Fungus already shows promise as a “green” form of leather and protective packaging. Thanks to new research, it has now also found use in an environmentally-friendly sound-absorbing material. Acoustic insulation is currently made of synthetic or mineral-based materials, neither of which are easily recyclable – their production processes also aren’t always very eco-friendly. Instead, scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for […]

DELVA Landscape Architecture / Urbanism has revealed designs for Het Oog (Dutch for “The Eye”), a multifunctional “(under)water” landscape park that will connect the two neighborhoods of Strandeiland, a future residential area that will accommodate 8,000 homes in Amsterdam’s IJburg collection of artificial islands. The 22-hectare city park is part of Strandeiland’s urban plan developed in collaboration with the municipality […]

London studio Boano Prišmontas is no stranger to projects that highlight sustainable workspaces. Once the pandemic hit, the need for affordable, easy-to-assemble remote work solutions became even more urgent. Enter “My Room in The Garden,” a low-cost prefab home office that can fit a yard of any size and takes less than a day to install. Although many countries around the […]

Turning Paris from a City of Light to a City of Green has long been an ambition of architect Vincent Callebaut, and his firm’s latest project in this vein envisions a greenery-filled footbridge in the French capital. Named the Green Line, the tree-packed bridge would also be used for growing fruit and vegetables, with an ambitious array of sustainable tech […]

A team at UC Berkeley has developed a process that turns plastic waste into something more valuable – an adhesive. Based on an engineered catalyst, the inspiration was to find ways to “upcycle” plastics by putting them to new uses while preserving the properties that made them attractive in the first place. Plastic waste is one of the modern world’s […]

New Zealand has joined 32 other nations in formally acknowledging a climate emergency. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described climate change as “one of the greatest challenges of our time” and pledged that New Zealand would have a carbon-neutral government by 2025. But not all New Zealand governmental officials agreed. The Green Party and the M?ori Party supported the motion, which […]

Water has now joined oil and gold on the commodities market. This week, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the United States’ first water market tied to California water prices. “Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” said Deane Dray, RBC Capital Markets managing director […]

Pesticides may indeed kill plant pathogens, but they’re also harmful to the environment. Newly developed nanoparticles may provide a more eco-friendly alternative, as they boost the immune systems of crop plants, then harmlessly dissolve. Occurring naturally in soil, a compound known as silicic acid has for some time been known to provoke plants’ immune response. It’s also released by amorphous […]

While we’re pretty well across the topography of the Earth’s surface, understanding that of the ocean floor is a whole other ball game. It is said that we know more about the surface of Mars than the seafloor, and scientists are developing all sorts of technologies to help us fill in the blanks. Among them is a new technique that […]

Is BBQing with charcoal eco-friendly? Even those of us who want to make conscious choices on behalf of the planet want to grill a little during the summertime. Whether we’re cooking up a vegan burger or a mean veggie kebob every now and again, we can all agree, some things just taste better on the barbie. So, it’s no wonder […]