Day: April 16, 2022

Scotland Excel is preparing to host its annual event for the local government sector – with this year’s event set to focus on Scotland’s Green Economic Recovery, supporting climate change and sustainability objectives as we move towards a Net Zero Scotland. The event will take place online on Wednesday 18th May – and tickets are now available!
The conference will deliver content through individual sessions, across seven sessions which you will be able to join via your laptop, tablet or mobile.

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of climate change, growing inequalities and biodiversity loss1. To meet these challenges and unlock the transformational capacity of research, we urgently need a sustainability science that is accessible and mutually beneficial to all2. How do the science and practice of ethnobiology position themselves in the global sustainability debate? What is the potential role of the discipline for achieving sustainable development, and in particular the Sustainable Development Goals? And more specifically, how are recent advances in ethnobiology pushing the frontiers of knowledge needed to achieve sustainable development? In this interactive session, we will ponder and explore these issues with researchers and practitioners.

Raleigh, N.C., has become a pioneer of true sustainability. The city implemented a three-pronged strategy the focuses on: Environmental Stewardship, Social Equity and Economic Strength.  So the city is not just installing plug-in stations for hybrid and electric vehicles and reducing greenhouse gases, it’s making buildings more efficient, reclaiming and recycling materials and resources, creating green jobs and improving infrastructure, transportation, storm water management and parks and recreation. In fact, Raleigh was named the #2 Fasted-Growing Clean (Green) Economy Job Growth among 100 Largest Metros by The Brookings Institution.  It’s a three-level plan that’s made Raleigh the first LED City on the planet and given us a chance at a higher quality of life. And meeting planners can also benefit from these practices by their events and attendees utilizing these green infrastructures and features around Raleigh.

The world’s population is growing, as is the demand for food, which means there is a pressing need to feed more people with a limited amount of land. For example, if the planet’s 7.6 billion people were to consume as much food as the average person in the United States of America, global demand would exceed the available land. In fact, it would take nearly 4.5 worlds to meet this demand.  But there’s more for sustainable farming to consider than the need to supply all humanity with sufficient, safe food: this also has to be done while making the lowest possible ecological impact. The planet’s limited resources need to be used as efficiently as possible.  The need to meet the world’s growing demand for food is creating a dilemma for dairy farmers: production has to be ramped up, but they also need to do their part to fight climate change. The solution is reliable products that allow farmers to not waste resources, and automation represents an opportunity to do this. The dairy industry is steadily transitioning to a more sustainable and efficient way of working, enabling suppliers to meet the world’s growing demand while also lowering emissions and water use.

USD Students, San Diego community members, and supply chain professionals are invited to join educators and industry professionals from diverse organizations at the 11th annual Supply Chain Management Institute’s Spring Symposium. This year, the one-day virtual conference will focus on sustainability and its relationship to the triple bottom line including common financial, social and environmental issues in supply chain management as well as tools, processes and metrics that can be used to address the needs of ‘people, planet and profits.’  Sustainability is a rapidly evolving issue that supply chain professionals are facing in organizations of all sectors. Global challenges within increasingly extended supply chains mean that it is now impossible for an organization to ignore regulatory, economic, environmental and reputational pressures to address the sustainability agenda of ‘people, planet and profits.’

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Ibrahim Odumboni, has urged engineers to design bailing machines for plastic materials to make recycling more attractive and less capital intensive.  He flayed the use of brown pet bottles for packaging of plastic drinks, urging firms doing so to stick to white ones.  Odumboni stated these at a stakeholders’ consultative forum for plastic recycling, organised by Giz, a German firm, at the Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of Pennsylvanians agree state lawmakers should place a high priority on funding for state parks and forests, according to a recent state poll of likely voters.  The agreement was broad-based and bipartisan, including majorities of voters regardless of their party affiliation, age, gender, geography, or ethnicity.  “Pennsylvanians – no matter who they are, where they live, or what political views they hold – support investing in our state parks and forests and protecting our precious natural resources,” said Brad Mallory, Board Chair of the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, which commissioned the scientific statewide poll.  In addition, the poll shows that 67 percent of Pennsylvania likely voters support using as much as $125 million of the state’s share of the federal American Rescue Plan’s funding on the maintenance and repair of state parks and forests. 

The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD) today priced the Wildlife Conservation Bond (WCB) in support of South Africa’s efforts to conserve endangered species. Also known as the “Rhino Bond,” this five-year $150 million Sustainable Development Bond includes a potential performance payment from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which will contribute to protecting and increasing black rhino populations in two protected areas in South Africa, the Addo Elephant National Park (AENP) and the Great Fish River Nature Reserve (GFRNR). AENP is managed by the South African National Parks (SANParks) and GFRNR is managed by Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA).

When devices such as computers, smart phones and batteries are sent for recycling, not all the materials are captured for use in new devices. Specialist coatings are often made with rare and expensive materials to enable our modern electronics to work. However, these coatings can cause problems when it comes to recycling and the materials are not always recovered but incinerated to produce ‘heat from waste’. This means that the expensive, highly engineered coating has been lost and its value not realised.” “adhesives often make our phones water tight and ensure longer lifetimes of electronic products, however when it comes to recycling these products the adhesives make it difficult to take the products apart, wavelength sensitive adhesives would make this more straightforward.

Fast fashion has a sustainability problem, and a TCNJ professor is heading to Finland to find out if intellectual property laws, of all things, have anything to do with it. This spring, Susanna Monseau, a professor of interdisciplinary business, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study the effects of trademark laws on sustainable fashion with researchers at Turku University of Applied Sciences in Finland. By speaking with fledgling companies about their experiences developing new sustainable technologies, she will investigate whether trademarks and intellectual property laws stifle innovation. “The whole purpose of intellectual property is to promote creativity,” says Monseau, who will travel to Finland in August. “But it doesn’t necessarily work like that.” The global apparel industry is a huge polluter, accounting for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a problem that is expected to worsen in the coming year as demand for cheap garments and accessories grows by 60% by 2030.

Most of us on earth now live in cities. By 2050, more than two-thirds of us will. And by the end of this century, demographers predict, 85% of the world’s population will live in cities. By then, demographers estimate, cities like Lagos in Nigeria and Mumbai in India will have 60 million or more inhabitants, and much of the world’s urban growth will be in Africa.  What will this mean for climate change, and how will climate change affect growing urban populations? Much depends on whether smart decisions are made now about how expanding cities develop, and how existing cities—especially in energy-intensive countries like the United States—adjust to be more climate-friendly.

Fort Worth Water offers free water use assessment and comprehensive report services with the SmartWater ICI Assessment Program. The services are available to all Fort Worth industrial, commercial and institutional water customers.  The cost of water is deceptively low. In reality, facilities pay for water twice by paying for water supplied and wastewater discharged. So paying for lost or wasted water adds up fast.  Water use assessments are a best management practice for water conservation to prevent water loss due to leaks, reduce water use and improve water efficiency across a facility.

We are currently inviting proposals for the ninth edition of Cynfas, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’s digital magazine, with the theme of Sustainability. We are very interested in the voices of those approaching visual culture from different angles, and no professional art/music/writing background is required to apply.  You do not have to have a professional art/music/writing background to apply and we are very interested in the voices of those approaching visual culture from a different angle. Contributors will take a work or works in the Museum’s Art Collection as a starting point or reference and will create a work of their own in response.