Unilever Cuts 1 Million Metric Tons CO2
by: Environmental Leader, 2013-04-17 14:20:24 UTC
Unilever says it has reduced CO2 from its manufacturing and logistics operations by more than 1 million metric tons since 2008, saving the company more than €300 million ($394.8 million). For manufacturing, this represents a reduction of 31.5 percent per metric ton of production, a company spokesperson tells Environmental Leader. John Maguire, Unilever’s group manufacturing [...]

Altered Appliances by Piet Zwart Institute Students
by: design milk, 2013-04-16 18:00:57 UTC

Students in a “research by making” thematic design studio at Rotterdam’s Piet Zwart Institute rolled out projects in which they investigated low-tech appliances and gadgets and then re-imagined them to offer an alternative use. During the exhibition, entitled Altered Appliances, the students presented the kitchen-based designs and showed the process of making.

With the kitchen being the most tech and equipment filled room in the home, the students were asked to research hand powered tools and devices and to gain knowledge of one in particular. This led the students to investigate a new or “altered” design for the kitchen.

Rollware, designed by Joanne Choueiri, Giulia Cosenza, and Povilas Raskevicius, is a set of rolling pins with laser cut shapes in them that lets you roll out and make edible dishware. The baked bread plates can then be eaten instead of being thrown away when you’re done.

Designed by Maddalena Gioglio and Egle Tuleikyte, CONEformation is a device to measure and mix ingredients as you cook. Six ceramic cones sit in a frame and are easily accessible while you’re in the kitchen.

Flip Food, designed by Ilias Markolefas and Nathalia Martinez Saavedra, allows you to store and carry your food in a fun and playful way. The geometric form reinterprets the brown paper bag and lets you have your homemade food on the ready when you’re out.

Students Bo Baalman and Kine Solberg designed Extrudough, an altered meat grinder that becomes a human-powered 3D printer to fabricate biodegradable tableware. Send an easily mixed, malleable dough through the grinder and into various shaped molds to make the containers.

The exhibitions and its live demonstration took place at Ventura Lambrate this year.

Forget GDP: The Social Progress Index Measures National Well-Being
by: Co.Exist, 2013-04-15 12:00:41 UTC

For many years, the powers that be thought that economic indicators were the ultimate measure of a country’s well-being. That’s starting to change. As we have discussed before, the general happiness of a country doesn’t always correlate with its wealth. In fact, economic indicators don’t match up with a number of important indicators about well-being.

Hence the Social Progress Index, an initiative from The Social Progress Imperative and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter that examines how 50 countries perform on 52 indicators related to basic human needs, the foundations of well-being, and opportunity. The top country: Sweden. The U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top five (it comes it at number six).

The Social Progress Index was hatched at a World Economic Forum working group, where participants decided that they needed common frameworks to measure the problems they were working on. "The big conceptual step was to say that if we’re trying to measure the well-being of a society, the big thing we have to do is actually look at outcomes directly rather than proxy of economic indicators," explains Michael Green, the executive director of the Social Progress Imperative. "We’re looking at social and environmental outcomes directly, which means that the index isn’t determined by economic factors."

These social and environmental components include personal safety, ecosystem sustainability, health and wellness, shelter, sanitation, equity and inclusion, and personal freedom and choice. Each component is calculated based on specific outcomes--health and wellness, for example, is determined by life expectancy, obesity, cancer death rate, and other factors.

The 50 countries in the list were chosen because they’re a representative sample of countries around the world. They also encompass 75% of the world’s population. So who made it to the top? Here are the countries with the highest ratings on the SPI (click to zoom). A full list is available on the SPI website.

There are a handful of important trends that we can glean from the index. Almost all of the wealthiest countries do poorly on the ecosystem sustainability component. "The U.S., Canada, and Australia are all struggling with that environmental measure generally," notes Green. Also, he says, "although economic growth is broadly correlated with social progress, there are departures from that." One example: Costa Rica (12) performs much better than South Africa (39), even though they have a similar GDP.

While the U.K. and Sweden didn’t perform well on the United Nations Human Development Index, they are at the top of the SPI because they have top marks across the three foundations measured by the index.

