According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, 70 percent of the world's fisheries have been depleted by overfishing. Even as we move towards a greater reliance of aquaculture - providing nearly 50 percent of the fish eaten worldwide - it may not be enough to meet [...] 
Interesting thought piece over at The Big Money examining the subtle shift that will take place in our habits as we make the transition from gas-fueled vehicles to electric cars. New infrastructure, in the form of “fast-charging” stations, will be needed to meet the [...]
Image Credit: Getty Images, vAns/Flickr
There’s been plenty written on the subject of converting urban space into farmland, from rooftops and abandoned lots to the empty beds of pickup trucks, but this idea always revolves around growing various varieties of vegetables and [...]
With so much talk around the benefits of buying local foods - keeping money in local economies, lessening environmental impact and being both healthier and better tasting - the concept of food miles - the distance food travels to get to your [...]
With the rampant urbanization of our society, is a little patch of green becoming just as valuable as precious materials like diamonds and gold? Icelandic designer Hafsteinn Juliusson raises that question with his evocative line of “living” accessories called Growing Jewelry. The series of rings containing live [...]
As a response to current trends in real estate development - cheap, fast and homogenous - that have become hallmarks of unmitigated suburban sprawl, Canadian architect John Brown created the Slow Home movement in 2006. Borrowing its underlying philosophy from Slow Food, that of quality, appreciation and holistic [...]
Image Credit: Getty Images, Long exposure photographs, straight out of the camera/Flickr
Designer Philip Hermes offers his futuristic design for connected city, albeit in a slightly more tangible way. Hermes envisions an underground delivery network that could transport packages as big as a shoe [...]
As part of its year long trial dubbed the “Working 4 Utah” initiative, the Utah state government placed more than 17,000 of its employees on a four-day workweek, increasing workdays from eight to ten hours. The program, which begin in August of 2008, has saved [...]
Image Credit: Getty Images, Ibrahim Iujaz Hafiz/Flickr
GreenXchange is a collaboration between Nike, Best Buy and the Creative Commons to create an open innovation platform that promotes the creation and adoption of processes and technologies in the areas of green design and [...]
We’ve been seeing a trend among eateries recently that brings haute cuisine to the streets, combining the mobility of social technologies like Twitter with the movement offered by four wheels, but we’ve yet to find the concept being applied to farming, until now. Filmmaker Ian Cheney - one [...]
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In an effort to help dairy farmers better manage their herds, Danish technology firm, SmartFarming has developed an animal tracking and monitoring system called CowDetect. The system enables farmers to maintain a more meaningful account of individual animals by analyzing [...]
Not to be confused with the American mysticism of crop circles, rice paddy artistry is the intentional act of using the field as canvas, creating large-scale artworks by arranging different varieties of rice plants. These stunning pieces serve as a point of pride amongst [...]
While predicting the weather is far from an exact science, particularly given the shifting patterns resulting from climate change, DRYDAY endeavors to do just that, promising to help you make all your future events rain-free (with 85% accuracy). The service model offers long-range forecasts for 50,000 [...]
Image credit: Getty Images, Daniel John Bushaway/Flickr
If the stories behind our physical things help to add value at the point of purchase (provenance) and throughout the lifetime of a product (object narrative), why can’t that value extend beyond our ownership and follow these [...]
Image credit: Getty Images, arturdebat.tk/Flickr
In a recent interview with Fast Company, Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard offers his thoughts on running an environmentally conscious business and what is on his mind - the “myth of sustainability”, an ideal he sees as a path rather than a destination. Though [...]
Robin Chase , founder of Zipcar and the community carpooling website GoLoco, spoke to GOOD Magazine recently about several ideas that have been really getting us excited recently: the “product as service” model, opensource innovation and multipurpose design. In discussing her thoughts on the [...]
Two great examples of guerilla gardening going vertical in the city of Toronto. Not only do the repurposed flyers serve as handy planting vessels, but when torn back they reveal an interesting visual archive that adds a bit of beautiful chaos to the already [...]
Ever thought about the final resting place of your Commodore 64 or Apple IIC? Thanks to a rapidly evolving technology industry that relies on a combination of built-in obsolescence coupled with “the next big thing,” those prehistoric precursors to our modern day machines [...]
A few months back, we wrote about McDonald’s “green” prototype restaurant in Chicago and now we see the popular burger chain is attempting to expand its positive, environmental footprint. In addition to the eco-friendly policies we previously mentioned - LED light fixtures, drought resistant plants and [...]
In an effort to provide a bit more incentive to would-be cyclists in the style of “keeping up with the Jensens,” the city of Copenhagen has installed a public bicycle counter on a popular greenway that passes through the City Hall Square. The digital readout displays both [...]
Situated somewhere between the Biosphere 2 construction of the late 1980’s and the dystopian future imagined by the film (flop) Waterworld, lies artist Mary Mattingly’s experimental vision for creating a floating ark of sustainability. The project, appropriately named Waterpod, is a livable sculpture housed on [...]
In a summer season filled with outdoor BBQ’s and picnics in the park, a level of convenience and disposability goes a long way. Unfortunately, for most of us that generally means trash bags overflowing with plastic cups and utensils, paper plates and napkins destined for the dump.
