The world is good

2021-06-11 11:56:51 150 Brands Unite to Clean Up Our Paper Supply – Saving Global Forests and Improving Recycling

Pack4Good, a campaign by the NGO Canopy, is one of the fastest growing corporate responsibility platforms in America for ensuring paper packaging is not coming from virgin, endangered, or valuable forests.

Canopy’s work in auditing supply chains and providing recycled or sustainable packaging solutions has attracted 750 brands across all its campaigns, including e-commerce giants Amazon, fashion empires like Gap, H&M, Marks and Spencer, and others, and publishing and media firms like Mansfield Press, Penguin, and the New York Times.

Only 18 months since launching Pack4Good, and the campaign has welcomed 29 new brands from food and beverage products, to the printing, fashion, and e-commerce sectors. “The companies that are joining Pack4Good are the out of the box thinkers we need—leaders ready to transform paper packaging supply chains and scale up solutions to save forests and our climate,” stated Nicole Rycroft, Executive Director of Canopy. “We have so many solutions just waiting to be implemented, it’s time to take them from the margins to the mainstream.”

Pack4Good’s selection of solutions for companies looking to reduce their forest impact are varied. They help connect companies to providers of waste pulp material like wheat straw that can be turned into fibrous packaging, while their stamp of approval—Ancient Forest Friendly—denotes the highest adherence to supply chain practices, and that the certified material contains no endangered, controlled, or ancient wood.

90 million tones of rice straw is burned every year in India, which in the fields surrounding Delhi accounts for 40% of the air pollution in the metropolitan area. Canopy wants to take take that rice straw and put it in the hands of recycled-paper mills, flooding the market with supply and adding a little more income to farmers. A win-win.

Pack4Good claim these solutions are everywhere, it’s just a matter of helping business get started down the road to sustainable paper supply chains. As more corporations look for ways to reduce their impact on the world environment, it’s up to groups like Canopy to ensure their energy is directed. Open / Comment

2021-06-10 10:26:16

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2021-06-10 10:26:13 This app helps distribute food to people experiencing hunger

We recently wrote about an application that allows you to buy leftover food from restaurants. Now we hear the news about a new application that helps to distribute surplus from stores.

Pittsburg nonprofit 412 Food Rescue thinks that the root problem of hunger lies in the distribution of food since as much as 40 percent of perfectly good food ends up in the bin.

With that goal in mind, 412 Food Rescue partnered with Pittsburgh institution Carnegie Mellon University to develop an algorithm for an app that can help solve the distribution problem. The result was Food Rescue Hero: a platform, now licensed to 11 other cities in the US and Canada, that facilitates delivery logistics for getting surplus food to those in need.

As 412 Food Rescue founder Leah Lizarondo tells Fast Company, Food Rescue Hero consists of a “network of thousands of drivers,” who use their own cars to pick up surplus food from grocery stores, or catered supplies from offices, universities, and sports events, and drop them off to a number of social services organizations.

These organizations, in turn, provide food to local residents who may experience food insecurity. The entire workforce participating in this initiative works on a voluntary basis.

As part of the model, volunteers get push notifications to make deliveries nearby, so there is little inconvenience to their daily routines. As such, the food gets dropped off at a range of locations including people’s homes, thus helping the least mobile, who are often the most at risk of hunger. “It can serve the senior who certainly cannot carry a 15-pound box for a mile,” says Lizarando. The platform is currently delivering as much as 1.2 million pounds of food per month in Pittsburgh alone. Open / Comment

2021-06-09 10:23:02

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2021-06-09 10:22:59 Airships can cut CO2 emissions by up to 10 times for smaller flights

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) named a string of routes it hoped to serve from 2025. The routes for the 100-passenger Airlander 10 airship include Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca in four and a half hours. The company said the journey by airship would take roughly the same time as aeroplane travel once getting to and from the airport was taken into account, but would generate a much smaller carbon footprint. HAV said the CO2 footprint per passenger on its airship would be about 4.5kg, compared with about 53kg via jet plane, told the Guardian.

