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Global biodiversity decline demands urgent, society-wide changes, experts warn

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-global-biodiversity-decline-demands-urgent.html

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Scientists call for a global alliance to place biodiversity at heart of UN Pact for the Future

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A new white paper: “From Knowledge to Solutions: Science, Technology and Innovation in Support of the UN SDGs,” published in the journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), brings together leading voices from Europe’s biodiversity and data science communities to deliver a clear message: protecting biodiversity is not just an environmental issue. It is essential for food security, public health, climate stability, and the global economy.

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Global Farmlands Already Grow Enough Food to Feed 15 Billion People but Half of Calories Never Make It to our Plates

Nearly half of the world’s food calories go to animals and engines instead of people.

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/global-farmlands-already-grow-enough-food-to-feed-15-billion-people-but-half-of-calories-never-make-it-to-our-plates

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Building livable cities starts with water resilience – CityTalk

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This blog was written by Anton Earle, ICLEI Global Water Coordinator

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Report confirms record-high greenhouse gases, global temperatures, global sea level, and ocean heat in 2024

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According to the 35th annual State of the Climate report, greenhouse gas concentrations, the global temperature across land and oceans, global sea level, and ocean heat content all reached record highs in 2024, and glaciers lost the most ice of any year on record.

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Solar power brings fresh water to Bangladesh’s thirsty coastal region

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Cheap Chinese panels are powering desalination plants for areas that have long struggled with water shortages.

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Jen Fitschen, Author, BSc Computer Science and Oceanography

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Streetlights Are Making Leaves Inedible for Insects Disrupting Whole Food Chain - discoverwildscience

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Streetlights brighten our nights. The increasing levels of artificial light are toughening tree leaves, making them less edible for insects.

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Third of ‘slum residents’ in global south are exposed to ‘disastrous’ flood risks

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One in three people in informal settlements in the global south live in floodplains and are at risk of a “disastrous flood”.

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Carbon ‘offsets’ aren’t working: Researchers offer a ‘roadmap’ to improve nature-based climate solutions

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A lot of the climate-altering carbon pollution humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels gets drawn into the Earth’s oceans and landscapes through natural processes, mostly through photosynthesis, as plants turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass.

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Earth Overshoot Day Reaches Record for Earliest Date - EcoWatch

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For 2025, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 24, the earliest it has been since the event was first calculated in 2006.

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Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

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Experts say global community must take action to improve pollution levels

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Since March 2022, the global community has been negotiating a global plastics treaty within the framework of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)—but no agreement has been reached so far. From 5 to 14 August, the next round of negotiations in Geneva (Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) 5.2) will make another attempt to reach a legally binding agreement aimed at ending global plastic pollution. Plastic pollution harms not only the environment and human health but also the climate.

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Throughout history, people have viewed seasons as relatively stable, recurrent blocks of time that neatly align farming, cultural celebrations and routines with nature's cycles. But the seasons as we know them are changing. Human activity is rapidly transforming the Earth, and once reliable seasonal patterns are becoming unfamiliar.

In our recent study, we argue that new seasons are surfacing. These emergent seasons are entirely novel and anthropogenic (in other words, made by humans).

Examples include "haze seasons" in the northern and equatorial nations of south-east Asia, when the sky is filled with smoke for several weeks. This is caused by widespread burning of vegetation to clear forests and make way for agriculture during particularly dry times of year.

Or there is the annual "trash season", during which tidal patterns bring plastic to the shores of Bali, Indonesia, between November and March.
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At the same time, some seasons are disappearing altogether, with profound consequences for ecosystems and cultures. These extinct seasons can encompass drastically altered or terminated migratory animal behaviour, such as the decline of seabird breeding seasons in northern England.

Climate change is also calling time on traditional winter sport seasons by making snow scarcer in alpine regions.

Nature's new rhythms

Perhaps more common are "syncopated seasons". The changes are akin to new emphases on beats or off-beats in familiar music that capture the listener's attention.

Syncopated seasons include hotter summers and milder winters in temperate climates, with increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather that exposes more people and ecosystems to stress.

The timings of key seasonal events, like when leaves fall or certain migratory species arrive, are becoming more unpredictable. We coined the term "arrhythmic seasons", a concept borrowed from cardiology, to refer to abnormal rhythms which include earlier springs or breeding seasons, longer summers or growing seasons, and shorter winters or hibernating seasons.

Changing seasonal patterns throw the interdependent life cycles of plants and animals out of sync with each other, and disrupt the communities that are economically, socially and culturally dependent on them.

In northern Thailand, human activity has reshaped nature's rhythms and affected the supply of water and food in turn. Communities along the Mekong river's tributaries have relied on the seasonal flow of rivers to fish and farm for generations.

At first, upstream dams disrupted these cycles by blocking fish migration and preventing the accumulation of sediment that farms need for soil. More recently, climate change has shifted rainfall patterns and made dry seasons longer and rainy seasons shorter but more intense, bringing fires and further uncertainty to farmers.

Let's rethink time

How we react to changing seasonal patterns can either worsen or improve environmental conditions. In south-east Asia, public awareness of the "haze season" has led to better forecasting, the installation of air filters in homes and the establishment of public health initiatives.

These efforts help communities adapt. But if society only uses adaptive fixes like these, it can make the haze worse over time by failing to tackle its root causes. By recognising this new season, societies might normalise the recurrence of haze and isolate anyone who demands the government and businesses deal with deforestation and burning.

Powerful institutions like these shape narratives about seasonal crises to minimise their responsibility and shift blame elsewhere. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to fostering accountability and ensuring fair responses.

The shifting seasons require us to rethink our relationship with time and the environment. Today, most of us think about time in terms of days, hours and minutes, which is a globalised standard used everywhere from smartphones to train timetables. But this way of keeping time forgets older and more local ways of understanding time - those that are shaped by natural rhythms, such as the arrival of the rainy season, or solar and lunar cycles, rooted in the lives and cultures of different communities.

Diverse perspectives, especially those from Indigenous knowledge systems, can enhance our ability to respond to environmental changes. Integrating alternative time-keeping methods into mainstream practices could foster fairer and more effective solutions to environmental problems.

Seasons are more than just divisions of time - they connect us with nature. Finding synchrony with changing seasonal rhythms is essential for building a sustainable future.

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Farewell to summer? 'Haze' and 'trash' among Earth's new seasons as climate change and pollution play havoc

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Seasons are more than just divisions of time - they are our connection with nature.

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Pollution, melting microbes, undamming rivers, risks for elders: 4 key climate issues

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In a world increasingly shaped by climate extremes, environmental experts are delivering a blunt warning: four rapidly emerging threats could reshape life for millions unless urgent action is taken.

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The parched planet paradox: How drought and sea level rise feed on each other

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Losses of land-based water could have profound implications for access to safe drinking water and the ability to grow food.

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Humans are using more resources than the planet can restore – DW – 07/23/2025

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Little more than half a year into 2025, mankind has already hit Earth Overshoot Day, consuming resources at a rate that far outpaces the capacity to restore them. Are there ways to slow things down?

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https://www.gdrc.org/techtran/tech-conti/index.html

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A Disaster Technology Continuum: Technology Ecosystems for Disaster Risk Reduction

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Laying out these technologies on a continuum will help us understand the “big picture” of who has to do what, and the role that technologies play in disaster risk reduction, particularly in risk prevention and ecosystem restoration.

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Study: London Low-Traffic Neighborhoods See 35% Drop in Road Injuries

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London’s effort to reduce speeds and limit vehicles in parts of the city are contributing to improved road safety.

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Ranked: The World’s Biggest Tourism Economies

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Explore the world’s biggest tourism economies in 2024, with the U.S. and China standing out as the only trillion-dollar tourism powerhouses.

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Reduce, remove, reflect: The three Rs that could limit global warming

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Since 2019, the UK has been committed to the target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Legally binding net zero targets form the basis for national efforts to meet the international goals of limiting global warming to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and ideally to 1.5°C.

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Fast-growing, Global South cities are ‘strikingly underrepresented’ in climate research

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Research on climate change in urban areas is skewed towards large, well-established cities in the Global North, according to analysis of more than 50,000 studies.

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Majority of UNESCO World Heritage sites face severe water risk

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UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Taj Mahal and Acropolis, are increasingly under threat from severe water hazards, a new report reveals.

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12 Ecosystems That Are in Danger: How Can They Be Protected? - discoverwildscience

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Discover 12 endangered ecosystems and explore the actions needed to protect and preserve these vital environments.

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Scientists unveil incredible new technology capable of producing clean water 24/7: ‘Easily scalable and accessible’

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U.S. scientists have created a new solar-powered system that can turn saltwater into clean drinking water around the clock.

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Desertification is not just about deserts. It’s round the corner and impacting us!

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/09/what-is-desertification-land-degradation/

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What is desertification and why is it important to understand?

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Drylands are degrading into deserts and could displace millions in the decades to come. This explainer breaks down desertification’s causes and how can it be mitigated.