Enter Branch’s [...]
Artist Jonathan Harris has just announced the release of an interesting project he’s been working on over the last two tears with Sputnik, Inc., a NYC-based nonprofit dedicated to documenting, archiving and disseminating ideas that are shaping contemporary culture. Named Sputnik Observatory, the project is a fascinating [...]
We’ve witnessed some innovative re-uses of shipping containers in the past from retail pop-up shops to portable health clinics, but the Müvbox Restaurant located in Montreal’s Old Port is particularly stunning. The website explains the modular design:
Created from an old shipping container powered by [...]
US News and World Report examines some of the contributing factors that have lead to a general decline in many of America’s malls, once the stalwarts of suburban prosperity and convenience. One interesting note from the article is the underlying (and accepted) notion that [...]
Japanese artist Hiroshi Sunairi has conceived a new twist on the idea of seed bombing by sharing seeds from Hibaku trees that survived the bombing of Hiroshima with gardeners from across the globe. The curated project, titled Leur L’Existence (Tree Project), offers seeds from numerous varieties that include Round [...]
While the dominant paradigm for our society - from parking garages and roadways to gas stations and AAA - may still be the automobile, more and more we’re seeing thoughtful approaches to designing the bike into our world view. To wit, RentaBikeNow, a site that lets [...]
We recently wrote about Brooklyn’s Bamboo Bike Studio, and now the Guardian points us to a similar venture lead by Craig Calfee, a California based bicycle designer and early pioneer of carbon fiber, who since 2005 has begun to turn his attentions to the use [...]
Last week the Bloomberg administration released New York City’s first street design manual in an effort to rethink the current car dominated landscape in favor of a plan that considers alternative modes of transportation and pedestrian-friendly public spaces. The guidelines are a culmination of nearly two [...]
Fast Company provides a sneak peek at 10 sustainable products created as part of The Nature Conservancy’s “Design for a Living World,” an exhibition on display at the Cooper-Hewitt now through January 2010. The show features work from [...]
Starting with the recent Public Ad Campaign targeting illegal street level advertising and followed by the Anti-Advertising Salon held last week, we’re noticing a more visible and organized movement to combat the commercial saturation of our physical and mental environments. This renewed effort couldn’t come [...]
The NY Times points us to the German suburb of Vauban, a thoughtfully designed community where an astonishing 70% of its 5,500 residents live without owning cars. Completed in 2006, the one square mile neighborhood is comprised of multi-family row houses designed to be more [...]
Dating back to 1909, The Plan of Chicago is considered one of the fundamental documents in the history of urban planning, presenting a thoughtful design for a city that incorporated many of the very principles - livability, sustainability and functionality - that we strive for [...]
While it’s hard not to ask “What’s the catch?” upon hearing news about big corporations adopting socially conscious policies, the fact remains that whatever the reasons are behind these changes, their footprints are often large enough to create a significant impact. To that end, fast food [...]
Anneli Rufus, coauthor of the recently published Scavenger’s Manifesto, takes us through a photographic preview of the David Brower Center, a multipurpose space in downtown Berkeley that will house non-profits working towards environmental and social action. The 50,000 square [...]
The first annual Brooklyn Food Conference took place over the weekend, bringing a diverse audience, estimated at between 2,500 and 3,000 people, together around the idea of creating a just, sustainable and delicious food system for all. The grassroots effort that resulted from a partnership [...]
Over the weekend, the Public Ad Campaign organized groups of New Yorkers to go around and whitewash illegal street-level billboards located throughout the city that the Department of Buildings is apparently too busy to enforce despite their stricter registration program. [...]
The documentary “Addicted to Plastic” is the result of three years and over 400 hours of footage that took filmmaker Ian Connacher around the globe seeking answers to the host of problems that surround one of the world’s most ubiquitous materials - plastic. The film [...]
As if spam wasn’t bad enough when it simply flooded our inboxes with promises of vast fortunes held captive in foreign lands and miracle drugs to cure all of life’s ills, new research suggests that it causes as much greenhouse gas to be released each year [...]
Though you might not believe it to walk outside - rain, cold and a shifting pastiche of gray - spring is upon us and with it the promise of a whole host of fresh, seasonal produce to bring to our plates. And though the local food [...]
Between 1997 and 2002, the USDA drafted and implemented a National Organic Standard, an act that unified the disparate state by state regulations and unified certification under one umbrella. This move, while benefiting the consumer, by providing a universal labeling system for recognizing a product as [...]
Perhaps no place exemplifies the failures of a post-industrialized economy better than Detroit, a city that has lost more than half of its population over the past 60 years. In an effort to provide perspective on the dramatic changes taking place in his hometown, photographer Kevin Bauman [...]
Salon recently spent a day with authors Anneli Lawson and Kristan Rufus who have taken the spirit of DIY culture and combined it with their unique perspective on consumerism in their book The Scavengers’ Manifesto, a guide for all those intrigued by notions of reduce, [...]
With the opening of the National Ignition Facility in California yesterday, scientists will now be able to utilize the world’s most powerful laser to create fusion reactions which will afford them greater insight into the nature of planets and stars, but the more practical applications of [...]
