Climate Technology
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IKEA will ship disposable furniture on disposable pallets
IKEA knows from disposable. So when the company realized it could save money and shipping space by using cardboard shipping pallets, it tossed out its traditional wooden pallets like last year's BILLY bookshelf. The new pallets can support loads as heavy as the wooden pallets could, but they’re only a third as high and weigh […]
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Live chat about Walmart’s greenwashing
Join a live chat with Stacy Mitchell about Walmart's sustainability efforts and how they've been coming up short, on Nov. 30 at 3:00 p.m. ET / noon PT.
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‘Human centipede’ business model saves 39 million tons of CO2
One company's trash can be another's treasure — for instance, a server farm produces excess heat, making heat a waste product, but a greenhouse runs on heat and considers it a necessity. The U.K.'s National Industrial Symbiosis Program (NISP) helps match up companies that produce waste with companies that need it. Essentially, it's a Human […]
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Infographic: The metals that make our technology are running out
This infographic by Camden Asay (click to embiggen) shows that we're fast running out of the stuff that powers our vehicles and our weaponry. But we've got even less time left with our gadgets. Yttrium and indium, two of the rare-earth elements that enable us to have TVs, computer monitors, and touch screens — oh, […]
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Electric car ad from 1912
Matt Novak of the always worthwhile blog PaleoFuture just stumbled across this ad for an electric car — from 1912. The Columbus Buggy Company once employed 1,000 people in a factory that produced horse-drawn carriages, and at the dawn of the automobile it attempted to make the leap to motorized versions. At the time, there was nothing odd about […]
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Giant banks screwing the economy are also screwing the climate, says report
When they're not making massively leveraged bets on the collapsing value of your savings account, the world's largest banks are doing their best to destroy the ability of this planet to support human life, says a new report. Watchdog group BankTrack investigated which banks are financing Big Coal, and discovered that America's largest financial institutions […]
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Interactive map shows hybrid and electric car sales in your area
See the map This interactive map from NPR, which shows hybrid and electric car sales figures across the U.S., is a handy way of calculating the hippie concentration of your area at a single glance. But it also might help predict which areas will get EV infrastructure soonest, because of high demand. Also, it's kind […]
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The next small thing: How sustainable neighborhoods could reshape cities
Lower Downtown Denver has become the city’s night life hub — and a laboratory for community-level sustainability.Photo: Wally GobetzI once worked for a New Yorker who loved to wisecrack that the only difference between Denver and yogurt was that “yogurt’s got culture.” Looking at the Mile High City’s endless sprawl of lookalike, Anywhere, U.S.A. subdivisions, […]
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Re-Occupy Main Street: Entrepreneurs revive down-and-out business districts
Designer Will Phillips (pictured) and John Bolster have opened Sandtown Millworks in a former bank with help from a Operation:Storefront grant.Photo: Elizabeth Evitts DickinsonLast week kicked off that special time of year when indulgence and guilt face off in the ultimate death match, prompting headlines like this one in the “healthy living” section of the […]
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Behind closed doors, Obama administration politicizes the regulatory process
When former Harvard Law Professor and eclectic intellectual Cass Sunstein was named administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), conservative, industry-oriented Wall Street Journal editorial writers enthused that his appointment was a “promising sign.” A slew of subsequent events has proved their optimism well placed, as we have noted repeatedly in CPRBlog. […]