Water, Water Scarcity Crisis, Water pollution

Last week Alcoa issued its annual sustainability report, which outlines some of the progress the company has achieved on the environment, water stewardship, community involvement and business.

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Last week Anheuser-Busch InBev released its 2011 corporate social responsibility report, which focuses on waste diversion and water stewardship.

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A prototype wind-powered system from France’s Eole Water has been producing as much as 800 l/d of clean water in desert conditions near Abu Dhabi.

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What do successful social entrepreneurships have in common? A key element is design. One of the best design concepts is IDEO’s “human centered design” (HCD), a set of design approaches and tools that put the end-users’ needs in the center of design solutions, and ensure that their experiences drive innovation. Now IDEO.org, the social arm of IDEO, is launching a new platform, HCD Connect that brings together people and projects across diverse geography and sectors.

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Last August, I posted an article on Thorium reactors, a form of nuclear power that supposedly overcomes many of the concerns associated with traditional nukes. Despite my admittedly anti-nuclear bias, I had heard enough good things about this technology to want to learn more and share what I learned. The technology has attracted an enthusiastic following, many of who feel that this is the best of all currently available alternatives.

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We have breaking news today on the oil industry . Ecowatch.org claims to have uncovered evidence of a Deepwater Horizon-type blowout of a BP rig in the Caspian Sea, in September 2008, two years before the Deepwater Horizon blew out. Had this incident been reported, there is no doubt that an investigation which have followed which would have very likely led to a change in the unsafe and faulty practices that ultimately led to the well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago.

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BP really wants to be considered one of the good guys. You can practically feel the eagerness saturating every page of their new 2011 Sustainability Review. But like a lion showing up at a vegetarian restaurant they don’t seem to realize that whatever their soft-hearted intentions might be, they cannot get away from their true nature, which is that of a fossil fuel giant. Fossil fuels will be a necessary evil for the immediately foreseeable future. By delivering these fuels to us, BP is performing a service that many of us literally could not live without. And it appears that they are trying to do it in as responsible a manner as they possibly can.

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Canada has oil reserves of 170 billion barrels, more than Iran and Nigeria combined. Much of that oil has been considered “not economically recoverable,” lying deep underground in a mixture of bitumen, a thick, tarry substance, sand and water known as oil sands or tar sands. Projections made after slowdowns in offshore production show that as much as 36 percent of American oil could be coming from Canadian oil sands by 2030. However, there are numerous major environmental problems and risks associated with this technology.

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Picture a group of really tall basketball players, playing keep-away with a group of small children. They laugh and joke as they toss the ball back and forth over the outstretched arms of the frustrated little ones. Remind you of anything?

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Picarro’s new N2O istopomer analyzer provides scientists with greater insight into the earth’s nitrogen cycle, as well as helping them address problems spanning agriculture, ecosystems and climate.

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Three TriplePundit writers have advanced to the final 10 writers in the UNEP/Treehugger blogging competition. Read excerpts from their second posts and vote.

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Natural gas has been in the news a lot lately, being hailed as the solution to our energy problems on the one hand, and a potential environmental disaster on the other. Let us try to sort out the reality behind this old friend with a new face. Before we start, it might be useful to make a distinction between the natural gas that has historically been collected as a byproduct of oil drilling and the more recently promoted source known as shale gas.

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In terms of GDP per capita, Brazil and India’s wealth grew 34% and 120%, respectively, from 1990-2008. According to a new, alternative Inclusive Wealth Indicator developed by UNU-IHDP that measures natural and human, as well as economic capital, Brazil’s wealth actually increased only 3% and India’s 9% over the period.

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Surveying solar PV manufacturers around the world, a non-proift, in conultation with a wide range of experts, establishes environmental, health & safety, and business management best practices for the industry sector while at the same time criticizing current energy policies which favor production of fossil fuels.

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The interrelated social, environmental and economic challenges associated with rapid, growing urbanization is bringing some 3,000 experts from around the world together in London this week for “Planet Under Pressure 2012″ conference.

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Saudi Arabia is an interesting country when it comes to energy. First of all, they have more oil than anyone else. They also get a huge amount of solar energy, approximately 2200 kWh per square meter. At the same time, they have tremendous energy demands, both for air conditioning and desalination. It is, after all, not an inherently hospitable environment. Until quite recently, they mostly used oil to generate electricity, since it was so plentiful and cheap there. But, given that oil production has now peaked and with the price of oil going up now, along with increased demand, they are looking in to other alternatives.

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Yesterday McDonald’s announced that the fast food giant would test the use of paper coffee cups instead of foam in 2000 of its U.S. locations.

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A Cola-Cola plant in Northampton, MA, churns out wastewater at a rate that is becoming to expensive for the city’s wastewater treatment facility to process.

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By Scott Bryan, Chief Operating Officer, Imagine H2O “We are planning for water for a century to come,” the San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Page wrote in 1913 of the decision to build the O’Shaughnessy Dam and flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Almost a century later, snowpack supplying the Bay Area with water is at a [...]

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While smart buildings and campuses show amazing results due to asset management and building improvements that impact energy use, spatial planning and inhabitant safety, smart cities go beyond structural enhancements to impacting urban planning, environment, energy and water, transportation, education, health, public safety and government and agency administration.

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Water-Gen developed a technology that turns air into water, in order to ensure that military troops have available drinking water even in rough field conditions. The system can be installed on any vehicle and produce 40-80 liters of drinking water per day.

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For decades shareholder advocates have been changing corporate behavior from the inside. They have challenged companies and shown them that doing good is good business, and that corporate responsibility helps profitability. This proxy season we expect no different. Read more about the hot issues on 2012 proxy ballots and Proxy Preview 2012, a free guide to the resolutions.

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In a startling disclosure, world renowned scientist, Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security and the chair of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics, the man that the BBC had called a “visionary on the environment,” confessed yesterday to using a false identity to obtain confidential documents from the Heartland Institute, and then to leak those documents to the press.

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With few exceptions, water is necessary to generate and distribute energy. In turn, water can’t be collected, purified and transported without energy. A term has been coined to describe the relationship: the Energy-Water Nexus.

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A new report from the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP Water Disclosure Global Report 2011: Raising corporate awareness of global water issues presents water findings from 190 companies around the world.

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When it comes to details, Dubai is a global leader and the quality of life and business climate both have tremendous benefits. But when it comes to overall design, Dubai could use some CPR.

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Desalination has been the answer to the rapid development of the Arabian Gulf region. But as Leon Kaye explains, the wasteful consumption of water in the UAE and Qatar comes with a price.

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Hong Kong’s Upsolar in mid-January became the first Chinese silicon PV supplier to complete an initial Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of its two best-selling solar PV modules. Now, it’s using Facebook to crowdsource a public contest to create its 2012 advertising campaign.

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I wrote about the innovative, waterless dyeing technique pioneered by a Dutch company, DyeCoo in August last year. It appears that Nike liked the look of this technology and will now be working with the company to reduce water use. The technique uses recycled carbon dioxide to dye synthetic fibers and uses absolutely no water. Nike [...]

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Investor groups, coordinated by Ceres, announced they’ve filed shareholder resolutions with Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Chesapeake Energy, ConocoPhillips and 14 other oil and gas companies, “pressing them to disclose their plans for managing environmental and workplace challenges such as hydraulic fracturing, greenhouse gas emissions and woker safety.”

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