, which outlines the lessons learned from a benchmarking study into

Kurt Kuehn and Lynette McIntire wrote an article called “Sustainability a CFO Can Love” in the April 2014 issue of Harvard Business Review. The article addresses the long standing problems of acceptance by financial professionals of sustainability as producing acceptable returns on investment. I normally find that many of the articles on sustainability that I

This article appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 122, No 1, January 2014. It talks, initially, about a case where a family built a house just under 5,000 metres from a wind turbine. One of the family members began to experience headaches, dizziness, insomnia and a ringing in her ears. Two years later, the family

The Downfall of the Plastic Bag: A Global Picture is a thorough and detailed global review of plastic bag usage and controls produced by the Earth Policy Institute. The side bar of the web page containing this article also includes a table of worldwide plastic bag regulations, as well as a number of papers and

Since “sustainability” became a buzzword in the nineties, many companies have “dipped their toes into the water” to varying degrees, to proclaim their commitment to achieving sustainable business practices. However, very few have been really successful and are committed wholeheartedly and completely to the philosophy…and then been able to show the results. One of the

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) used the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, as a platform to launch an inquiry into policy options for guiding the global financial system to invest in the transition to a green economy. Mobilising the world’s capital is seen as an essential part of the transition to a