Day: April 8, 2022

When we climbed the stair tower to the roof of a local distribution center along with our teaming partner, Coastal Solar, we knew which ingredients were necessary to install this massive 500kW solar pv system.  Le Creuset, at nearly a century old and known for their superior quality cookware, had asked Coastal Solar to help make their SC warehouse more efficient financially while planting their flag as a leader in environmental stewardship. We combined the talents of our two solar companies and savored the moment when Le Creuset became less reliance on fossil fuel and greatly diminished their carbon footprint.

Under the blistering sun of Southern California’s Imperial Valley, it’s not surprising that subsurface drip irrigation is more effective and efficient than furrow (or flood) irrigation, a practice in which up to 50% of water is lost to evaporation.  But a recent study also concludes that drip irrigation can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soil – which contribute to climate change and unhealthy air quality in the region – without sacrificing yields of forage crops alfalfa and sudangrass.  “It was really exciting to see,” said lead author Holly Andrews, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona. “The crop yield was at least maintained and in some cases increased, but the water use and gaseous emissions were especially decreased under drip irrigation.”

Gear up for spring in Missoula by making sustainability part of your everyday routine! Get rewarded for doing what you can, when you can, and make the sustainable shift.  We’re shaking things up this year. Spring Shift is happening April 1 – 30, 2022, with prize drawings and winners announced the week of May 2.  We’ll be raffling off epic prize bundles, full of fun products, memberships and gift cards, to help you make this an even more sustainable, vibrant year.

A new study commissioned by the EEA shows a clear hierarchy of passenger and freight transport modes, in terms of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Rail and waterborne transport have the lowest emissions per kilometre and unit transported, while aviation and road transport emit significantly more. Alongside shifting to rail and waterborne transport, improving the GHG efficiency of all motorised forms of transport remains an important objective. Moreover, monitoring their GHG efficiency on a regular basis would support these efforts. While active modes, such as walking and cycling, are outside the scope of the study, they are an obvious choice for clean and sustainable mobility because their emissions can be assumed to be close to zero.

Several nautical miles offshore, a special diving boat is a mere speck in Port Phillip Bay.  Key points: Marine scientists are rebuilding reefs using recycled scallop and oyster shells from restaurants.  The project has built 12 hectares of artificial reefs in Port Phillip Bay out of a planned 100 hectares.  A crucial part of the restoration project has been producing the angasi or native oyster.  The bay, comprising almost 2,000 square kilometres, fans southwards from Melbourne, Australia’s second-biggest city.  Two divers carrying live shellfish are descending on an artificial reef, taking another small step in an ambitious reef restoration project — the largest yet undertaken in Australia.  Known as Reef Builder, it is backed by federal and state governments and overseen by The Nature Conservancy.  “Our Commonwealth investment has produced 40 hectares of shellfish reefs, and it’s a truly fantastic program,” Environment Minister Sussan Ley said.

After first achieving LEED Silver certification for design and construction in 2019, the commercial section of Montreal’s L/AVENUE tower, owned and operated by partners Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada and BentallGreenOak, recently obtained LEED Gold O+M certification.  L/AVENUE, the 50-story mixed-use building is located on Canadiens-de-Montréal Avenue, in the heart of downtown Montreal. For the project, our green building management experts planned and coordinated the launch of the LEED certification process, while our air quality team leveraged its expertise to ensure the building achieved Gold certification performance requirements.  The building’s high energy efficiency, occupant satisfaction, access to active transportation and air quality level were some of the key elements that led to the certification.

A Fonterra directive that non-replacement calves from supplying farms enter a value stream from next year is a bold move, says William Morrison, Morrison Farming.  He says while the co-operative must be commended for the move, they will need support from the industry to eliminate euthanisation of calves on farm.  “There will need to be support from all in the industry, regardless of whether the output is higher value dairy-beef animals or better bobby calves,” Morrison told Dairy News.