Today the world airship construction industry is represented by about 100 companies. Airships are used for military purposes, as advertising and sometimes in tourism. In the USA about 30-35 airships fly. But the industry has huge potential for growth.

HAV claims independent estimates put the value of the airship market at $50bn over the next 20 years. We can trust HAV because airships have many benefits.

Airships have a large payload capacity. They can easily lift up to hundreds of tons of cargo. In Germany, in 1996, an airship project was even developed that could lift a record 160 tons. If something fails in the airship at altitude, it will simply land on the ground. Airships do not require a runway. And it can stay in the air almost free (Since they are held by hydrostatic force).

We can assume that in the near future small flights will normally be carried out on airships and for long flights there will be planes. Open / Comment

2021-06-08 11:15:52 Open / Comment

2021-06-08 11:15:48 This futuristic autonomous street sweeper is incredibly energy-efficient

City streets around the world may soon witness a new cleaning vehicle that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie. Called the Trombia Free, the Finnish vehicle is the world’s first electric and autonomous street sweeper.

The sweeper consumes less than 15 percent of the energy required by conventional brushing cleaning machines and does not generate emissions while at work — cutting over 3 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually. Additionally, the futuristic street sweeper consumes only a fraction of the amount of water required by conventional cleaning machines. It instead combines cyclone filtration, aerodynamics, and humidifier methods to control dust.

“The current vehicle technology relies on suction performance that was invented in the 1950s,” says Antti Nikkanen, CEO of Trombia Technologies. “We simply cannot enter 2020’s green and sustainable era with such outdated solution. With the globally patented Trombia technology we are able to take down the power requirement dramatically, so turning it into a beautiful and powerful, electrified and autonomous device has been an exciting journey to this day.”

The sweeper comes with a safety feature in the form of a margin zone that detects when a person, animal, or object falls or runs in front of it, allowing it to register them as obstacles and stop automatically.

In terms of jobs, the company says that their autonomous sweepers will enable drivers to instead become operators, service managers, and route or logistics planners. As for the costs, the Trombia Free has an annual operation total of 500 hours of continuous high-power sweeping, which makes it 85 percent more energy-efficient than manual street sweepers and makes it 15 times more cost-effective too.

The company plans to kick off a year-long pilot program of its patented technology this year and start mass deliveries in early 2022. Some of its previous sweeping technologies are already being used in several countries around the world. Open / Comment

2021-06-07 10:59:23 Open / Comment

2021-06-07 10:59:12 Paralyzed race car driver Sam Schmidt takes first steps thanks to new tech

The former Indy race car driver, who was left paralyzed from the shoulders down after a racing accident in 2000, was able to stand up and take his first steps in more than two decades. To help Schmidt walk again, a team of engineers from Arrow Electronics designed an “exoskeleton” that supports his legs, allowing him to stand and walk forward while a person helps him balance from behind.

“I've almost ran out of words to describe the feeling in this entire process,” Schmidt said. “Epic. Mega. Unbelievable. After 21 years, I didn't remember what the view was like. ... I haven't gotten a full-body hug in 21 years, you know. And we got some of those today.”

Schmidt never lost his passion for racing. He drove again a few years ago and even participated in several races using a specially designed Corvette that allows him to control the car using only the movements of his head.

There was hardly a dry eye on the race course as Schmidt took his first steps, including from Schmidt himself as he described how he has dreamed of walking ever since his accident.

“In 21 years, I've never had a dream where I was in a wheelchair,” he said. “I'm always walking around with my kids and the race team and everything else.” It was also an emotional scene for Tim Baughman, one of the crew members who pulled Schmidt from the wreckage all those years ago.

Schmidt described his new exoskeleton as a “1.0” design and said that engineers are working on even more advanced versions of the device. “Their goal with it is that I won't need to be balanced and that I will be able to operate it completely, myself, which is a mega-task,” he said.

In the meantime, his current device has already helped him achieve one major dream: dancing at his daughter’s wedding. “I'm surprised I have any tears left,” Schmidt said. “It's been a wild month, for sure.” Open / Comment

2021-06-06 11:55:36 Open / Comment