The EU is working on a plan to ensure that every piece of packaging on the continent is reusable or recyclable by 2030. Following China’s decision to ban imports of foreign recyclable material
What is the cost of inaction? Costly weather disasters have now cost the US a record $306 billion. Although it is difficult to definitively draw cause-effect relationships, “many scientific studies
The Smart Prosperity Leader’s Initiative, a group of respected Canadian leaders from a range of sectors, recently launched their Let’s Stand Up for Nature campaign. As part of this initiative, they
How many of you have seen George Carlin's video on stuff? This article reminded me of his video and how difficult it is to be healthy when all around you the infrastructure is calling out to you, to
Normally, I try to blog on the many wonderful social innovations that are happening everywhere, on the assumption that the media frames are so negative. But we cannot ignore what we are doing to our o
Our research shows again and again how important framing an issue is, and even more importantly, it has the power to disempower or empower people. Those communities who are farther along in implementing climate innovations initially framed the issues to politicians as energy efficiency and once those benefits were demonstrated, then moved on to the larger sustainability lens. Similarly, the language we use to describe the environment and our impacts on that environment are equally powerful.
This blog by Alex Himelfarb, a former clerk of the Privy Council, is a thoughtful analysis of the drivers behind the recent election to the South. He mentions the need to transform government, and this is one of the things my research team is studying, what we mean by transformative change versus incremental and transitional change.
Co-housing is a win-win situation with many co-benefits. As the baby boomers age, and lose their partners, co-housing is a viable alternative to retirement homes and nursing homes. As Anil Gawande points out in his thoughtful book, Being Mortal, “our most cruel failure is how we treat the sick and the aged. .
A local energy company in Vermont, Green Mountain Energy, is leading the transformation of an electric system that depends on power sent along big transmission lines to a community-, home- and business-based energy system for both economic and environmental reasons. As a practical matter, the less electricity the utility pulls from the regional transmission system, especially at times of peak demand, the less it has to pay in fees, producing savings it can pass on to customers.