Older hardware consumes much more power than newer technologies. Upgrade when you can and take care in how you recycle your old equipment. Computers often contain dangerous chemicals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic that must be disposed of properly. Here are some ways you can recycle your old gear: UW computers and other electronics hardware can be turned over to UW Surplus Property.  Personal property can be dropped off at businesses participating in the E-Cycle Washington program, which provides recycling of computers, monitors, laptops, and televisions, often at no charge. Information about participating businesses in Washington State is available at the Recycle Hotline site or by calling 1-800-RECYCLE.

Valorem Reply’s QuBites video series breaks down Quantum Computing concepts and use cases to help business leaders learn more about the next wave of technology disruption in quick and easy to consume episodes. Alongside other experts in the field, our Global Innovation Research & Incubation Director Rene Schulte shares expert tips on how to integrate this emerging tech in your business to improve operational efficiencies and drive business outcomes. In the 3rd episode of QuBites Season 5, Rene, alongwith our expert guests, Prassede Colombo, President, IIBA, Italy Chapter and Sara Felloni, Business Unit Manager for Quantum, Data Reply discuss about quantum computing and business analysis for green business.

On March 31, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth (SDSN Youth) unveils its first-ever Global Youth Innovation and Global SDG Impact Awards, which aim to recognize, showcase, support and mobilize outstanding solutions that are advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Why launch the Awards?  It has been almost seven years since the United Nations unanimously adopted the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. However, we are “tremendously off-track” to achieve the SDGs:  0 countries remain on track to meet all of the goals, 43 years behind schedule to achieve the goals, 2.5 trillion annual financing gap that needs to be closed.  During this time, SDSN Youth has been mobilizing young people worldwide and has witnessed the creativity, innovation and passion of young people who are eager to create change for a sustainable future. Many of them are already developing and even running solutions that address one or more of the SDGs. What they lack is support to scale their efforts to bring about more impactful change.

We eat chocolate for comfort, celebration, and indulgence. But what’s really going into the chocolate we buy? We have surveyed the world’s biggest chocolate companies to find out! Some are rising to the challenge, but others continue to ignore consumer demand for chocolate that’s free of child labour, poverty, deforestation and is good for people and the planet.  GOOD EGG AWARD – The 2022 Good Egg Award goes to Beyond Good, for a business model which ensures people and the planet are respected and cared for. Their smaller size has enabled this model to be refined and now they are looking to scale up.  ROTTEN EGG AWARD – 
The 2022 Rotten Egg Award goes to Storck (manufacturer of Werther’s, Toffifay, Merci) for lack of transparency and being unreasonable. They also received the Rotten Egg Award last year.

The Woolmark Company, On and SALEWA have announced the prize winners and 12 innovative finalists’ concepts for the Woolmark Performance Challenge 2021 – the preeminent ideas platform for the sports and performance market.  This year, the Woolmark Performance Challenge partnered with two brands for the first time: Swiss running specialists, On, and Italian skiwear experts, SALEWA. On challenged participating students to explore apparel innovations that respond to the highest demands of performance for modern outdoor runners, whist maximising fashion-forward wearability. Whilst SALEWA asked entrants to innovate low environmental-impact fabric technologies to create thermo-regulating apparel for mountain activities.  The Woolmark Performance Challenge is a world-leading incubation program for tertiary students. It encourages innovative thinking resulting in ground-breaking ideas whilst fostering the education and development of the next generation of game-changers. From more than 400 entries from across the globe, the 12 most promising ideas were selected as finalists, before judges selected the winners for each category.

Any developer can be a space developer with Azure. Microsoft has a long history of empowering the software development community. We have the world’s most comprehensive developer tools and platforms from Github to Visual Studio, and we support a wide range of industries and use cases from healthcare, financial services, critical industries, and now space.  As Microsoft expands its focus toward space, we are bringing the power, approachability, and security of our developer story to the next frontier. Microsoft is empowering developers with a platform for on-orbit compute at the ultimate edge, so that spacecraft running AI workloads are connected to the hyperscale Azure cloud.  We are reducing the barriers to entry for space application development and increasing the flexibility and modularity of software solutions. Enabling those building space workloads to easily leverage the productivity of our developer tools and integration with Azure services—to develop, analyze, deploy, and operate space applications in orbit and on the ground.