Governments are already paying attention to the index. This month, Paraguay agreed to incorporate the SPI into its national development framework. But Heather Hancock, managing partner of talent and brand at Deloitte, says that the index will be useful in the business world as well. "We believe this will help businesses have a framework to articulate their own impact," she says. "We have been having this conversation in a more generic way over the past two and a half to three years about how business can better articulate the purpose that it serves--how business can collectively shape influence and be a co-collaborator in some of the bigger social progress issues."

Deloitte reported in a recent Millenial Innovation Survey that 71% of millennials think that business innovations can directly improve society. The SPI framework could help businesses articulate exactly how their services benefit society--and in the process, gain some credibility among social impact-minded customers.

Stay tuned: the SPI will continue to add more countries as the years go on.

Live Screen vertical garden presented during Milan Design Week
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2013-04-15 16:39:22 UTC


This Battery Can Send A Car 1,000 Miles On Just Air, Water, And A Lot Of Aluminum
by: fast company, 2013-04-15 15:00:18 UTC

Better Place may have failed in Israel, but another Israeli EV startup shows promise. Phinergy’s air-aluminum car has a 1,000-mile range, substantially beating a conventional EV, and now a major European car maker has invested in it, according to the company. (Bloomberg took it for a spin recently).

Metal-air batteries get energy from the interaction of oxygen and metal. The aluminum is an anode; the oxygen a cathode; and the water an electrolyte. When drivers of the car use up their standard lithium battery’s power, they switch on the range-extender, adding water to set off a reaction in the trunk.

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kerFchair by Boris Goldberg
by: design milk, 2013-04-12 14:00:55 UTC

The kerFchair is a flat pack furniture designed by Boris Goldberg made from CNC-machined birch wood. Instead of bending laminated wood, he applied a different technique to achieve the same effect.

By using the kerfing technique, he avoided the laborious process of pressing the sheets of wood on a bending mold and clamping the together. Instead, the structure of the chair (the legs) are used as a bending tool.

You can contact Boris at goldberg.boris@gmail.com.

Recycled Rugs: Go Green with Fashion
by: Ecofriend, 2013-04-15 09:12:03 UTC

Love to live in an eco-friendly way and always think of using recycled products? If yes, then these recycled rugs made from worn out denim jeans perfectly fit in your Go-Green motto. Gone are the days when you have to throw your worn out jeans as the Swedish denim company Nudie Jeans has come up with a perfect solution for these worn out jeans. The Denim Label has the creative idea of turning these worn out nudie jeans into recycled rugs.

 

The stylish and innovative concept of reusing the worn out jeans is a part of Label’s Post Recycled Jeans initiative and after all who said that jeans have only one use? The Label is turning the jeans into well textured and stylish eco-friendly rugs which definitely make a fashionable home décor.

The whole concept of these rugs from the Gothenburg-based denim label has the Scandinavian influence. The green approach to these denim rugs is given by the donated pair of jeans by its own customers. The jeans are collected then are cut into thin strips, sewn together and then at last rolled up on spools. After that it is weft with the indigo-dyed thread and then it is woven by hand manually in a shuttle room.

 

The age of the denim is not the matter because the older the denim is the more stylish texture it acquires. The brilliant idea of these rugs has just revolutionized the new way towards fashion. The rugs are not only stylish but are quite light in weight as compared to other rugs. When placed in your living room or anywhere in your house it definitely catches everyone’s eye making it a perfect home décor.

The production of these rugs takes place in Turkey and the size available is 2 x 1.5 meters. This piece of recycled fashion will be available at Nudie Jeans House Los Angeles and Nudie Jeans concept stores globally. The price quoted for the recycled rug is $599 USD.

Chill Puck designed to keep drinks colder, longer
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2013-04-11 07:40:25 UTC


Brussels unveils green performance scheme for products (News)
by: Euractive, 2013-04-11 05:51:04 UTC

The European Commission has proposed EU-wide methods for companies to measure and communicate their ‘greenness’ and the environmental footprint of their products.

EU-Wide Eco-Label Proposed
by: Environmental Leader, 2013-04-11 14:26:09 UTC
A proposal to adopt a European Union-wide standard to measure the environmental performance of products and organizations is drawing mixed reactions from industry groups. The European Commission will soon begin a three-year pilot to test the common standard, which would be voluntary and is intended to help companies cut costs and lessen consumer confusion caused [...]