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This is how cities can reduce emissions by as much as 84% with waste-reduction solutions

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/waste-emissions-methane-cities/

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Here's how the fight against climate change is actually going | World Economic Forum

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Here’s how the fight against climate change is actually going, according to a top UN official.

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Nigel Topping, the UN’s High-level Champion for Climate Change, shares his views on where climate action is succeeding with the World Economic Forum.

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Towards zero hunger in Africa: 5 steps to achieve food security

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Global food systems have been battered by overlapping crises in recent years. Key among these are the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukraine war and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. These have resulted in forced migration, loss of employment, climate stress, loss of biodiversity, and economic instability.

In Africa, which is home to 1.5 billion people, these shocks and stressors have slowed - or even reversed - decades of progress in improving food security and nutrition. For example, 37 million people in the Greater Horn of Africa are facing acute hunger in one of the region's worst droughts in decades.

These multiple crises have forced the world to recognise that improving nutrition and food security requires more resilient global and national food systems. Food systems are the sum of actors and interactions along the food value chain - from input supply and production to transport, processing, retailing, wholesaling, preparation, consumption and disposal.

As set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG2), the journey towards food and nutritional security for Africa has a clear destination - zero hunger. The target is to ensure access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people by 2030.

The recently launched Africa Agriculture Status Report examines the continent's progress towards food and nutritional security.

We co-edited the report, which has six key themes. It charts a roadmap to get to the goal faster while adapting to a changing environment. Our report coincided with World Food Day 2022, whose theme is safer food, better health.

Without transformative change like the Asian Green Revolution, African food systems will continue to impede human development. They will also continue to be overly dependent on food imports. Without a strong drive for sustainable agricultural practices, the continent's food systems will worsen environmental destruction. Urgent action is needed to anticipate megatrends, rally political will, mobilise investments and strengthen capacity.

Five ways to transform African food systems
The need for true cost accounting
Development practitioners working in Africa need true cost accounting for our food systems. It should explicitly consider all the environmental, social and human health outcomes associated with the way food systems are organised. For example, 74% of agricultural production growth in sub-Saharan Africa since 2000 has been achieved through area expansion and only 26% from increased yields. This is far from ideal. Reliance on area expansion has converted forests and grasslands into cropland on a massive scale. The result has been substantial damage to the region's stock of natural resources and ecosystem services.

A true cost accounting framework sets out the costs of this approach. It would lead to the recognition that technical innovation is important to improve yields on existing farmland. It would show that this is a more sustainable approach to production growth, better health and improved nutrition.
Anticipate the megatrends
African governments must be prepared for the big demographic, economic, environmental, and social trends shaping the continent's food systems. These include:

rapid population growth, associated land scarcity and rapidly rising land prices

rapidly growing demand for food, driven by rapidly growing urban areas, rising incomes and purchasing power

more frequent and intense weather disruptions associated with climate change

global health crises, economic disruptions, and civil conflicts such as the Russo-Ukraine war

technical innovation in digital agriculture.

Africa's food systems continue to evolve in response to these drivers. Food policies and investment strategies need to change too. We are chasing a moving target.
Role of leadership
Leadership is essential to harness collective effort, shared responsibility, stakeholder engagement and political will to transform food systems.

Political leaders can either push the accelerator or step on the brakes. The complex nature of our food systems requires that key actors, including national governments, international agencies, civil society, farmer organisations and the private sector, work together towards the common goal.

Governments and regional bodies are at the centre of food systems interventions.
Investment gap
Financing is the fuel needed to accelerate transformation. Based on recent estimates from New Growth International, a network based management consulting firm, food systems transformation in Africa requires up to US$77 billion a year from the public sector and up to US$180 billion from the private sector.

Mobilising financing at scale requires African governments to:

define priorities

commit to financing priority actions

enhance coordination between government and private sector

ensure good governance and accountability.

Capacities and capabilities
Africa must invest in domestic human, institutional and system-wide capacities and capabilities. Capacity development efforts should be guided by seven core principles: country ownership and leadership; alignment with national needs and priorities; use of national systems and local expertise; no "one-size-fits-all" tactics; multi-level approaches; and mutual accountability.

We also note that even though agricultural research capacity has increased by 90% between 2000 and 2016 there has been a decline in public investment in agricultural research systems. This threatens Africa's capacity to adapt the latest technologies to local conditions.

Call to action

There's an urgency to transforming African and global food systems to make them more resilient and sustainable. Failure is not an option.

Transformation will require a coordinated approach from governments, development partners, the private sector and civil society. It is time to put into action the carefully designed strategies, policy reforms and investment plans highlighted in the latest report.

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Towards zero hunger in Africa: 5 steps to achieve food security

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Global food systems have been battered by overlapping crises in recent years. Key among these are the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukraine war and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. These have resulted in forced migration, loss of employment, climate stress, loss of biodiversity, and economic instability.

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The New Era of Energy

Energy is the pulse of our daily lives, powering everything from our homes to our cars and electronic gadgets.

Over the last two decades, there's been an ongoing shift in how we produce and consume energy, largely due to rising climate awareness among both governments and consumers.

The above infographic from Surge Battery Metals highlights the increasing uptake of clean energy technologies and explains the need for the raw materials that power them. This is part two of three infographics in the Energy Independence Series.

The Growth of Clean Energy

Government policies, falling production costs, and climate consciousness have all contributed to the exponential adoption of green energy technologies.

For example, only a few countries were actively encouraging EV adoption a decade ago, but today, millions of consumers can take advantage of EV tax concessions and purchase subsidies with governments committed to phasing out internal combustion engines. Partly as a result, electric vehicles (EVs) are well on their way to mainstream adoption.

Here's a look at how the number of electric cars on the road has grown since 2011, including both battery EVs and plug-in hybrids:

In 2021, the global electric car stock stood at around 16.4 million cars, up by around 60% from 2020. EV sales also more than doubled to reach 6.8 million units.

Alongside electric cars, renewable energy technologies are also on the road to dominating the global energy mix. In 2021, renewables accounted for 16% of global energy consumption-up from just 8% in 2000. This growth is largely down to solar and wind energy, which made up the majority of new renewable capacity additions:

Every year since 2018, solar and wind have accounted for more than 80% of new renewable capacity additions, contributing to the record-breaking growth of clean energy.

Despite this growth, the IEA projects that both EVs and renewables need to expand their reach significantly if the world is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Electric car sales need to hit 56 million units by 2030-more than eight times the 6.6 million cars sold in 2021. Similarly, solar PV and wind additions need to quadruple by 2030 from 2021 levels.

This new era of clean energy will require an increase in the supply of EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, which translates into more demand for the unnoticed raw materials behind these technologies.

The Metals Behind Clean Energy

From copper in cables to lithium in batteries, some metals are key to building and growing clean energy capacity.

In fact, for every megawatt of capacity, solar photovoltaic farms use more than 2,800 kg of copper according to the IEA. Offshore wind farms, which are connected to land by massive undersea cables, use even more copper at 8,000 kg per megawatt. Similarly, electric cars use lithium-ion batteries, which are composed of a variety of minerals, including graphite, copper, nickel, and lithium.

While the demand for these clean energy minerals is skyrocketing, their supply remains a concern, with China dominating the supply chains. In the new era of energy, domestic supplies of these materials will be key to ensuring energy independence and lower reliance on foreign imports.
In the next part of the Energy Independence Series sponsored by Surge Battery Metals, we will explore how the U.S. can build an Energy-Independent Future by developing domestic raw material and battery supply chains.

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Energy is the pulse of our daily lives, powering everything from our homes to our cars and electronic gadgets. Over the last two decades, there's been an ongoing shift in how we produce and consume energy, largely due to rising climate awareness among both governments and consumers.

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Two-thirds of the world's oceans are currently considered international waters, which mean all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research there.

But only 1.2% of these high seas, as they are referred to, are protected.  The rest is a free-for-all.

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Nudging Consumers to Make Sustainable Choices | BCG

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Companies that empower consumers and create a societal surplus can reward shareholders, build sustainability markets, and protect the planet. It’s a win-win-win.

We each make choices every day—about what to buy, what to eat, when to recycle, and whether to walk, drive, or take public transportation. While these can feel like highly individual choices, behavioral economics has shown that consumers are highly susceptible to environmental and social cues. Given that consumers’ decisions have consequences—for personal well-being and the health of the planet—companies could play a role in steering consumers to make sustainable choices. It’s as simple as giving them a nudge.

Popularized by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, nudges are simple, low-cost interventions that can alter people’s decision making without attaching a substantial economic reward or penalty to the process.

One purpose of nudges is to help people be the best version of themselves—to make the choices that they would make if their executive function, willpower, and long-term thinking were firing on all cylinders. As consumers increasingly demand more environmentally and socially conscious choices, nudges can nurture and facilitate their desire to live sustainably, accelerating demand for sustainable products and services. That demand, in turn, can help build attractive markets for investment and propel the sustainability transformation forward.

Companies already shape behaviors, so they could encourage environmentally and socially conscious ones.

