The Hive Garden, a first-of-its-kind pollinator garden at MIT, recently opened on Saxon Lawn. Designed as a sustainability garden that will be in part maintained by students, the Hive Garden hosts nearly 40 unique varieties of plants to attract and support pollinating species.
Source: news.mit.edu
The circular economy has infiltrated the board rooms of Australian and New Zealand water utilities, according to a new report. Now to put these ideas into action. Bricks made from biosolids (bacteria and urea found in human urine) could play a role in circular water system in Australia that avoids heavy metals, microplastics and other pollutants ending up in our waterways. According to a recent Water Services Association of Australia report on water management in a circular economy, organic building materials like this tick several boxes for a circular economy as they can be returned to the biosphere at the end of their useful life. The “Bio-Bricks” invention is just one of many interesting technologies identified in the report. Another valuable material that could be extracted from urban waterways for circular economy purposes, WSAA chief executive Adam Lovell says, is hydrogen.
Companies may be cherry-picking sustainability measures that make them look good, while huge variation in what’s reported makes meaningful comparisons across firms impossible, a new international study shows.
Scientists have discovered a way to make ultra-efficient solar cells on a commercial scale using the “miracle material” perovskite.
A team from the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and Imperial College London made the discovery in a breakthrough that could have major implications for renewable energy production and reaching zero carbon objectives. Perovskite has been hailed for its remarkable properties compared to tradtional silicon solar cells, however until now they have been too unstable to be suitable for commercial use. The next-generation cells are expected to cost less, have a much higher power conversion efficiency, and be lightweight and flexible – opening up new applications like coating glass windows with thin layers of solar panels.
This study presents two different approaches to address topics on one hand related to sustainability defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and on the other hand topics related to the Societal Grand Challenges (SGCs) and Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) defined by EU Horizon2020.
Just a regular woman taking apart items of e-waste to see what is inside and what copper can be saved.
‘We expect [seafood suppliers] to be in compliance and [to] find no errors’ — Guy Pizzuti, Publix’s seafood category manager…