Sustain Our Earth

New research shows that many businesses around the world won’t start planning until 2018. Is this too late?

Despite widespread warnings of resource scarcity over the next few decades, a significant proportion of global businesses are not prepared to address the predicted shortfall, according to new research by Carbon Trust.
The U.K.-based organization’s survey of 475 executives in the U.S., Brazil, China, Korea and the U.K. revealed while a majority acknowledged that their companies would have to charge more for their products and services as a result of resource constraints, 43 percent are not monitoring risks posed by incidents such as energy price increases and environmental disasters. Over 50 percent have not developed goals to reduce their company’s consumption of water, waste production or carbon emissions...

View the Carbon Trust infographic for more details on the survey.

Via Lauren Moss, Susan Davis Cushing

Located on a dense site next to ‘Sustainability Street’ at the University of British Columbia, the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability [CIRS] houses 200 researchers from private, public, and NGO sectors, who work together with the common mission of accelerating sustainability.

The 5,675m2 ‘living lab’ is organized around two four-story wings linked by a central atrium. The atrium serves as a building lobby and entry to a daylit auditorium, and as a social and educational space from which all of the project’s sustainable strategies are visible.

The CIRS building has embraced the ambitious sustainability goals of the Living Building Challenge, including those of net zero water consumption; waste water treatment on site; net zero energy consumption, and construction and operational carbon neutrality...
Via Lauren Moss, Digital Sustainability