Meet Vivian Tai, Director of Innovation at GS1 US, the American division of GS1, a nonprofit organization you interact with daily and probably do not know by name. Its product, the Universal Product Code, or UPC barcode, is on virtually everything you buy and could power your participation in the circular economy. The original UPC barcode transformed shopping in the […]
Can Blockchain Unlock Sustainability in Supply Chains?
Making a product sustainable is often more challenging than it seems. That’s because behind every item is a supply chain involving multiple parties with their own carbon footprints. Because supply chains are so complex, they’re difficult to track and make green, but new technologies may help shoppers identify low-impact products. Blockchain is one of the more promising solutions. These accounting-like […]
Earth911 Podcast: GS1 US Builds the Circular Economy Using Scannable Codes
Meet Vivian Tai, Director of Innovation at GS1 US, the American division of GS1, a nonprofit organization you interact with daily and probably do not know by name. Its product, the Universal Product Code, or UPC barcode, is on virtually everything you buy and could power your participation in the circular economy. The original UPC barcode transformed shopping in the […]
Best of Earth911 Podcast: William Ulrich on Learning From Y2K To Design the Circular Economy
What do the response to climate change and the Y2K computer bug — which required hundreds of thousands of technology workers to spend several years fixing in the 1990s to prevent catastrophic errors when the date turned over to Jan. 1, 2000 — have in common? Both are complex problems that reach into every corner of our lives. Y2K showed […]
Earth911 Podcast: Oceanographer John Englander Shares a 2023 Sea Level Rise Update
Sea level rise due to melting glaciers on Greenland and in the Arctic and Antarctic could force the relocation of 267 million people and entire cities located less than 2 meters — 6.5 feet — from today’s waterline by 2100. Oceanographer John Englander has raised the alarm about sea level rise in his books, High Tide on Main Street and […]
Earth911 Podcast: William Ulrich on Learning From Y2K To Design the Circular Economy
What do the response to climate change and the Y2K computer bug — which required hundreds of thousands of technology workers to spend several years fixing in the 1990s to prevent catastrophic errors when the date turned over to Jan. 1, 2000 — have in common? Both are complex problems that reach into every corner of our lives. Y2K showed […]
Earth911 Podcast: Dr. Helen Crowley on Creating the Nature-Positive Economy
A new paper from the World Economic Forum, called Scaling Investments in Nature, warns that if humanity does not change the way we extract and use the resources of planet Earth, the economic impact of climate change could cost society $44 trillion in lost value by 2050 (that represents 46% of 2021 global GDP). But simply by making reasonable investments […]