Green Matters

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Architecture Firm Creates 4-Story-Tall Whale From Ocean Plastic

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Architecture Firm Creates 4-Story-Tall Whale From Ocean Plastic

The Contemporary Art and Architecture Triennial has returned with a splash to the northwest Belgium city of Bruges, featuring poignant works of art and architecture exploring this year’s “Liquid City” theme.

Peppered among the city’s famous canals, medieval buildings and beloved cobblestone streets rises a trail of installations by artists and architects from around the world that will be on display through Sept. 16. At one poignant spot—where the canal dips underground and disappears—rises a particularly noteworthy installation: a breaching, four-story tall whale called “Skyscraper,” made entirely of plastic plucked from the ocean.

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How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe, According to the Woman Who Invented It

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How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe, According to the Woman Who Invented It

Fast fashion is costing us dearly.

Worldwide, fashion is a $2.5 trillion industry that is one of the biggest consumers of water. People go through 80 billion pieces of clothing every year, and the average American produces 82 pounds of textile waste annually. Far from previous generations, when clothes were made to last, mended, and invested in, our cheap clothes today are seen as disposable. So we dump them, en masse, into landfills every single day.

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Nature Preschools Offer an Education That Classrooms Can't

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Nature Preschools Offer an Education That Classrooms Can't

Children today spend just half the time outside that their parents’ generation did. The consequences of our nature-deficit disorder are still largely anecdotal, but obvious: shorter attention spans. Diminished cognition. Lowered creative-thinking skills. Childhood obesity.

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Urban Planners Are Saving the Planet With Redesigned, Walkable Cities

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Urban Planners Are Saving the Planet With Redesigned, Walkable Cities

The healthiest, most economically advantaged and sustainable cities on the planet share one trait: their walkability.

Walkable cities are better for the environment, people’s overall wellness, and positively impact levels of wealth. Unfortunately for those of us in the United States, a lot of our cities were built around cars — not feet. For as much as folks love the walkability of New York, Boston, Minneapolis, and Savannah, they dislike in equal measure the sprawl of other beloved cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

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Experts Weigh In On Taking Your Kitchen From Wasteful To Waste-Free

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Experts Weigh In On Taking Your Kitchen From Wasteful To Waste-Free

It’s easy to succumb to the greenwashing of eco-friendly packaging. 

Buzzwords like recycled, organic, compostable and recyclable convince us to buy additional products just because they say they’re better for the environment. But the central ethos of reducing our impacts and waste have to start with buying high-quality and long-lasting items, and end with nothing getting tossed out (even if it’s being thrown into a recycle bin).

Nowhere in our lives is this process more difficult than in the kitchen. From the excessive packaging on food to the wastefulness of food storage methods, the kitchen ends up being one of the most wasteful zones of the home. Composting is simply not enough to counteract the onslaught of garbage that comes with virtually every meal. So we talked to three heavyweights in the zero-waste movement about how to turn a kitchen from wasteful to waste-free.

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This Detroit Non-Profit Created A Shipping Container Farm To Feed Their Community

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This Detroit Non-Profit Created A Shipping Container Farm To Feed Their Community

A charitable grant from the Ford Motor Co. has made possible a "mobile farm" partnership between the automaker and a Detroit charity that promises to educate children on healthy eating, provide food for the hungry, and teach people to be more self-sufficient by growing their own food.

Two essential (if unlikely) pieces required to make this project happen? A 40-foot-long shipping container and an F-150 pickup truck. 

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Grub Tubs Turns Restaurant Waste Into Nutrient-Dense Animal Feed

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Grub Tubs Turns Restaurant Waste Into Nutrient-Dense Animal Feed

Green Matters has teamed up with WeWork for the month of April to celebrate Earth Day 2018 with a #workgreen challenge and Q&A series spotlighting sustainability-minded WeWork member companies. In this installment, we’re sitting down with Robert Olivier, founder and CEO of Grub Tubs. Olivier has spent the last 17 years developing insect-based technologies; and Grub Hub stands to be his pinnacle achievement. 

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This Company Plans To Feed And Power The World With CO2

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This Company Plans To Feed And Power The World With CO2

Green Matters teamed up with WeWork for the month of April to celebrate Earth Day 2018 with a #workgreen challenge and Q&A series spotlighting sustainability-minded WeWork member companies. In this installment, we’re sitting down with Dr. Lisa Dyson, CEO of Kiverdi.

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Meet Bar & Cocoa, a Curated Craft Chocolate Shop and Subscription Club

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Meet Bar & Cocoa, a Curated Craft Chocolate Shop and Subscription Club

Green Matters has teamed up with WeWork for the month of April to collaborate on the #workgreen challenge and we invite you to share how you're incorporating sustainability into the workplace. In this three-part Q&A series, we’re spotlighting different WeWork member companies around the country making great contributions to sustainability. In this installment, we’re sitting down with Pashmina Lalchandani, co-founder of Bar & Cocoa.

Tesla's Tiny House Tour Hits The Road In Australia

Tesla's Tiny House Tour Hits The Road In Australia

The Tesla Tiny House is hitting the road in order to offer a public view of how anyone can create, store and use renewable energy at home. For the tour, which will wind through all of Australia’s major cities, Tesla put together a state-of-the-art, tiny home wrapped in locally sourced, sustainable timber and hooked to a 2,000-watt solar system and Tesla Powerwall. In addition to alternative energy offerings, the Tesla Tiny House also boasts a mobile design studio and configurator that allows people to calculate their own at-home energy needs and customize a system that works for them.