Category Archives: General

Fuelled by the success of its eponymous movie, Lego claimed the title of world's largest toy manufacturer last week. The company is also an industry leader in renewable energy and zero waste efforts.  But, like most businesses, LEGO still has room for progress when it comes to eco-friendly business practices. It's a challenge they are tackling head-on, with the…

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Closed-loop. Cradle-to-Cradle. Industrial Sustainability. There's more than one name for the circular economy. But, whatever you call it, a zero waste approach to the manufacturing and consumption of the goods and services offers a new framework for continued prosperity in a changing world.  And as our planet gets smaller, resources scarcer, and the stakes higher, the circular economy may…

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Our oceans have become a dumping ground for plastic waste. Developing nations need economic opportunities with low barriers to entry. David Katz thinks he may have a solution for both issues.        Katz is one of the founders of The Plastic Bank - a new organization with a mandate to "to lead the movement…

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Buy, use, throw away, repeat. That's the linear system that is the basis of our dominant consumer economy. The things we buy and use daily are designed to be thrown away. This is called “Cradle-to-Grave” design because products are manufactured from virgin materials, used for a while, and finally discarded. Sure, some things get recycled, but the…

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In the famous 1967 movie The Graduate, a young Dustin Hoffman – in the role of Benjamin Braddock, is taken aside at a party and given a piece of career guidance that became famous. In a word – "plastics". Fast forward to the 21st century and this succinct advice might get a small edit if you were to ask Toby Reid. He'll…

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One of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Zero Waste Conference pushing for adoption of Circular Economy thought and action at one of the world’s largest electronics companies – Philips. There’s a good chance you’ve already used one of a Philips product today. Based in Amsterdam, they have three primary divisions focused in the areas…

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Carpet tile manufacturer Interface first came to wide public attention for its eco-friendly approach to business in the 2003 Canadian film The Corporation. In the documentary, company founder Ray C. Anderson outlined how a personal awakening to the nature of industry and its impact on the environment transformed his approach to running the company. Anderson…

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One of the guest speakers at #ZWC2014 is one of the world’s foremost plastics recycling innovators. Mike Biddle, Founder and Director of MBA Polymers Inc., has dedicated himself to solving the central dilemma of plastic – why is so little recycled? The reason: sorting. Plastic is a valuable resource and all of it can theoretically be recycled and…

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Profitable Collaborations Across An Internet of Things Free energy. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction wishful thinking. But crowd-sourced green energy harvested from the buildings all around us could hold great promise. It’s at the core of Jeremy Rifkin’s ideas about the Internet of Things – something he considers a natural outgrowth of…

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Dayna Baumeister Co-founder and Keystone of Biomimicry 3.8 There's no waste in nature. It seems as though everything has a purpose, even in death. The decaying leaf fortifies the soil of the forest floor. The left-over carcass of a predator's kill sustains the carrion-eaters that come after. It's zero waste reality in action. But, nature's…

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