Bananas are one of our most popular supermarket products and most are locally grown. One of the country’s most innovative banana producers is Bartle Frere Bananas in Queensland and the business’s operations were recently showcased at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.  Through technology innovation, Hitachi has enabled the banana business to produce food in an environmentally-friendly food way. Bartle Frere Bananas demonstrates how artificial intelligence, machine learning and sensor technology can help farmers make data-driven decisions to support more sustainable agriculture. These practices include optimising farm management to ensure good quality and production while aiming to protect the land and keep consumption of water and energy low.

As businesses in Victoria, B.C., await the arrival of the first cruise ship in more than two years this weekend, an environmental group is arguing the industry’s economic impact is not worth the damage to the surrounding waters and communities.  An independent report commissioned by Stand.earth and released this week shows tourists arriving in the city from cruise ships spent $137.1 million in 2019, while non-cruise tourism — including those visiting Victoria by car or plane and staying in hotels — totalled $2.94 billion.  “The cruise industry is not the boon to Victoria that they sell themselves as,” said Anna Barford, the Canada shipping campaigner at Stand.earth.  Cruise ships that stop in Victoria are often stopping over on their way to longer-term stops in Alaska, giving passengers less than a day to visit and spend money in the B.C. capital.

We know that plastic bags, straws and microplastics have a deadly reputation when they wind up in the ocean, but there are other everyday items that are killing animals regularly without us noticing.  This story contains images that readers may find distressing.  Recently, a platypus was found dead in Warburton, 2 hours east of Melbourne, with an old hair tie wrapped around its neck.  Geoff Williams from the Australian Platypus Conservancy says platypuses are killed from hair ties more often than you might think.  “We are currently aware of one or two platypus deaths per year in Victoria caused by hair ties. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg,” he says.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. In the early 1970s, a group of fishermen organized a campaign to dump 2 million used auto tires into the Atlantic Ocean, about a mile off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., between two living coral reefs.  The goal was to build an artificial reef that would promote sea life. But it had the opposite effect: The mass of tires became an underwater blight.  William Nuckols, with Coastal America, the federal office that is helping coordinate a cleanup of the tires, says the original goal was a good one.  “The original intention,” Nuckols says, “was to try to provide a fish habitat and add to the natural coral reefs that were there.”

Supply Chain visibility and sustainability are two of the most important topics in supply chain today.  So when I came across Sony Visilion’s Head of IoT Tracking Erik Lund I knew I had to get him on the podcast.  Fortunately he was delighted to join and we had a great discussion about IoT tracking and the visibility implications of that, and we also talked about the sustainability implications of seeing the data associated with your shipments.  As usual, I learned loads, and I hope you do too…  Oh, and this is one of the first podcast episodes that I have created chapters for. If you find them useful, do let me know ([email protected]) and I’ll make the effort to do it more often!

To feed our growing global population, modern agriculture needs to boost food production. Meeting anticipated demand however will generate environmental damage, in turn undermining our future capacity to produce food.  Sustainable intensification of agriculture is one solution. This conceptual framework aspires to:  Increase food production per unit area, reduce the impact on the environment, sustain – or improve – the natural resource base on which agriculture depends for future generations strengthen resilience to future environmental change.  How to achieve this is the subject of much debate and the focus of the ASSIST (Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems) programme.

Solar photovoltaic energy represented more than 4% of the electricity generated in the United States in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.  In the automotive sector, announcements related to solar include Sunrun Inc. and Ford Motor Co.  partnering to create energy-charging solutions for the F-150 Lightning electric truck. Worksport Ltd. and its spring release of Terravis, a solar-paneled tonneau cover, using Perovskite panels by Greatcell Italy. And rumors that General Motors Co. is seeking more ways to integrate solar into its new line of vehicles.  “Solar accounted for 46% of all new electricity-generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2021, the third year in a row that solar made up the largest share of new capacity,” according to The Solar Energy Industries Association® (SEIA).