Whether they intend to or not, companies already shape behaviors, so they could encourage environmentally and socially conscious ones instead. A travel portal may rank comparable flights on the basis of price and flight time, for example, but it could rank them on the basis of carbon emissions. Food delivery platforms may promote popular restaurants or their sponsors, but they could elevate climate-friendly food options instead. By examining the current options offered to customers and seeking ways to nudge them toward sustainable choices and behaviors, a company can empower its customers to meet their personal sustainability goals, enhance the company’s brand, help build sustainability markets, and protect the planet.

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From a Behavioral Surplus to a Societal Surplus

With access to an abundance of consumer data, organizations that digitally engage with their customers now have what Professor Shoshana Zuboff calls a behavioral surplus. Zuboff coined the term to describe the concentration of excess information companies have captured about consumers that is above and beyond what they need to improve their products or services—information that could be used to predict and steer future purchasing behavior and launch new products.

Companies that build this behavioral surplus (and, along with it, the power to predict and shape consumer behavior) could and should use it for the greater good—to create what we call a societal surplus: the sum of the benefits that accrue to society by advancing economic vitality; environmental sustainability; lifetime well-being; access, equity, and inclusion; ethical capacity; and social progress. Companies could use their behavioral data to nudge customers toward more sustainable choices, thereby building market demand for sustainable offerings and helping society achieve sustainability targets. A societal surplus is generative; it benefits consumers, shareholders, and society as a whole.

In our assessment, there’s an ethical imperative here: if companies are cultivating a behavioral surplus, then they also have a responsibility to cultivate a societal surplus. Recent advances in data and analytics, data segmentation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence—combined with raised awareness of the environmental and social impacts of lifestyle choices—mean that companies have the technology and data that they need to help consumers make the responsible choices that the best versions of themselves would make.

By cultivating a societal surplus, companies can gain a competitive advantage that is not easily replicated.

By cultivating a societal surplus, companies can gain a sustained competitive advantage that is not easily replicated. By understanding and aggregating the environmental and societal benefits created by their customers’ use of more-sustainable products or services, companies can quantify their own societal impact. Are nudges in an online marketplace increasing the number of transactions for more-sustainable products? Does a credit card that shows the emissions associated with each purchase reduce the amount of carbon per dollar spent? Is a manufacturer experiencing significantly higher growth because of its nudges to buy energy-efficient appliances? Is a sustainability campaign that is allied with social media influencers seeing an uptick in sustainable purchasing patterns? In the same way that an organization calculates its CO₂ footprint, water savings, or diversity, equity, and inclusion impact, companies should quantify the effect of their nudges by measuring the impact that their customers’ choices have on the sustainability market and the community at large.

Enhancing a Sustainability Strategy

The right portfolio of sustainability nudges should help a company accelerate its sustainability strategy. This can be done, for example, by nudging its customers toward more sustainable product lines, capturing inputs that help it meet the goals of a circular economy, or providing greater transparency into product sustainability and choices that further differentiate the company.

Before building a portfolio of sustainability nudges, companies must first understand which issues are most material to their stakeholders and to the performance of the business. If a product’s total life-cycle emissions is central to a company’s sustainability strategy, for example, the goal could be to create a suite of initiatives that will nudge its customers to make choices that reduce those life-cycle emissions. This can be done by nudging customers toward the company’s lower-emission products or its Internet of Things energy-optimization service, for example. At the same time, it’s important to think about how the nudges could also contribute to other important social goals, including improving customers lifetime well-being, advancing equity and inclusion, and operating ethically.

Addressing sustainability also requires collective action to shape the wider ecosystem. Companies are increasingly joining alliances to jointly make fundamental changes, such as expanding the recycling infrastructure, building market demand, and strengthening their influence on standards and policy. The use of sustainability nudges also applies to corporate-led sustainability alliances. A sustainability alliance can share the load on some sustainability nudges by educating consumers, for example, and disclosing environmental costs.

A sustainability alliance can share the load on some nudges by educating consumers and disclosing environmental costs.

For example, an alliance could create a shared advertising campaign that encourages consumers to adopt a sustainable behavior, such as recycling plastic beverage bottles. Then, each member company could complement that campaign with its own set of recycling nudges. Or the alliance could promote a logo usable by all members that conform to certain sustainability practices, such as abiding by fair-trade arrangements or sourcing from conflict-free areas. Every sustainability alliance should explicitly think through how it will use nudges to amplify members’ sustainability efforts and accelerate end-market transformations.

Putting Nudges into Action

So, how can companies use nudges to engage customers and advance sustainability? There are four main ways.

Highlight sustainable options throughout a customer’s purchasing journey. Behavioral economics research shows that given a choice, people opt for the status quo—they have a preference for the default option. But, with the right type of prompting, they can be encouraged to adopt new behaviors. Companies could find creative techniques to highlight sustainable products and services, particularly approaches that showcase their unique value.

Draw attention. Make it easy for consumers to find and purchase sustainable options. Travel search engines could list the flights with the lowest carbon emissions first, stores could make the most sustainable products easy to spot on racks and shelves, and parking garages could put parking spots for electric vehicles closest to the entrance.

Leverage branding. Develop a brand that allows consumers to quickly gauge a product’s level of sustainability. Companies could create brands around sustainable themes, such as planet friendly, sustainable sourcing, or water-smart options.

Create contrast. Present a sustainable choice next to alternatives to positively influence the consumer’s perception of the value of the sustainable option. By offering a consumer nonorganic, organic, and local organic versions of a product—two sustainable choices along with a nonsustainable one—companies could nudge consumers to select a sustainable option.

Simplify sustainable choices. Successful companies take into account consumers’ tendencies to act and think automatically, nudge them when they’re open to making a change, and enable them to take small steps that aren’t difficult.

Remove barriers. Eliminate digital and physical barriers or additional steps so as to streamline the sustainable decision. Meal kit services could offer curated vegetarian or carbon-neutral options that could be ordered with a single click.

Change defaults. Decrease the friction of choosing the most sustainable option. Food delivery platforms could set the utensils default to “no plastic cutlery and napkins.”

Provide automatic prompts or encouragement. Guide sustainable decision making through real-time prompts. E-commerce platforms could suggest that a customer consider a product that offers the same features but has a smaller carbon footprint. Additionally, the platform could offer customers the choice to “round up” to contribute toward offsetting carbon emissions.

Educate customers and disclose environmental costs. Companies could use nudges to share data and insights that highlight the value of sustainable options—and the costs associated with nonsustainable options.

Remind. Keep sustainability top of mind for customers. Show customers their purchases and emissions in an app or at the bottom of their receipt. Send them periodic reminders about the impact of their sustainable choices and the company’s commitments to sustainability. Or, post reminders in stores or at checkout counters highlighting the value of sustainable choices.

Educate. Help customers learn more about the production of the products that they buy and the importance of sustainable choices. Produce a video that highlights the local farm or the factory where an item is produced, that talks about the sustainable and ethical practices of the brand, or that analyzes the steps of the production life cycle and reveals opportunities for customers to drive sustainability. Then make the video accessible via a quick response, or QR, code.

Disclose. Be transparent about the resources that were required to produce an item. Using the nutrition labels on foods and beverages as a model, clearly and consistently present a product’s sustainability metrics on the packaging in a way that allows for easy comparison.

Engage customers and communities in actions that reinforce their commitments. Companies could use nudges that reflect socially acceptable group behaviors, inducing customers to think or act differently.

Encourage precommitment. Encourage customers to actively commit to sustainable choices early on. Use commitment strategies (such as asking customers to sign a pledge when they contract for a service or to press a button as they walk into a store) to encourage sustainable choices.

Tap into positive social pressure. Use individuals’ desire to uphold social norms and maintain a positive image to drive sustainable choices. Consider ranking and grading customers’ purchases for sustainability relative to their peers, convey the percentage of customers that have switched from a less sustainable product to a more sustainable product recently, or congratulate the most-sustainable customers.

Gamify. Frame sustainable decision making as a game, and reward good choices. Invite customers to ring a bell when their cart contains sustainable choices, incentivize sustainable purchases that unlock a new level within a loyalty program, or offer rewards for meeting certain targets (such as making three consecutive carbon-neutral purchases).

Whether companies run traditional advertising campaigns or use the latest in machine learning and behavioral science, they tap into the behavioral surplus they have accumulated as a matter of course.

The urgent question is whether companies should nudge consumers toward more sustainable choices, thereby helping to create a societal surplus for the well-being of individuals and the world. Getting consumers on the path to sustainable living can’t wait. There is an ethical imperative for companies to help them.

By recognizing the opportunity and building a portfolio of sustainability nudges, companies can drive consumer demand, accelerate their sustainability strategy, and build sustainability markets—not only to benefit the company’s bottom line but also for the good of individuals, society, and the planet.

The authors thank their colleague Kateryna Gudziak for her thoughtful contributions to this article.

The BCG Henderson Institute is Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration from the Institute, please visit our Latest Thinking page and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Authors

Sana Rafiq

Project Leader, BCG Henderson Institute Ambassador

Washington, DC

David Young

Managing Director & Senior Partner, BCG Henderson Institute Fellow

Boston

About Boston Consulting Group

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.

Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.

© Boston Consulting Group 2022. All rights reserved.

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What happens when we run out of sand? - Marketplace

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Sand is mined more than any other mineral in the world. Roughly 40 billion to 50 billion tons of aggregate sand (including gravel and crushed rock) are extracted every year from the earth. The United States alone produced 960 million metric tons in 2020. Demand for sand is not only depleting the resource, it's causing a host of issues, driving up the cost of development while also creating dire environmental and social consequences.

The enormous spike in sand consumption is a relatively new problem, driven by the shift from rural to city living. But the exact amount of sand mined every year is unknown. Global extraction is not well recorded, making it hard to know how extensive the crisis is. Still, the conservative estimate on yearly global sand extraction is 40 billion tons, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

"It's only probably in the last 20 to 30 years that sand mining, extracting sand from the ground, has really started to create major problems," said Vince Beiser, a journalist and author of "The World in a Grain." The world, and especially developing countries, are undergoing an "incredible burst of urbanization," he said, "building cities at a scale and on a pace that's never happened before in human history."

Rising costs

And builders need a lot of sand to do that. The construction industry consumes the largest amount of sand in the world.Concrete and cement production are particularly dependent on sand; concrete is made up of 25% sand and 45% coarse aggregate.

As sand becomes more scarce, it gets more expensive. In 1991, the average price per ton of sand in the U.S. was $3.96. In 2021, it was $9.90. It takes roughly 18,000 tons of sand to build a mile of highway, and 200 tons for the average single-family house. That means it costs over $1,000 more for sand alone to build a house than it did 20 years ago.

The use of sand, gravel and crushed rock in construction is predicted to more than double by 2060, when world population could top 10 billion, according to a 2019 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Floor area per capita is set to double by 2060 for developing countries. Every person on the planet uses an average of about 40 pounds of sand per day, the United Nations reported in 2019, and that will continue to grow with urbanization trends. As we build cities, roads and parking garages, the sand that's locally available is depleted and the material must be brought in from other areas - an expensive solution.

Those transportation costs are adding to the price of development, said Aurora Torres, an ecologist and environmental researcher.

"The moment that you start increasing the transportation distance, it becomes the biggest fraction of the price," she said. Local scarcity has given rise to an international sand market, forcing prices higher for the commodity.

The "right" kind of sand

What about all the sand in the Sahara, Gobi and Arabian deserts?

Desert sand is created by wind erosion, resulting in grains too fine and round to be used for building. The sand in concrete is often mined from lakes, rivers and deltas, where erosion creates the jagged sand needed for cement.

"There's a lot of sand on the planet," that can be used in construction, author Beiser said. "The stuff that's really easy to get, the stuff that's near the surface ... that stuff is mostly gone. And we're having to go further and further and do more and more damage to get at the stuff that's left."

Rising prices have led to illegal trade

"What happens is that the demand is still high, but you have a lower supply of material from formal sources. So this commonly leads to an increase in the price, then triggers a lot of illicit activity," Torres said.

This happened in China, Torres said. When the government introduced stronger regulations for river sand mining, the price of river sand increased by 600%.

"This triggered a lot of illicit activity," she said, "many people silently became part of this illicit supply of materials."

And in areas where illicit mining is prevalent, it can devastate communities. India is the second largest producer of concrete in the world, and much of its sand industry is dominated by organized crime groups known as sand mafias.

"The conflict over sand has created, I don't want to say warfare, but pretty large-scale violence," Beiser said. "Communities are being targeted for violence," he said, "it's literally destroying people's livelihoods."

Singapore, for example, is a high-density city-state undergoing massive and rapid development, and it relies on sand imports.

"This has led to many conflicts in the area, and in the past Singapore has been accused of stealing sand from neighboring countries, and it was even accused for the disappearance of more than 20 islands in Indonesia," Torres said.

What do we do?

Reducing demand for sand is paramount, according to Torres and Beiser. The most important way to limit the environmental and societal issues that result from sand mining is to significantly decrease our need for the resource.

For Torres, this means shifting priorities and building differently.

"It's our idea of progress that the more successful we are, the bigger house we will have, the more cars we will have, and we need to act against that," she said. A high floor area per capita means a large footprint in the sand, figuratively.

Perhaps the best place to start is recognizing the crisis exists.

"I would just like people to be much more aware of how crucial this mineral is for our lives," Torres said.
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Pune Garbage Crisis Part V: Tech solutions to help fix the city’s garbage problem | Cities News,The Indian Express

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Across the world, municipal solid waste and its safe disposal have triggered research by scientists and technologists who want to solve the problem once and for all. Most of the research has focussed on finding solutions for both wet and dry waste and to come up with solutions for municipal landfills and the ever-growing mountains of garbage. (If you missed the earlier stories in this series, click here)

Generation of solid waste, in ever expanding urban spaces, has far exceeded the infrastructure set up to handle them. The need of the hour is to find a solution which would allow for decentralized treatment of wet garbage (preferably at the source of origin), treat landfills and their legacy waste and come up for solutions for multi-layered plastics which ends up in landfills because of difficulties in recycling.

A look at solutions from Pune which might have answers to these questions.
Vaayu, turning waste pickers to energy providers
Priyadarshan Sashrabuddhe's desire to tackle the problem of organic (wet) waste stemmed from his student days in IIT Bombay. A devout votary of sustainable lifestyle, Sashrabuddhe wanted to come up with solutions for organic waste which would help in its disposal and also have a social impact. In his words, the solution should convert waste pickers into energy providers, allow for decentralised solutions for organic waste and to solve the problem of fossil fuel.

"In a world where there is emphasis on reduced usage of fossil fuels, organic waste can solve problems of cooking fuel in a single household. What is needed is intelligent design and quick solutions which can be implemented in a decentralised manner," he explained.

Sashrabuddhe's solution relies on generation of biogas from wet waste but uses a much simpler mechanism to handle and operate. Vaayu, the brainchild of Sashrabuddhe, is a simple mechanism which can be set up at household levels and run on a day to day basis.

"Vaayu solves the problem of solid waste and access to clean cooking fuel. Biogas generated from organic waste becomes the main cooking fuel," he said.

Vaayu, or air, involves a special bacterial solution which 'digests' the organic waste and generates biogas. The gas generated is stored in an inflated balloon and then supplied through piped installation for cooking. The set includes a digester, where the bacterial decomposition happens and the piped installations which supplies the gas for cooking.

Research and development by Sashrabuddhe has allowed development of a better digester which is much easier to handle and much more efficient from the prototype developed in 2018.

A normal Vaayu installation consumes 2 kg of organic waste to generate enough bio gas to meet the cooking needs for 40 minutes. The liquid by-product is an excellent fertilizer which can be reused. Thanks to the bacterial mixture, the whole process is odourless and hygienic.

Vaayu comes in various sizes which can be as large as 200 kg. Since the design was perfected, Sashrabuddhe has managed to install 300 units in Maharashtra as well as in Udaipur. The installations range from individual homes to institutional set ups like hotels, corporate canteens hostels and others. The company has channel partners in various cities of Maharashtra and is now expanding pan India.

What Sahasrabuddhe dreams of is a social impact wherein the waste collector becomes the energy provider. Over the last two years, Sahasrabuddhe is LPG-free with Vaayu meeting all his domestic energy requirements. "What I really want to do is to have bigger set-ups in housing societies which would be run and operated by the waste collectors. Thus, instead of just waste collectors they should become energy providers," he said.
Solving the problem of MLP
In the world of recycling, plastic - and its numerous - forms presents the biggest challenge. Thanks to its durability and its almost immortal nature, plastic has become the mythical Lernaean Hydra which is almost impossible to end. Worldwide, research on plastics attracts millions of dollars with scientists, and polymer engineers spending endless nights trying to come up solutions to this problem.

Multi layered plastics, or MLP, are the most commonly used packaging material. Being easy to use, food manufacturers prefer this to pack their food to retain its freshness and to prevent spoilage. What was the biggest boon for the material is now the biggest stumbling block for recyclers. Banker turned entrepreneur Anish Malpani, founder of Ashaya, is on a mission to solve this problem and also have a social impact on ground.

Before the 33-year-old Malpani decided to hang up his corporate shoes, he was working in the United States in finance with a top media company. His desire to work in the impact space saw him pursuing what he called "Custom MBA" which saw him working in Africa and Latin America. With real-time experience under his belt, Malpani landed in India in 2019 to identify a sector where his work can have the biggest impact both socially and individually.

"Solid waste management presents the greatest potential given the multifaceted problems it presents. In the world of recycling, MLP is the bug bear which has little or no solutions. Most of it ends up in the landfills which is really not a solution," he said.

MLP presents unique problems - the material is produced by fusing together or sticking together different types of material. A single packet of potato chips would have layers of plastics, and metal stuck together with adhesive or fused together. For recycling, this becomes a nightmare and ends up in the landfill. What Malpani, in his laboratory in the Bhosari industrial unit, plans to do is to convert this MLP into high quality material.

