On Monday, the E.P.A. announced that over 100 cement kilns will have to reduce the pollution they emit. This will be very costly to the cement industry, with each producer estimated at having to spend around $1 billion a year to keep up with the E.P.A.’s regulations. A majority of the mercury and particulate matter …
Capturing Carbon and Building With It: Calera’s Vision Read More »
While many companies are still try to figure out what their CSR strategy is (or in some cases, what CSR is period), lumber and paper giant Weyerhaeuser has recently issued its 2009 Sustainability Report. Weyerhaeuser was an early adopter of the voluntary Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) report. The company started publishing a report of their …
At one point, it seems as though virtually everyone has sat in front of washing machine and watched the soaked clothes tumble through the suds. That tradition may be a thing of the past if a new “virtually waterless” laundry machine finds its way to the mainstream. Although only in prototype stage, this new machine …
At approximately 7:00 AM PST tomorrow, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will announce the development of a large scale wave power project off the coast of San Francisco. The project promises to bring wave energy and jobs to the Bay Area.
With the recent “storm watch” as the local news stations like to dramatically call it, an onslaught of much needed snow hit the Lake Tahoe region and the ski resorts. Of course, we had to be on hand to check the falling beauty. So, it appears for now that Mother Nature got a late start …
According to a recent UNESCO study, fresh water supply is expected to drop by one-third within 20 years. UNESCO points out that up to 7 billion people could face water shortages by 2020 as global warming will affect water supply in more than 50 countries.
Water as a priority in national strategic discourse is not new but its prominence in recent years illustrates the emergence of a new battlefront. A broader acceptance of climate change associated with global warming has led to the reassessment of fresh water’s priority.
Just yesterday, I was browsing the bottled water section at Whole Foods when I came across a new brand with a really cool looking logo and labels that read “Joy”, “Peace”, “Health”, and “Prosperity” featuring instructions to visualize this intent while drinking the contents. Intrigued, I bought some and brought it home. It tasted fresher and cleaner than other waters – and hopefully my chosen intent (Prosperity, of course), will manifest.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program is the EPA’s water efficiency equivalent to its wildly successful and well-known Energy Star program. Watersense’s mission is to protect the future of the U.S. water supply by promoting and enhancing the market for water-efficient products and services. WaterSense has jumped onto the internet “widget” bandwagon, and recently released …
US EPA Watersense Program Releases New Internet Widget for Water Efficiency Read More »
A fundamental necessity for ALL life forms on earth is clean, potable water. Yet sustainable sources of fresh water are in limited supply, particularly in poorer areas of the world. Water is the ONLY resource that is not replaceable with another – oil can be made obsolete through the use of new, renewable energy sources, food sources can be substituted one for another, but pure water has no equal.
While we all know that there is no free lunch, reality is that very soon there might be no free water either. As both an industrial input and a prerequisite of life, water has become extremely scarce for roughly a billion people who do not have a constant supply of clean and safe water, so the issue is of extreme importance.
On September 30th, The Economist started a two-week long Oxford-style online debate on the value of water.
The proposition: “This house believes that water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value.”
Global Water Challenge (GWC) and Ashoka’s Changemakers invite everyone to join "Tapping Local Innovation: Unclogging the Water and Sanitation Crisis," an online competition to discover and support entrepreneurs with groundbreaking approaches to the world’s water and sanitation challenges. Also today, director of Oscar-winning films, Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur launches a blog …
They say that the wars of the future will not be fought over oil, but over fresh water. We all understand that water is essential for life, but, as the Financial Times reports, “many are just beginning to grasp how essential it is to everything in life – food, energy, transportation, nature, leisure, identity, culture …