Walk Score is a handy web-service that approximates the walkability of addresses and neighborhoods in the 40 largest cities in the US using an alogrithm - you can read about their entire methodology here - that takes into consideration proximity to stores, schools, [...]
Good Magazine shares this handy graphic as a means of visualizing our water consumption, comparing various activities and decisions that we undertake on a daily basis. Although we don’t always have smarter choices available to us, it’s important that we’re aware of the alternatives that [...]
In Richard Florida’s recent piece for the Atlantic, “How the Crash Will Reshape America,” he foresees a more concentrated population centered around cities, leading to the further expansion of mega-regions - systems of multiple cities and their surrounding suburbs - based on their ability to [...]
In these lean times, eBay is hoping to persuade you to spend some of your hard earned dollars with them by pushing a more sustainable model of shopping they’re marketing as part of their project Green Team, though you might not initially realize it upon [...]
The ways our food is produced, packaged and shipped stand at the center of an ongoing debate about the health of our planet and ourselves, but the key to creating a sustainable system may rely on our collective ability to accept a realistic solution as a [...]
The Guardian recently sat down with Rob Bondurant VP of Marketing at Patagonia and asked him to discuss their sustainable model and how they will continue to innovate for the future. Beyond simply furthering the reach of their own brand, we found Patagonia’s desire [...]
The Coen Brothers have taken their unique view of the world and applied it to the myth of “clean” coal, directing a commercial spoof that seeks to dispel the fantasy of guilt-free fossil fuels as wishful thinking at best. The spot was created on behalf of [...]
With all the talk about developing greener technologies and alternative sources of energy to curb our consumption and clean up the environment, are we ignoring the simplest solution - walking more? Worldchanging asks us to reframe our current thinking and consider the time tested notion [...]
The use of setting can be the difference between an okay story and a truly great one. Place not only adds context to a narrative, but it can take on a life all its own, playing a vital role in shaping the lives of the characters [...]
We wrote last month about the city of Los Angeles winning a court appeal to uphold their ban on new billboards but despite the legislation, many advertisers continue to try and skirt the wording of the law by putting up supergraphics signs instead. Supergraphics are essentially [...]
At the same time our country’s economy attempts to right itself, there is growing talk that its future success will rely heavily on environmental technologies, clean energy and sustainable development - changes that are becoming necessary on a large scale and across a number of industries. [...]
As the economy goes, so too does our trash and as people tighten their belts and spend fewer dollars, they’re also reusing more and throwing out less. The LA Times reports on some telling statistics in cities across California:
Over the last six months, operators at Puente [...]
During 2008, the U.S. Army moved to establish the Army Energy Task Force to assess and implement various energy initiatives with an aim towards reducing consumption while promoting alternative and renewable fuels sources and creating an overall culture of awareness throughout its [...]
There has been a continuous evolution of wine packaging throughout the years from bottles to cardboard boxes, corks to screw tops and more recently the emergence of Tetra Paks - essentially box 2.0 with less environmental impact. And now South Africa’s The Company of [...]
In move that will likely effect offsite advertising across the country, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Los Angeles’ 2002 ban on most new billboards, overturning a lower court’s decision that it violated advertisers’ First Amendment rights. The injunction specifically [...]
Emily Cummins, a 21-year old UK student, has produced a portable, solar-powered fridge that can be constructed from simple components, making it a perfect innovation for the developing world where reliable electricity is often not accessible. Basing her design on the principle of evaporation - the [...]
We’ve been aware of vertical farming for a little while now, but whereas previously it only existed in theory, we’re finally beginning to see some fledging real world examples bringing the underlying principles to life.
Understanding the environmental impact of the way our food is grown and [...]
Taking inspiration from WWII fighter planes, designer Da Feng has created the “Gym Car,” a human-electric hybrid vehicle that integrates several exercise machines into the context of the driver’s seat. While many automobiles on the market today have already begun to resemble home entertainment systems on [...]
As an alternative to the ubiquitous gift guides that always appear this time of year, each one claiming to contain all the ideal presents for everyone on your list, Changing The Present asks us to consider spending our money in more thoughtful ways. Run by Important Gifts, a non-profit [...]
Spanish Design Company Ciclus creates consumer wares that follow the basic principles of ecodesign: reduce, reuse, recycle. When recently tasked by Group Hera to create a memorable holiday gift that exemplified the theme of converting waste into resources, the Wine Box turned Lamp was [...]
As prices at the fuel pump remain high and people’s concerns about their impact on the environment rise, where we live in relation to what we do takes on greater significance. Enter Optimal Home Location, a real estate tool that lets users input the addresses [...]
Graham Hill has crafted businesses that are innovative, socially conscious and successful. Tree Hugger and Planet Green have taken the eco-lifestyle to a wider audience by delivering content that is both interesting and relevant. During a recent interview with Behance, he offers practical [...]
Sony has built in an extra incentive to make the move to one of their Bravia HDTVs by offering a premium service that appeals to the budding environmentalist in all of us. When purchasing a television over 32″, customers now have the option of selecting a [...]