Extracting high quality material, Malpani says, is possible through a complex process which involves chemical and polymer engineering. The recycled material that is extracted can then be moulded into products using customized, 3D-printed moulds.

"In the world of plastics, PET bottles have a higher recycling rate. This is because it is made up of single material. In our laboratory we have extracted high quality material from MLP which the penultimate steps towards products," he said.

Malpani's business model has the involvement of waste pickers who provide the MLP as well as a complex marketing chain where in the finished product is sold. Malpani hopes to spread across the country with mini manufacturing hubs in different regions. This will decentralise the problem of waste and help eliminate the need of a landfill.

"We are still in R&D stage and hope to launch our first product made from recycled material by the end of the year," he said.
Missed the Pune garbage series? Read all the stories here Writeback: Send in your comments, on this report and others, to pune@expressindia.com

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pune pollution and garbage crisis issues today

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Pune Garbage Crisis Part V: Tech solutions to help fix the city's garbage problem

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Across the world, municipal solid waste and its safe disposal have triggered research by scientists and technologists who want to solve the problem once and for all. Most of the research has focussed on finding solutions for both wet and dry waste and to come up with solutions for municipal landfills and the ever-growing mountains of garbage.

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Chart: Where tropical forests disappeared in 2021 - Vox

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Last fall, more than 140 world leaders made a pact to stop deforestation within the decade, not long after dozens of countries vowed to conserve nearly a third of their land. But while policymakers deliberated, trees continued to get chopped down.

In the tropics, where nearly all deforestation takes place, farming, logging, and wildfires destroyed more than 11.1 million hectares (27 million acres) of trees last year, an area roughly the size of Virginia, according to a new analysis by the nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI). More than a third of that loss was in tropical "primary" rainforests - old and unharmed groves of trees that store huge quantities of carbon, which is now likely to reenter the atmosphere where it will fuel climate change.

These losses extended to areas outside the tropics as well. In Russia, home to the largest forested area on Earth, wildfires wiped out more than 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres) of boreal, or snow, forest in 2021, roughly equivalent to the area of West Virginia, WRI's analysis shows. (The organization typically doesn't consider these losses "deforestation" because forests may grow back after a wildfire.)

Losing two states' worth of forests in a single year is alarming but not unusual. Compared to 2021, the tropics lost slightly moreprimary forest in 2020. What's surprising is that rampant deforestation continues, seemingly unbridled, even as companies and countries promise to save these ecosystems, which people and animals depend on. What's more, just a few places - and a few products - are behind the bulk of this destruction.

Just one country is responsible for more than a third of all deforestation in the tropics

More than 40 percent of the primary forests that humans wiped from the tropics last year were in Brazil, according to WRI's analysis. Most of that loss was in the Amazon, the largest rainforest on Earth.

Deforestation like this often appears in satellite imagery as large shapes cut from dark green expanses, typically near roads. The images below, taken last spring, show deforestation in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Continuing to cut down the Amazon comes at a staggering cost. It's weakening the forest and pushing it closer to a dangerous tipping point, some scientists fear, beyond which much of it could turn into a grassy savanna - that is, an entirely different ecosystem.

"Such losses are a disaster for the climate, they're a disaster for biodiversity, they're a disaster for Indigenous people," Frances Seymour, a researcher at WRI, said on a call with reporters, speaking about deforestation in Brazil. ( Hundreds of Indigenous tribes live in the Amazon.)

WRI's analysis also showed steep losses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), home to the world's second-largest rainforest. The Congo Basin is not as famous as the Amazon but is no less important, providing habitat for countless endangered animals like chimpanzees and African forest elephants and a home to more than 100 distinct ethnic groups.

But there are some glimmers of good news in the report. Once rampant, deforestation in Indonesia continues to decline thanks to strong corporate pledges and policies, according to WRI. In 2021, it dropped for the fifth straight year, the group said, falling by 25 percent compared to 2020. (However, the price of oil palm, a crop linked to deforestation in Indonesia, is currently at a 40-year high, WRI said. That could put pressure on the industry to chop down more forest for plantations.)

The greatest threat to our forests

It's not toilet paper or hardwood floors or even palm oil. It's beef.

Clearing trees for cattle is the leading driver of deforestation, by a long shot. It causes more than double the deforestation that's linked to soy, oil palm, and wood products combined, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

And worldwide beef consumption is increasing. In 1990, the world ate roughly 48 billion kilograms of beef (and veal); in 2019, consumption surpassed 70 billion kilograms (154 billion pounds), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Much of the beef-fueled deforestation is in Brazil, followed by Paraguay. Companies that raise cattle are responsible for an astonishing 80 percent of the forest loss in the Amazon, scientists estimate.

Oil palm production is a problem, too, but many of the companies that sell it have committed to preventing forest loss; those pledges are less common among corporations that buy and sell cattle and beef, according to a 2016 report by the nonprofit Forest Trends.

"The disparity is alarming," wrote the authors of the report, who mention that cattle farming causes an estimated 10 times more deforestation than oil palm.

Can the world actually stop deforestation by 2030?

Advocates have tried to before.

At a UN climate summit in 2014, dozens of governments signed a pact called the New York Declaration on Forests, which aimed to end deforestation by 2030. So far, it hasn't done much.

Last year, a much larger group of global leaders made a similar pledge at the big climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Will this time be different?

"We have had many declarations before and nothing has changed," Kimaren ole Riamit, an Indigenous leader in Kenya, told Vox last year. "There's very little to inspire us."

But some forest scientists and advocates are still hopeful. Last year's pledge involves a large number of economic powerhouses, including China, and a lot of money. Countries and private institutions backed the commitment with more than $19 billion, which will help poorer nations restore damaged forests and prevent wildfires.

There are other positive signals, too, such as what's happening in Indonesia. And more than ever, major agencies that shape environmental policies are beginning to incorporate the rights and contributions of Indigenous people and local communities. (It remains to be seen whether support for Indigenous groups extends beyond acknowledging them on paper, advocates caution.)

Getting beef consumption to decrease is a bit trickier, but there's been some progress. Fast food joints including Burger King and TGI Fridays are now serving plant-based burgers, for example, and the alternative meat sector is beginning to receive government funding.

Ultimately, companies and politicians are responsible for ending deforestation, but that doesn't mean individuals can't help. Eating less beef (and other meats) is perhaps the best way to limit your impact on the planet.

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Where forests disappeared last year, in one chart

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Last fall, more than 140 world leaders made a pact to stop deforestation within the decade, not long after dozens of countries vowed to conserve nearly a third of their land. But while policymakers deliberated, trees continued to get chopped down.

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The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap

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One of the first things many of us do when we settle into a hotel room is reach for the packaged bar of soap on the bathroom counter.

These soaps are the single most-utilized amenity at hotel chains: 86% of guests who stay at a hotel for 1-2 nights use it, handily outranking other popular offerings like the in-room TV (84%), hair dryer (36%), and valet parking (28%).

Hotels take great pride in selecting their toiletries, and invest a tremendous amount of time and money into finding the right brand partners.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
But these tiny bars come with a big problem.

While some of us smuggle home every bar we can get our hands on (a totally acceptable move, according to hoteliers), most guests leave behind sizable, half-used hunks of soap.

At scale, this is a big deal:

There are ~5m hotel rooms in the US alone.

Pre-pandemic, the average occupancy rate was ~66%.

That means that, in normal times, hotels go through ~3.3m bars of soap every day.

Every year, it has been estimated that the hospitality industry generates ~440B pounds of solid waste - much of it soap and bottled amenities. That's the equivalent weight of 2m blue whales.

What happens to all that leftover soap?

Fourteen years ago, one man asked that very question. And the answer led him down a path that has since saved tens of thousands of lives all over the world.

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One man, a pickle bucket, and a potato peeler

The thought first struck Shawn Seipler in 2008 while staying at a hotel in Minneapolis.

Seipler was a road dog. A technology executive, he spent 150 days per year in hotels on business trips. And one night, after a few room service cocktails, he wondered what became of unused hotel room soap.

So, he called the front desk and asked.

"Excuse me, what do you do with all that leftover soap?"

"Sir, would you like another cocktail?

"Absolutely... but also, what happens to all that soap?"

"Well, we throw it away."

"Do all hotels throw it away?"

"Yes, sir, it all goes to a landfill."

Seipler did some back-of-the-napkin math and realized that millions of bars of perfectly salvageable soap were going to waste.

"I couldn't stop thinking about that," Seipler told The Hustle. "And I decided I had to do something about it."

A few weeks later, in his hometown of Orlando, he walked into a Holiday Inn and asked if they'd be willing to part with their unused soap. The general manager happily complied, and Seipler left with a giant bag of half-used toiletries.

"I went to 6 other hotels that same day and they all said the same thing," recalled Seipler: "' Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! '"

Armed with thousands of bars of soap, Seipler and a few friends set up a small "workshop" in a single-car garage in downtown Orlando.

