Here's what a solidarity economy looks like
Defining the term “solidarity economy” can be difficult: it has become a kind of catch-all to describe everything from worker-owned cooperatives to open source software to complementary currencies. Surprisingly, the ideas promoted in the solidarity economy aren't very well known in the Read More...
Microsoft wants to make Bitcoin easier for banks
Microsoft no longer solely counts on Windows 10 to pay the bills. With CEO Satya Nadella at the helm, it's also betting heavily on cloud services, and just revealed an interesting new one: Bitcoin-style encryption. Redmond joined forces with startup ConsenSys on a platform called Ethereum to help Read More...
Billions of dollars are fueling clean energy and climate action
Finance and banking companies go where the money goes, and the money is headed straight towards clean energy to the fine tune of billions and billions of dollars. Earlier this year Citi Bank pledged $100 billion towards renewable energy over the next decade. Bank of America followed up with a Read More...
Meanwhile, the shift to clean energy is creating lots of jobs
The go-to argument for opponents against climate action is that it’s bad for the economy and kills jobs. Not true! A new report from climate advocacy organization NextGen Climate America shows that investments into clean energy, such as efficiency improvements, renewable energies and electric Read More...
For a sustainable lunch, here's how to grow edible insects at home
There are a lot of good reasons to start eating insects. First of all, they provide us with necessary nutrients: adult locusts, mealworms and grasshoppers have comparable levels of protein to raw beef. Secondly, insects release fewer greenhouse gases than traditional livestock. Did you know that Read More...
North Face launches winter jacket using synthetic spider's silk
Silk is a remarkable product of nature. For many millennia, silkworms and spiders have known how to make a fantastic fibre that's thinner than human hair, stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar. We, humans, are only catching up. Several teams of researchers around the world are exploring how Read More...
How to improve your memory and reduce your risk of getting dementia
What if you talked with your health professional about dementia and you would get a prescription for a few glasses of champagne a week? Indeed, new research from the University of Reading suggests that three glasses of champagne a week could help prevent the onset of dementia. However, we are still Read More...
Why doing good makes for good business
There are many ways of achieving social impact, and many ways that people organize themselves to do so. Sometimes this is through informal associations, like community groups; sometimes it’s through more formal ventures, such as charities and cooperatives. Increasingly, there’s a third Read More...
World’s first industrial-scale carbon capture
We recently wrote about a Belgian company converting climate change related byproducts into ethanol that is sold on as fuel. Switzerland-based Climeworks is going a step further by capturing CO2 from the air for commercial uses. Climeworks have developed a filter that binds CO2 by direct air Read More...
Balanced crop nutrition for plants and people
With each year’s planting and harvest, the essential nutrients — nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) — must be replenished for optimum plant growth and health. The natural replenishment cycle is often slow and generally unable to keep up with the annual agriculture Read More...