Tag: Sustainability

MIT Center for Real Estate advances climate and sustainable real estate research agenda

Real estate investors are increasingly putting sustainability at the center of their decision-making processes, given the close association between climate risk and real estate assets, both of which are location-based. This growing emphasis comes at a time when the real estate industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming; its embodied and operational […]

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Helping the cause of environmental resilience

Haruko Wainwright, the Norman C. Rasmussen Career Development Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at MIT, grew up in rural Japan, where many nuclear facilities are located. She remembers worrying about the facilities as a child. Wainwright was only 6 at the time of the Chernobyl […]

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Tackling counterfeit seeds with “unclonable” labels

Average crop yields in Africa are consistently far below those expected, and one significant reason is the prevalence of counterfeit seeds whose germination rates are far lower than those of the genuine ones. The World Bank estimates that as much as half of all seeds sold in some African countries are fake, which could help […]

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MIT-led teams win National Science Foundation grants to research sustainable materials

Three MIT-led teams are among 16 nationwide to receive funding awards to address sustainable materials for global challenges through the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program. Launched in 2019, the program targets solutions to especially compelling societal or scientific challenges at an accelerated pace, by incorporating a multidisciplinary research approach. “Solutions for today’s national-scale societal […]

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Biodiversity May Suffer From Some Climate Initiatives, Climate Czar Says

White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi (left) and former Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a … [+] fireside chat at Stanford University. Sarah Weaver Solutions to the world’s converging environmental crises may not always align, the Biden Administration’s climate czar said last week. “There are a lot of hard conversations around the clean energy […]

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Fiber “barcodes” can make clothing labels that last

In the United States, an estimated 15 million tons of textiles end up in landfills or are burned every year. This waste, amounting to 85 percent of the textiles produced in a year, is a growing environmental problem. In 2022, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a law banning the disposal of textiles in […]

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Current Climate: Breeding A Better Tomato Faster, Plus: How GM & VW Are Beating Tesla

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. Sound Agriculture Since 2020, California-based Sound Agriculture has been selling its crop additive called Source, which mimics a signal that naturally occurs in plants to attract microbes. Those […]

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This 30 Under 30 Alum Is Helping Save Mileage With A Newly Unveiled Electric RV

Lightship’s L1 trailer in its collapsed mode. Lightship In 2020, San Francisco-based entrepreneur Ben Parker toiled away as a battery engineer at Tesla before getting wrapped up in a pet project: Electrifying food trucks, where he dreamed of ditching the noisy, exhaust-coughing generators that sat behind them. This quickly morphed into a broader idea to […]

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VW And GM Are Passing Tesla In The Race To Sell Affordable EVs

Volkswagen’s ID. 2ALL, due in 2026, will have a base price of around $26,000 and travel up to 270 miles per charge. Volkswagen AG Elon Musk has teased the idea that Tesla would sell a widely affordable battery-powered model since 2006. He finally came close to announcing one this month, but still hasn’t shared details. […]

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Minimizing electric vehicles’ impact on the grid

National and global plans to combat climate change include increasing the electrification of vehicles and the percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources. But some projections show that these trends might require costly new power plants to meet peak loads in the evening when cars are plugged in after the workday. What’s more, overproduction of […]

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These Photos From Envision Festival Mark The Return Of One Of Earth’s Best Parties

Envision Festival is a celebration, a message, and a movement. With a mission to create an eye-opening experience that turns attendees onto a new form of living and a new way to be inspired, Envision Festival provides the tools that can be integrated into the life we’re living to blossom into our higher selves. Also… […]

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Current Climate: The Young Entrepreneurs And Scientists Working To Save The Planet

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week. Alisha Fredriksson GUERIN BLASK FOR FORBES This week, Forbes launched its annual 30 Under 30 Europe list, and as always, there were lots of talented young people already […]

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Engaging enterprises with the climate crisis

Almost every large corporation is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 but lacks a roadmap to get there, says John Sterman, professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, co-director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and leader of its Climate Pathways Project. Sterman and colleagues offer a suite of well-honed […]

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Shrinky Dinks, nail polish, and smelly bacteria

In a lab on the fourth floor of MIT’s Building 56, a group of Massachusetts high school students gathered around a device that measures conductivity. Vincent Nguyen, 15, from Saugus, thought of the times the material on their sample electrode flaked off the moment they took it out of the oven. Or how the electrode […]

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Celebrating a decade of a more sustainable MIT, with a focus on the future

When MIT’s Office of Sustainability (MITOS) first launched in 2013, it was charged with integrating sustainability across all levels of campus by engaging the collective brainpower of students, staff, faculty, alumni, and partners. At the eighth annual Sustainability Connect, MITOS’s signature event, held nearly a decade later, the room was filled with MIT community members […]