The group sat on upside-down pickle buckets and scraped the outside of the soap bars off by hand with potato peelers, pulverized them in a meat grinder, melted them down in Kenmore slow cookers, poured the mixture into soap molds, dried it overnight, and cut it up into new bars.

Seipler (right) and his buddies in a garage, manually cleaning hotel soap, in 2008 (courtesy of Clean the World)
At his best, Seipler could churn out ~500 new soap bars per day.

The next question was what he was going to do with it all.

He laid out a bunch of stats and came to a realization:

Hotels were wasting millions of bars of soap.

At the time, ~9k children under the age of 5 were dying from hygiene-related illnesses every day globally.

Studies showed that regular hand-washing could cut those deaths in half.

Seipler launched Clean the World and set out on a mission of getting those millions of bars of wasted soap to children in need.

To do that, the first thing he'd have to do is scale his operation. But getting monetary support for a real facility proved to be difficult.

"I put together a grant application for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, imagining that Bill would walk up our driveway and hand us a check for $1m," said Seipler. "We got a rejection notice within 8 hours of submission, with a note that said, 'Please do not reapply for 3 years.'"

Donated hotel soap was piling up. The economy was in a bad spot. And if Seipler didn't figure out a solution, the whole idea would die.

Shawn Seipler (photo via i4 Business Magazine; illustration: The Hustle)
So, Seipler came up with an annuity model:

1. Hotels pay a small fee ($0.50 to $1 per room, per month) to participate in a soap recycling program.

2. They're provided with everything they need to streamline donations and get rid of their waste: storage bins, shipping, staff training.

3. They also get impact reports detailing the social and environmental impact of their donations.

For hotels, this serves 2 purposes: 1) It was a relatively affordable way to get rid of all their waste, and 2) it helped them meet sustainability goals.

How the hotel soap recycling process works

Today, Clean the World partners with more than 8k hotels - roughly 1.4m rooms in total - around the world.

Its clients include major chains like Hyatt, Marriott, InterContinental, Walt Disney Resorts, and Hilton, in addition to cruise ship lines, casinos, and airlines.

Since 2009, the company has:

Collected 13m pounds of discarded soap from hotels

Distributed 68m bars of reprocessed soap to 127 countries

Diverted 23m pounds of plastic and soap waste from landfills

Its biggest partner, Hilton, which signed on all of its worldwide locations in 2019, has contributed 14.5m bars of soap in less than 3 years.

To recycle all of this soap, Clean the World has a $750k production facility in Orlando, and satellite facilities in Las Vegas, Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, Montreal, and Amsterdam.

"It's a much more professional operation now," said Seipler. "No more potato peelers or meat grinders."

The process to convert hotel soap into new bars works like so:

1. Clean the World provides a participating hotel with storage bins; when full, they're shipped to a Clean the World facility

2. Soap goes into a giant refining machine, which filters out hair, dirt, and other debris, and churns out "soap noodles"

3. Soap goes into a mixer and is sterilized with diluted bleach

4. Soap goes into a duplex plodder, where it's pummeled into a powdery substance and compressed into long solid blocks

5. Soap is cut into bars, stamped, and packed into boxes

6. Soap is sent to countries in need

Hotels all use different types of soap, and there's a whole science to mixing the right bars together. Holiday Inn Macau's oatmeal bars, for instance, pair well with Aloft Taipei's Bliss bars. Clean the World relies on 20k+ volunteers to determine the right sorting process.

The soap recycling process (photos via Clean the World)
Every donated bin is weighed so Clean the World can give hotels detailed impact reports chronicling things like:

The number of new bars contributed

The total pounds of landfill waste diverted

Carbon footprint reduction (in kg of CO2)

The number of refugees the soap directly impacted

Water and energy use reduction

Once the soap is repurposed and ready for its second life, Clean the World works with humanitarian partners like UNICEF, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, World Vision, and Children International to determine where it's most needed around the world.

With these partners, they're able to work with local clinics and schools, where they teach kids hygiene protocols and monitor effectiveness.

The organization played a big role in providing soap to Syrian and Somalian refugees, and Haitian residents in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.

Millions of bars of soap have been sent to help refugees and others without access to basic hygiene products (via Clean the World)
By volume, the largest amount of soap has gone to countries like the Philippines, Zambia, and Honduras.

But in recent times, another country has been added to the list: the US.

A pandemic pivot

In 2020, Clean the World faced a frustrating problem:

1. Supply was crimped by massive hotel closures

2. Demand for soap in the US was at an all-time high

"We were nearly on the brink of extinction at a time when people needed soap more than ever," Christina Flores, Clean the World's marketing director, told The Hustle. "We had to let 80% of our staff go."

When hotels began to slowly open back up, many big chains - including Marriott and IHG (the parent company of Holiday Inn) - also pivoted from packaged soaps to big refillable dispensers.

Facing a diminished supply, Clean the World launched a new arm that provides at-home kits consumers can fill up with unused soap and other toiletries at home.

To date, the organization has distributed 5m+ of these kits to US homeless shelters and other countries facing sanitation supply chain shortages.

These initiatives have had a considerable global impact.

As the largest hotel soap recycler in the world, Clean the World has helped lead to a 60%+ reduction in the number of children who die from diarrheal diseases each year.

One 3-ounce bar of soap is good for 100 hand-washings - enough to significantly cut down the risk of contracting such illnesses.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
A big problem still looms: worldwide, an estimated 3B people still don't have access to hand-washing facilities with soap. And thousands of hotels still throw away their soap waste.

Luckily, Clean the World isn't the only organization working on solving this problem:

EcoSoap partners with 1k+ hotels and has provided 250k+ pounds of soap to children in 10 countries

Diversey, a leading provider of hotel hygiene products, has repurposed 25m bars of soap since 2013

Thanks to these efforts, hotel toiletries that otherwise would've ended up in landfills have been given a second use case.

Seipler has seen mothers cry with joy when they're given soap. The small, commonplace things we often take for granted, he said, can make a world of difference when reallocated.

"I know it sounds funny," he said, "but that little bar of soap on the counter in your hotel room - that thing can literally save a life."

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The surprising afterlife of used hotel soap

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One of the first things many of us do when we settle into a hotel room is reach for the packaged bar of soap on the bathroom counter. These soaps are the single most-utilized amenity at hotel chains: 86% of guests who stay at a hotel for 1-2 nights use it, handily outranking other popular offerings like the in-room TV (84%), hair dryer (36%), and valet parking (28%).

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Utah Dreams Up a Different Kind of '15-Minute City' - Bloomberg

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Sustainable development hinges on fate of world’s cities | | UN News

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"The actions we take now must lead us to...a new social integration based on the principles of prosperity, transformation, adaptation, equity and respect for human rights," said Martha Delgado, President of the UN-Habitat Assembly.

Highlighting urbanization as one of today's great megatrends, she joined others in calling for resilient, sustainable "smart cities" that are more inclusively governed and better prepared to navigate future shocks and crises.

New Urban Agenda

Thursday's special meeting on Sustainable Urbanization and the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda will complement a similar High-Level meeting of the General Assembly, on 28 April.

Both sessions are designed to explore how the UN system can better support countries in implementing the New Urban Agenda - a landmark plan for the world's urban spaces, which was adopted in 2016 at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development.

The Agenda put forward standards and commitments for the planning, construction, development, management and improvement of urban areas.

It also articulated a shared vision for cities as just, safe, healthy, accessible and affordable places where all inhabitants are able to live without discrimination.

COVID-19 disparities

Opening Thursday's meeting, ECOSOC President Collen Vixen Kelapile urged participants to examine urban issues through the lens of inequality, especially given the stark disparities illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Sustainable development will hinge on how we manage urbanization," he said, adding that current discussions should be framed in the context of responding to COVID-19 response and the climate crisis.

Noting that 1.2 billion people in the global South currently live in informal settlements and slums, Mr. Kelapile reminded that they have long struggled to prevent disease transmissions, now including COVID-19.

Meanwhile, in the global North, dependence on welfare, where available, increased manifold during the pandemic and many people entered the ranks of the homeless.

In response, cities have deployed creative actions and provided services in underserved areas, while new urban models are beginning to pay more attention to pedestrians and mixed land uses.

Reclamation, inclusivity, greening

UN-Habitat chief Maimunah Mohd Sharif agreed that the world's cities have been absorbing much of COVID' s socioeconomic impact.

However, that has often resulted in closer cooperation between national and local governments, which, in turn, has led to greater reclamation, greening and inclusive use of public space.

Spotlighting a fresh opportunity to build on those partnerships, she said: "We can provide basic services in a more equitable manner, reduce commuting through tele-work and reduce carbon emissions by prudent use of energy."

Upgrading slums and addressing the housing affordability crisis remain the highest priorities for countries.

Meanwhile, as cities have been forced to augment emergency social spending during the pandemic, she warned that Agenda implementation continues to be impeded by inadequate financing, further crippled by dramatic expenditure reductions.

COVID-19 demonstrated that real value comes from providing affordable service, rather than extracting profit, she added.

