Our self-hosted, solar-powered, off-grid website has been running for 15 months now. In this article, we present its energy and uptime data, and calculate the embodied energy of our configuration. Based on these results, we consider the optimal balance between sustainability and server uptime, and…
Source: www.lowtechmagazine.com
No longer for sale, beauty retailer Space NK is looking to grow internationally under new chief executive officer Andy Lightfoot.
The partnership between Inter IKEA Group and the Foundation will focus on putting the home furnishing business on the global circular map and accelerating the transition to a circular economy within IKEA and beyond. Working together, one of the first projects will be to develop a common glossary of terms to support an industry-wide transition. Lena Pripp-Kovac, chief sustainability officer, Inter IKEA Group, said: “To become circular is one of our big ambitions and challenges for the future. It is a transformational shift of our entire business from how we develop our products and services, and source materials, to how we work through the supply chain and meet our customers.
Here are this year’s honorees for outstanding sustainability achievements at NC State University.
The process of global warming begins with the release of greenhouse gases, such as methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, water vapour and fluorinated gases. Outgoing infrared radiation, or longwave radiation, is absorbed from the Earth’s surface by these gases as well as aerosols, hence the lower layers of the atmosphere become warmer and less energy is emitted by the Earth’s surface. This is known as the greenhouse effect; without it, the Earth would be a very cold place, with a mean surface temperature about 33°C lower than it is now. But approximately since the beginning of the Industrial Age, the concentrations of greenhouse gases have reached unprecedented levels. The amount of carbon dioxide in the troposphere, or the lowest layer of the atmosphere, has risen from 280 ppm to about 400 ppm. methane levels have exceeded 1800 ppb, an increase from approximately 700 ppb in pre-Industrial times.
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Sustainability, an international, peer-reviewed Open Access journal.
Support for a shift to a circular economy has been growing since the World Economic Forum (WEF) undertook a multi-year collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation under the Project Mainstream to accelerate a transition. Project Mainstream is a CEO-led initiative that helps to scale business innovations related to the circular economy. The idea behind the circular economy is to reuse and recycle resources multiple times to keep them in use for as long as possible and minimise waste. Building on the work of the WEF and the MacArthur Foundation, the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy – PACE- was launched in 2017 as a public-private collaboration. It is co-chaired by the CEO of Philips and the heads of the Global Environment Facility and UN Environment, along with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the International Resource Panel, Circle Economy and Accenture Strategy as knowledge partners. The World Economic Forum hosts and facilitates the Platform. The Global Leadership Group currently includes over 40 CEOs, ministers and heads of international organisations committed to leading a portfolio of projects and activities. Project focus areas include plastics, electronics, food and bioeconomy, the business model, and market transformation across China, Asean, Europe and Africa. Following the trend across Asia, businesses are increasingly discarding the decades-old “take, make, waste” model in favour of the circular economy in which waste is minimised and products are kept in the market in one virtuous loop. The approach has the potential to spur a new industrial revolution, Eco-Business Magazine reported recently. For example, in Taiwan, used coffee grounds collected from Starbucks cafes are turned into T-shirts, socks and soaps by Taiwanese firm Singtex. Lighting giant Philips gives office landlords in Singapore free lights in return for a share of the energy saved. In the Philippines, discarded fishing nets are sold by local communities to carpet maker Interface to make fresh carpet tiles. All over the world, including in Asia, home-sharing platforms Airbnb and PandaBed, along with car-sharing services Lyft and Tripda, and goods-sharing apps SnapGoods and Rent Tycoon are fuelling collaborative consumption and changing the way people use goods. In Thailand, Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Ltd (MQDC) has collaboration with PTT Global Chemical Plc (GC) to develop upcycled building materials from plastic waste. The materials were used in the construction of MQDC’s residential projects starting last year. The first project features construction of a 5-kilometre network of footpaths that will take at least 160 tonnes of plastic waste. The plastic is being provided by GC, which collects it from the sea. Later, the company’s Research & Innovation for Sustainability Centre (RISC) will carry out research and development into the use of other such materials in infrastructure at its projects. The World Economic Forum estimates that 80 per cent of the US$3.2 trillion (Bt103 trillion) value of the global consumer goods sector is lost irrecoverably each year due to the current inefficient linear “make, take, waste” model.
Read the full article at: www.nationthailand.com