Every company ought to behave and operate in a sustainable way at all levels of operation. There is an obvious environmental argument for doing this, but some people don’t initially see the economic value. In this TED talk the economic efficiencies of sustainable manufacturing, distribution, and marketing are explored.
Environment
Beets for Road Ice Removal
The traditional approach to deicing roads is to cover the roads (and thus the ground around the road) in salt – which is absolutely awful for the environment. Because so many people drive cars the demand for road salt is high and has come to negatively impact local economies and environments.
There is a solution to make salting less damaging and it’s already being used in some communities.
Beets are usually just used to create sugar or, like at Schrute Farms, beet soup. In Ontario roadworks departments have been using a byproduct from beet sugar processing to clear ice off of roads. They mix the beet byproduct with salt to create a new brine that works better and harms less.
Niagara Region has used the mixture for about three years, resulting in a 30 per cent reduction in road salt which damages tender fruit trees and vines, said Dave MacLeod, the region’s manager of transportation operations and technology.
The Ontario transportation ministry is working with Oakville and Grey County to test the effectiveness of other beet juice-based products that are added to brine, said a ministry spokesman.
“The ministry’s objective is to provide safe highways for all travellers by using the best available technology. At the same time, we recognize our responsibility to protect the environment, so we use technology to help us determine the best way to clear our highways in the most environmentally friendly, cost-effective way,†he said.
The Hanging Gardens of Singapore
The Hanging Gardens of Ancient Babylon was known for it’s amazing vertical garden and to this day it’s not clear how the gardens functioned (or how it was built). That hasn’t stopped enterprising architects in Singapore from creating a modern version of the hanging gardens in skyscraper form!
Designed by WOHA, the block-long “hotel and office in a garden” sits on a narrow plot that opens onto Singapore’s central business core and is situated across from a verdant parkland and near the riverbank. Slab-like towers, which echo those rising in downtown just in the distance, are suspended above a green zone of tangled flora and palm trees that thrive in the tropical climate. The vegetation is rooted to curved terraces that are themselves fixed to the towers’ glass facades. “The project is a study of how we can not only conserve our greenery in a built-up high-rise city centre but multiply it in a manner that is architecturally striking, integrated and sustainable,” the architects say.
Rest of World to Canada: Stop Risking The Future
COP 19 ends this week and there is at least one clear message coming from the meeting: Canada is risking the wellbeing of future generations. While most countries agree that climate change needs to be dealt with and carbon output needs to be curtailed, Canada is refusing to budge on its pro-tar sands stance while keeping an ineffiecent resource-based economy running.
Hopefully Canadians will be able to notice the rest of the world is concerned about more than just Rob “Crack Mayor” Ford. Other countries are clearly thinking into the future and let’s hope Canada can do the same.
Good on the forward-thinking participants of COP 19!
“How can Canadians not see that their grandchildren will share the world with nine billion other people (by 2050)? And I have no certainty at all that it will be a livable world.”
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“We’re not, I think, a stupid race. I know that political timescales can be very short. But I believe that these next two years – 2014, we have to change course, and 2015, when we need sustainable development goals and a robust, fair climate agreement – we can still do it.“We need a forward-looking leadership, and that won’t come from Canadian politicians unless it comes from the Canadian people.”
Carbon Output Shrinking as Economies Grow
Some odd people think that environmental policies and mandated efficiencies ruin economies, well, now there is another reason why those people are wrong. A report just released will hopefully have an impact on the climate talks in Poland happening this month shows the disconnect between economic growth and destroying the planet. Their findings buck the trend of wastefulness being associated with economic growth, which means that in all likelihood pro-environemnt polices of the past decade are having a very positive effect!
“The small increase in emissions [of 2012]… may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase of global CO2 emissions, and ultimately of declining global emissions,” declares the Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2013 Report, published by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) last week. It analyses the latest emissions data, right up to 2012.
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The data show that global carbon dioxide emissions rose by 1.4 per cent in 2012. Allowing for it being a leap year, the underlying increase was just 1.1 per cent, says the report, compared with an average of 2.9 per cent since 2000.Importantly, the emissions rise is considerably less than the increase in global GDP of 3.5 per cent. “We see a decoupling of CO2 emissions from global economic growth,” says Greet Janssens-Maenhout of the JRC in Ispra, Italy, a co-author on the report.