Accelerating progress

"Achieving the New Urban Agenda's goals will accelerate our progress on human welfare and security globally," said General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid.

He joined other speakers in emphasizing that, when properly managed, cities are among humanity's most sustainable living environments.

On the climate front, adhering to the Agenda will help keep alive the goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C.

Cities 'connect the dots'

Echoing those points, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said the Agenda also includes measures to secure land tenure, promote affordable housing, enhance mobility and provide services that are accessible to all.

"Cities can spearhead innovations to bridge the inequalities gaps, deliver climate action and ensure a green and inclusive COVID-19 recovery," she said.

The deputy UN chief added that urban spaces "connect the dots" on many of today's global challenges.

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Sustainable development hinges on fate of world's cities

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The future of sustainable development will hinge on the fate of cities, officials told a special meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Thursday, stressing that the more than half of the world's population currently live in urban environments, a number likely to rise to nearly 70 per cent by 2050.

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How to Build a Corporate Sustainability Agenda | BCG

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Related Expertise: Digital, Technology, and Data

Achieving ESG goals and building sustainability as a competitive advantage requires integrating technology and data from the beginning.

By Rich Hutchinson, Hamid Maher, Romain de Laubier, and Tauseef Charanya

Sustainability is at the top of corporate agendas worldwide, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals have become major considerations in companies' digital transformation programs. In BCG's latest research into digital transformations, more than 60% of survey respondents listed ESG factors as a primary focus or a key criterion for selecting and prioritizing digital initiatives, and more than 80% of companies plan to increase their investments in sustainability. But putting ESG at the top of the priority list does not guarantee success.

Our research, which involved more than 850 companies worldwide, shows a clear link between digital capabilities and sustainability. Companies that are successful in their digital transformations are almost twice as likely as other organizations to see ESG goals as a key focus of digital initiatives. (See Exhibit 1.) One reason is that successful transformers shift from digital reengineering to innovation as they look beyond the challenges of delivering a transformation and focus on how their new capabilities can help tackle broader opportunities in the company agenda.

We also believe that leaders merge their digital and sustainability agendas. Our latest research indicates that digital capabilities are critical enablers for sustainability initiatives and that there are digital prerequisites for achieving sustainability goals. We explore these in more depth below. But let's look first at how companies are setting their E, S, and G digital priorities.

Industry, Company, and Regional E, S, and G Priorities

There are significant differences among industries regarding the importance that companies put on ESG and how much each industry emphasizes the E, S, and G. While one in four companies overall makes ESG the primary focus area of its digital transformations, the percentage in individual industries ranges from almost twice that (in medtech, biopharma, and automotive) to about one in ten (for telecommunications, software, and fashion and luxury). (See the interactive.) But even in the lagging industries, digital leaders put a high priority on ESG: 38% for telecommunications and 64% for software, for example.

At the same time, while climate change has put environmental considerations front and center, company investments cover all three aspects of sustainability. Overall, 80%, 70%, and 69% of companies have digital initiatives that focus on social goals, governance considerations, and environmental programs, respectively. Again, there are significant differences by industry as well as by region. Companies in more people-centric industries (both employee- and customer-focused sectors), such as health care and consumer goods and services, are most likely to prioritize social initiatives, while energy companies and industrial goods manufacturers emphasize environmental initiatives. Governance and social initiatives are top priorities among financial institutions and insurance companies. Rising cyber attacks and the shift to more remote ways of working are driving these concerns.

Regionally, social initiatives are the most-pursued priority in North America and Europe, where diversity, equity, and inclusion concerns run high, while governance initiatives rank first in Asia. Companies in Europe (74%) and Asia (71%), where most countries are net energy consumers, are more likely to prioritize environmental initiatives than companies in North America (64%), a major center of fossil fuel production as well as use. (See Exhibit 2.)

Using Digital Technologies to Drive the ESG Agenda

For leaders that think broadly about how to advance their sustainability initiatives, technology can act as a major accelerant. We call this mindset technology ecoadvantage -using advanced technologies and ways of working to enable profitable solutions that also have a positive impact on ESG goals. Employing advanced digital tools requires having certain capabilities in place. Here are five prerequisites that our research and experience show are critical to moving ESG initiatives forward.

Sustainability and growth need to be thought about together. Sustainability presents opportunities for both growth and cost reduction, putting the need to reduce carbon footprints or to comply with social or governance regulations in a new light. These opportunities can involve disrupting a company's own core business by offering low-carbon alternatives or creating new products and services that expand accessibility. For example, Norwegian crop-nutrition company Yara International, which was established in 1905 as the world's first producer of mineral nitrogen fertilizers, today offers a portfolio of digital farming solutions that enable farmers to maximize the yield and quality of their harvests while reducing environmental impact. As the company's CEO puts it, "Over the past decades, Yara has moved from an owner of assets and producer of fertilizer to becoming a complete solutions provider, both for farmers and food companies. We are transitioning from growing volume to growing value."

Such opportunities require companies to be able to innovate quickly and foster innovation across the entire organization. Digital capabilities-such as fully agile teams that can make and implement decisions independently, performance-based funding mechanisms, and rapid and flexible technology adoption-are crucial for companies to enable such innovation.

You cannot systematically reduce what you can't measure. Our study clearly shows that companies are using digital tools in a variety of ways to assess their opportunities and their progress. At the level of individual initiatives, top environmental priorities include supply chain optimization (a priority for 83% of respondents); reducing energy consumption in offices, factories, and buildings (78%); and using analytics to reduce waste (73%). Top social priorities are ensuring the protection of clients', employees', and customers' data (86%); improving employee collaboration with digital platforms (83%); and improving diversity and inclusion (80%). Critical-incident risk management (including building cyber resilience), real-time monitoring of risk, and predictive risk analytics are the three biggest areas of governance concern, focus, and priorities for 89%, 86%, and 82% of respondents, respectively.

But the real value comes from the ability to integrate internal data with data from a broader supply chain or ecosystem so as to identify areas of intervention beyond the company's own processes. This requires infrastructure based on application programming interfaces as well as advanced people capabilities to manage the data collection and analysis and orchestrate the relevant conversations. For example, BCG has developed CO2 AI, an end-to-end software solution that accurately measures emissions directly produced by a company's own activities and quantifies the more difficult-to-measure, indirect emissions produced along the company's entire value chain.

Dynamic environments mandate digital decision-making support. Reducing a company's carbon footprint often means making hard and complex decisions that turn ways of working upside down. Redesigning a supply chain, for instance, or rethinking a service delivery model from in-person to remote are big changes affecting both people and processes. Analysis paralysis is a real risk when the variables are many and the cost of making mistakes is high.

Being able to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to support such decisions enables companies to move faster and more assuredly-and make bolder moves. A leading European minerals company, for instance,used a digitally enabled energy control tower with a cloud-enabled data platform and AI and advanced analytics to create an end-to-end model for an integrated energy-management solution. As a result, it achieved a reduction in energy consumption of 5% to 10%, and it is on track to save €8 million to €9 million a year in costs. But being able to rely on AI requires very advanced data capabilities and a familiarity and comfort level with advanced tools that can only be gained through time.

Risk tracking, monitoring, and mitigation is more important than ever. Being able to quantify the risks associated with such external factors as climate change (for instance, the impact from a combination of adverse events) or cyber incidents (data theft or a system hack, for example) are fast-rising priorities for many companies. In fact, 89% and 86% of companies, respectively, have made critical-incident risk management and real-time tracking of risks digital priority initiatives.

Understanding how external events can affect the supply chain, supplier base, or customers in real time, and being able to translate such risks into financial impact, is a complex undertaking. Having access to the right data, algorithms, decision mechanism, and governance is key. Moreover, these capabilities enable companies to achieve a level of transparency on decision making and accountability, both internally and externally, that would otherwise not be possible, leading to not only better risk avoidance but also faster and more effective mitigation efforts.

Access to platforms and ecosystems is key. Most companies cannot solve climate and other sustainability issues on their own, or within the time frames necessary, to have a broader social impact. For example, 72% of companies cite collecting data across the Internet of Things (IoT), monitoring production processes, and assessing environmental impact as priorities. Digital capabilities are essential to tapping into innovation platforms and ecosystems, such as those orchestrated by Caterpillar and John Deere in agriculture; Honeywell in data from IoT; and Schneider Electric in power generation and use. It is not necessary to orchestrate a new ecosystem, and not every company is in a position to play the role of orchestrator. Contributing to an existing ecosystem can be just as attractive.

Achieving ESG goals-and building sustainability as a competitive advantage-requires integrating technology and data from the start. Making sure the digital prerequisites for ESG initiatives are in place is a critical first step.

Rich Hutchinson

Atlanta

Tauseef Charanya

Project Leader

New Jersey

Featured Content

Learn more

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The Five Digital Building Blocks of a Corporate Sustainability Agenda

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Related Expertise: Digital, Technology, and Data By Rich Hutchinson, Hamid Maher, Romain de Laubier, and Tauseef Charanya Sustainability is at the top of corporate agendas worldwide, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals have become major considerations in companies' digital transformation programs. In BCG's latest research into digital transformations, more than 60% of survey respondents listed ESG factors as a primary focus or a key criterion for selecting and prioritizing digital initiatives, and more than 80% of companies plan to increase their investments in sustainability.

