Algae could bring solutions to major challenges such as carbon sequestration and world hunger, provided we succeed in building an industrial sector.
Tag: sustainability
For all its cosmopolitan pretense, the Green Party is strikingly provincial when it comes to addressing the global threat of climate change, Die Welt foreign-desk editor Klaus Gieger writes.
Announced several years ago, 3D-printing in the building industry is becoming a reality with the first houses already going on sale in the United States. Start-ups and manufacturers predict this could be a revolution for the construction industry.
A global pandemic and weariness in many places of cheap, mass tourism may hasten a real paradigm shift in the travel sector. Or not.
Argentine food production is doing fine and needs no ‘progressive’ state intervention to assure supplies.
Viruses spread, mutate and then become deadly because humans destroy the areas where wild animals live. We must learn from this, once the coronavirus pandemic is contained.
The trend of what the French dubbed décroissance (degrowth) overlooks how progress and technology are bound to improve our lives.
Monday marks the debut of the third stage of Energy Observer’s revolutionary six-year journey toward a cleaner, hydrogen-fueled future. After four months of updating its equipment and infrastructure, including custom photovoltaic panels, the state-of-the-art ship has embarked from French harbor Saint-Malo, this time heading towards Northern Europe. This first major vessel in the world powered by hydrogen is led by Victorien Erussard, founder and captain of Energy Observer, and Jérôme Delafosse, expedition leader and documentary filmmaker. The odyssey began in Saint-Malo June 26, 2017, as the vessel travels the world’s waterways in search of innovative solutions for the environment. Here’s […]
Indigenous communities in the country’s Caribbean coastal area dug in for more than decade to keep their traditional lands from being trashed.
France has long been an innovator in building materials, from the steel splendor of the Eiffel Tower to concrete to surprisingly resistant wood. Environmental factors hold sway.
BRAZZAVILLE — In the area around the Congolese capital of Brazzaville, it’s common practice to burn vegetation in fields before planting crops. But this slash-and-burn approach inflicts severe damage to the forests and the soil, not to mention to the health of women, who are the primary farmers in this area. “The placement of these […]
HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s enormous appetite for seafood and its role as a hub for the global seafood trade is having an unfortunate impact on endangered fish species. Chinese cuisine prizes seafood, so it’s perhaps not surprising that per capita seafood consumption in Hong Kong averages 70 kilograms a year, about four times the global average. But the city is also a hub for trade into mainland China, where consumption is on the rise. All of that is putting a strain on endangered marine life and driving an unexpected sustainability push. On a busy Saturday morning at Hong Kong’s […]
The Quirimbas islands in northwestern Mozambique is the front line in the war on over-fishing.
For Argentina, and other Latin American countries, this is a golden opportunity.
Rolling sand dunes and ascetic silence. Kites and boards flying over lagoon waters. And tomato farms. It’s Dakhla, the windy Moroccan city of sustainability.
Spaghetti produced from the wheat of local farms is served in the restaurants of Ethiopia, which discovered pasta during Italian colonial rule but only now are developing an entire economy around it.
MUNICH — For people driving through Germany in a normal car, things couldn’t be easier. With just a single debit card, they can refuel everywhere at anytime. That is not, unfortunately, the case for people who drive electric cars. To travel, let’s say, from Wolfsburg via Stuttgart and Munich to Berlin and back, that person […]
MILAN — The International Highrise Award enjoys great prestige because, unlike other similar competitions, it is granted neither for a building’s height nor form. Instead, the prize — bestowed by the German Architecture Museum, the city of Frankfurt and Deka Bank — honors criteria such as sustainability and innovation. And this year’s winner, Milan’s Bosco […]
China may be Africa’s largest trade partner and investor, but what China brings to the table is often regarded as sloppy, thoughtless and inconsistent with African values.
But just try brushing your teeth with bamboo.
Using donated same-day bread and soon-to-expire food from supermarkets, this volunteer-run Copenhagen restaurant then turns proceeds over to needy African students.
If you want milk or Berlin-made vodka, bring your own bottles. At Original Unpackaged, there’s no cardboard or shrink wrap, nothing jarred or canned. Is this the smart consumer of the future?
Environmental activists the world over are breathlessly indignant that the popular Rainbow Loom wristbands are neither degradable nor recyclable. But are they overreacting?
BOGOTA — Colombia’s National University is working on recycling used banknotes, by processing them into an absorbent material that cleans water and air of pollutants, El Espectador reports. Some 169 million banknotes in Colombia are replaced every year. And the University’s chemical engineering department found that shredding them creates “activated carbon,” a crystalline substance able […]
Torn T-shirts, dead remote controls and jammed DVD players aren’t necessarily doomed for the junk heap. Sustainability is the watchword at these special German locales.
In the Netherlands, a growing movement to lease clothing rather than piling up ever more cheaply-made, environmentally damaging jeans, shirts and sweaters.
SANTIAGO — Believe it or not, food production waste can have more healthy components than the end product itself. That’s the conclusion of Chilean food research institute CREAS, which conducted a joint project with juice-makers Bayas del Sur in which they recovered juice production leftovers to obtain a berries-based concentrate with super-high antioxidant levels. In […]
What does “sustainability” really mean? A forward-looking French architect offers his reflections as part of Worldcrunch Impact: Smarter Cities.
One writer discovers that a New York once suicidal for cyclists has given way to a city of bike lanes and cheap public access to this environmentally friendly mode of transportation.
Global warming is a big problem in Latin America, but the private sector is busy developing alternative energy sources. Has the rush to innovate arrived in time?
MUNICH – To many, “i” was just a letter of the alphabet – until it was used by a then unknown computer company to skyrocket to the global position Apple holds today. And now BMW is hoping to go far on “i” too, investing billions in the i3 electric car due to come onto the […]
GAHUNGA – Not long ago, the communities bordering Rwanda’s three national parks were the biggest threat to their survival. The villagers poached animals and illegally exploited the forest. But today, locals collaborate with the tourism industry and take part in the protection of biodiversity while improving their living standards. Much of the credit goes to […]