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Titanic robots make farming more sustainable

There’s a lot riding on farmers’ ability to fight weeds, which can strangle crops and destroy yields. To protect crops, farmers have two options: They can spray herbicides that pollute the environment and harm human health, or they can hire more workers. Unfortunately, both choices are becoming less tenable. Herbicide resistance is a growing problem […]

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Working to make nuclear energy more competitive

Assil Halimi has loved science since he was a child, but it was a singular experience at a college internship that stoked his interest in nuclear engineering. As part of work on a conceptual design for an aircraft electric propulsion system, Halimi had to read a chart that compared the energy density of various fuel […]

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Nanotube sensors are capable of detecting and distinguishing gibberellin plant hormones

Researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and their collaborators from Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory have developed the first-ever nanosensor that can detect and distinguish gibberellins (GAs), a class of hormones in plants that […]

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3 Questions: Antje Danielson on energy education and its role in climate action

The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) leads energy education at MIT, developing and implementing a robust educational toolkit for MIT graduate and undergraduate students, online learners around the world, and high school students who want to contribute to the energy transition. As MITEI’s director of education, Antje Danielson manages a team devoted to training the next […]

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Aviva Intveld named 2023 Gates Cambridge Scholar

MIT senior Aviva Intveld has won the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their choice at Cambridge University in the U.K. Intveld will join the other 23 U.S. citizens selected for the 2023 class of scholars. Intveld, from Los Angeles, is majoring in earth, […]

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With Labor And Climate Challenges, Farmers Turn To Robot Beehives, Tractors And Fruit Pickers

Startups are aiming to solve big problems for agriculture, including labor and water shortages, climate-driven headaches and declining bee populations, by deploying artificial intelligence, autonomous driving technology and robotics. If the vast farms of the Midwest are America’s breadbasket, California is its produce department. But the country’s biggest producer of fresh fruits and vegetables is […]

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Integrating humans with AI in structural design

Modern fabrication tools such as 3D printers can make structural materials in shapes that would have been difficult or impossible using conventional tools. Meanwhile, new generative design systems can take great advantage of this flexibility to create innovative designs for parts of a new building, car, or virtually any other device. But such “black box” […]

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STEAM power on the runway

Science Surfaces, a capsule collection of body coverings and accessories, serve as canvases for digital prints of ideas inspired by award-winning biomedical images produced by life science research labs at MIT. The exhibition, now on display in the Koch Institute Public Galleries, is the result of the inaugural Peers + Pros Project, a Boston Fashion […]

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Insect farming startup targets pet food as gateway to human consumption

Evolving views on food are challenging traditional diets — and not just for humans. Innovative dining options are also being added to the menus of our pets. Startups have proposed numerous new ways to satiate their appetites. The UK’s Bella and Duke, for instance, caters to animals on raw diets, while Sweden’s Buddy Pet Foods […]

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End-To-End Success: How To Effectively Build, Manage And Measure Customer Journeys

Brick-and-mortar shopping has made an impressive comeback since the end of lockdown, but e-commerce is still retail’s dominant new force. This year alone, online shopping is predicted to bring in over $6.3 trillion in revenue, representing more than a fifth of all worldwide sales. Fast forward to 2026, and these figures will accelerate to over […]

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Improving health outcomes by targeting climate and air pollution simultaneously

Climate policies are typically designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that result from human activities and drive climate change. The largest source of these emissions is the combustion of fossil fuels, which increases atmospheric concentrations of ozone, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and other air pollutants that pose public health risks. While climate policies may result […]

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The Connection Between Global Health & Global Warming

Many will recognize Dr. Larry Brilliant as CNN’s resident COVID expert, but the epidemiologist is most famous for leading the World Health Organization team that eradicated smallpox. He’s also stewarded the philanthropic efforts of both Google and Salesforce and has been a mentor to many tech leaders, including Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. But before […]

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Study: Carbon-neutral pavements are possible by 2050, but rapid policy and industry action are needed

Almost 2.8 million lane-miles, or about 4.6 million lane-kilometers, of the United States are paved. Roads and streets form the backbone of our built environment. They take us to work or school, take goods to their destinations, and much more. However, a new study by MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) researchers shows that the annual […]

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A more sustainable way to generate phosphorus

Phosphorus is an essential ingredient in thousands of products, including herbicides, lithium-ion batteries, and even soft drinks. Most of this phosphorus comes from an energy-intensive process that contributes significantly to global carbon emissions. In an effort to reduce that carbon footprint, MIT chemists have devised an alternative way to generate white phosphorus, a critical intermediate […]

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