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How can we make the construction sector truly circular? | World Economic Forum

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We spend over 90 percent of our time indoors. Most of you are probably reading this newsletter indoors. Have you ever spent time thinking about circularity in the built environment? The question I'm thinking about today is: Can buildings be truly circular?

We are a long way from that ideal future right now, so I took a look at some of the numbers for construction and demolition (C&D) and building waste, and suggest a couple strategies to move this sector towards circularity.

Let's start with a couple of staggering numbers:

We generate an estimated 600 million tons of C&D waste each year in the U.S. This number is double that of all municipal solid waste.

Roughly half of all materials we extract are used in the built environment. This includes non-building infrastructure such as roads and bridges, but importantly, those materials tend to be very similar to those used in buildings and have very similar and disappointing reuse numbers.

As much as 30 percent of all construction materials delivered to building sites leaves as waste.

If these numbers aren't bad enough, global material use is expected to more than double by 2060, with a third of this rise attributable to the building and construction sector. We also anticipate adding more than 2 trillion square feet of floor space, roughly the equivalent of adding an entire New York City to the world - every month for 40 years. This is a bit of an apples-to-oranges piece of information, but we also know that nearly 40 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from the construction and operation of buildings.

I have trouble wrapping my head around the scale of that development, but we can all probably agree that it is a lot of new buildings and a lot of raw material extraction.

As much as 30% of all construction materials delivered to building sites leaves as waste.

The key question then is, what can we do to improve our situation? There are countless approaches that should all be considered together for circular building design, but I'll start by addressing just two.

Let's start with what to do about construction waste. If as much as 30 percent of all material delivered to a job site is disposed of before it even makes its way into the building, it would seem we have a fundamental design problem to address. It can be useful here to think of how manufacturers in all sectors have worked to minimize their waste since the beginning of the industrial revolution, if not since the beginning of humans living in communities. Standardizing processes, planning ahead and automation have all led to significant efficiency gains in nearly every sector's manufacturing.

There are effective methods to minimize on-site C&D waste. The first, and I would argue one of the most powerful, is to use modular building systems. Manufacturing building systems in a controlled environment and limiting work at the job site to sequencing and assembly has proven effective, but is regrettably still underused.

Home builders have been doing this for a century, if not more. An early example includes the Sears mail order homes of the early 20th century. The homes would arrive with many components pre-cut to size and ready to be assembled. Sears sold more than 70,000 mail order homes between 1908 and 1940.

There are, of course, trade-offs with this method. The waste in this case is pushed upstream to the manufacturer. That being said, efficiencies are often available in manufacturing plants that are not available in the field. This is especially true in the 21st century, where computer programs can optimize each part of the manufacturing process to minimize waste. Both volumetric (whole rooms arriving on site) and panelized (wall and floor systems) modular construction can save materials and lead to more energy-efficient buildings. They can also cut construction times considerably. An additional benefit to modularity is that many buildings can be disassembled and reassembled as needed, thus serving as more of a materials bank than a fixed asset.

As a quick aside, I grew up in a modular home. A few years after my parents sold it, the new owners decided to build a new home. Someone bought our old modular home, separated it down the middle (much as it had been originally delivered in the early 1970s) and moved it to their own land on a new foundation. A good reuse story for sure, and one that almost certainly would not have happened with a standard, site-built home.

Designing buildings for circularity from the beginning is also important. Starting with circularity in mind requires close collaboration between product manufacturers, specifiers and the owners and developers of buildings. We are watching these collaborations begin to take shape through programs such as mindful MATERIALS (yes, that's how they capitalize their name). Mindful MATERIALS is a collaboration hub that is building a common materials framework to enable better decisions by specifiers. It also supports several building products transparency programs (such as environmental product declarations and ingredient disclosures) that are key to knowing what is in a building at the time it is deconstructed or renovated.

Ultimately, interventions exist to make buildings more circular if we invest in them and put them at the forefront of design. As with any complex system of complex systems, this will take time and commitment by everyone up and down the supply chain. It also will take education to make sure that buyers recognize the value in high-quality, durable and more circular products.

We are starting to see the makings of a circular building sector unfold in front of us, but everyone involved in the sector -pretty much all of us in one way or another - needs to push it forward.

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What we should be considering for circular building design | Greenbiz

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We spend over 90 percent of our time indoors. Most of you are probably reading this newsletter indoors. Have you ever spent time thinking about circularity in the built environment? The question I'm thinking about today is: Can buildings be truly circular?

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At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW - prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

April 22 is Earth Day, where we celebrate our beautiful planet and what we can do to conserve it. One huge step towards figuring out how we can help our planet is to educate ourselves. Sitting down with a nature documentary is one of the simplest and easiest ways to do that.

So, in light of that, here's a bunch of great documentaries celebrating our planet that you can watch on local streaming services.

Nature documentaries to watch on Earth Day and beyond
The Year The Earth Changed
David Attenborough's nature documentary The Year The Earth Changed gives us potentially one of the only upsides of the pandemic. After humanity locked down, nature rose up, which proves just how much of a problem we are for mother nature.

The Year The Earth Changed shows some truly incredible natural sights and is well worth a watch on Earth day to remind us how big of an impact we have on our planet. It also has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is reason enough to watch.
2040
Damon Gameau's documentary is one of few to actually share a positive look at our planet's future. Gameau envisions multiple different strategies to reduce climate change and then envisions how our world could look if we acted on them now.

As it turns out, we have everything we need to actually reverse climate change but we just need people to do it. It's well worth watching to learn how we can get involved as individuals.

Where to watch: stream on DocPlay or Prime Video.
Secrets of the Whales
Secrets of the Whales is a nature deep dive from National Geographic. Featuring narration by Sigourney Weaver and executive produced by James Cameron, the series is a stunning look at the lives and culture of five different whale species.

Long story short: whales are the best and we do not deserve them.
My Octopus Teacher
Celebrate Earth day and knock off an Oscar winner off your list with My Octopus Teacher. The documentary shows one man's quest to become best friends with an octopus living in the kelp forests off the coast of South Africa.

It's heartfelt, inspiring and a great reminder of the wonders of nature.
An Inconvenient Truth
A classic tale, An Inconvenient Truth was probably the first time most of us had even heard of climate change. We may have come a long way since 2006 but it's still interesting to see the beginning of the climate change movement. It's not surprising to see that a lot of the things Al Gore was pushing for then are still an issue today.

The sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is also worth a watch.

Where to watch: An Inconvenient Truth and An Inconvenient Sequel are available to rent digitally.
Polar Bear
Disney has announced a new suite of nature documentaries coming to the service in time for Earth Day 2022, and the first of the bunch is Polar Bear. It will be available to stream from April 22, 2022.

The synopsis for the feature documentary reads as

Narrated by two-time Academy Award® nominee Catherine Keener, Disneynature's Polar Bear tells the story of a new mother whose memories of her own youth prepare her to navigate motherhood in the increasingly challenging world that polar bears face today. Polar Bear is helmed by Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson, and produced by Fothergill, Wilson and Roy Conli.

Bear Witness will also be released alongside this documentary, showcasing the behind the scenes journeys of the filmmakers behind Disneynature's Polar Bear.
The Biggest Little Farm
Another Earth Day release for Disney+ is The Biggest Little Farm. Coming to screens in April, the heartwarming original movie follows life on an urban farm.

The synopsis for the film reads:

The Chesters leave urban life to revive barren land. By living in harmony with nature and maximizing biodiversity, they create a magical working farm.

Explorer: The Last Tepui
This original nature documentary film follows Alex Honnold ( Free Solo) and a climbing team led by National Geographic Explorer and climber Mark Synnott as they take a journey into the Amazon jungle and attempt a first-ascent climb up a 1000 foot sheer cliff.

High octane stuff.

The synopsis for the upcoming film reads:

An elite climbing team attempts a climb up a sheer cliff to deliver a renowned scientist to the top of a tepui to search for undiscovered species.

You'll be able to catch the doco on Disney plus as of April 22, 2022.

Where to watch more David Attenborough

Yes, David Attenborough is already on this list, but really any of his documentaries are worth a watch on Earth Day. As one of the world's greatest natural historians, David Attenborough has enlightened us about so many different animal species and habitats on Earth and we can all continue to learn from him.

There's an endless number of Attenborough's nature documentaries to watch, but here's where you can find just a few.

If you want to see some of the other ways you can get involved this Earth day, check out the official website.
This article has been updated since its original publish date.
About the Author

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Documentaries That Will Remind You Why Our Planet Should Be Protected at All Costs

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At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW - prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

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GDRC | The Global Development Research Center

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GDRC | The Global Development Research Center

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GDRC The Global Development Research Center is an independent policy think-tank that carries out initiatives in the spheres of environment, urban, community, economy and information, and at scales that are effective.