In this year’s annual letter, we’re highlighting nine more things that have surprised us along this journey. Some worry us. Others inspire us. All of them are prodding us to action. We hope they do the same for you, because that’s how the world gets better.
In the not-too-distant future–as soon as this spring, if you live in or near New York City or Paris–you’ll be able to buy ice cream or shampoo in a reusable container. When you’re done eating a tub of Haagen-Dazs, you’ll toss the sleek stainless steel package in your personal reuse bin instead of your trash can. Then it will be picked up for delivery back to a cleaning and sterilization facility so that it can be refilled with more ice cream for another customer.
Loop, a new zero-waste platform from a coalition of major consumer product companies, will launch its first pilots this year.
Cleantec Infra is using aquatic weed harvesters and "trash skimmers" to clean up lakes and rivers in India. Both these platforms can pick up tonnes of weeds and trash per day to make the bodies of water in India healthier for the ecosystem.
The 2,000-foot-long unmanned structure was the product of about $20 million in funding from the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that aims to trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic during the boom’s first year at sea. Within five years, with the creation of dozens more booms, the organization hopes to clean half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The patch, a gyre of trash between California and Hawaii, comprises an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of scattered detritus, including at least 87,000 tons of plastic.
OMG is a multi-pronged effort to map the underwater contours of the Greenland coast, and better understand how warming ocean waters drive melting ice.
A giant leap forward came late in 2017, when NASA, the University of California, Irvine and others published high resolution maps of the bedrock and sea floor around Greenland
OMG’s measurements by ship and plane, including ice thickness data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge, were plugged into a computer modeling tool called BedMachine. The result: high-precision maps that unveiled previously unknown features on the Greenland coast, and beneath its ice sheet.
Some 2.1 billion people worldwide don’t have safe drinking water at home, and 1.06 billion people, primarily rural dwellers, do not have access to electricity.
A startup founded in Italy — a MassChallenge winner from last night and former Techstars Boston participant — has created self-sustaining technology that could provide a solution for both needs: The startup’s proprietary technology generates enough energy to provide clean water and electricity to a small village.
And it all fits inside a 6 x 6 x 6-foot shipping container.
It’s called Off Grid Box. There’s a 3.2kWp solar panel system on the top of the box, with an inverter that converts the captured sunlight into usable energy. The box stores water (which can be collected via rainwater, a well, a nearby stream, ocean or an external tank) and houses a water treatment system powered by solar energy. Excess energy is stored in a battery pack that can be used to power a local commercial grid, homes, businesses or smaller battery packs.
Each box can provide up to 230 families with 27 liters of clean drinking water per day, as well as enough energy to power two lights and two mobile phones. Each box is expected to last at least 15 years.
Now in its fourth year, the Fortune Change the World list celebrates the changemakers – those pioneering business leaders who look at social issues material to their long-term success and say, “We can do things differently.” They’ve embarked on a strategic shift towards shared value, a smarter business model that reimagines the way companies build new markets, innovate, create distinction, and contribute to a thriving society and planet.
Project Natick seeks to understand the benefits and difficulties in deploying subsea datacenters worldwide. Phase two extends the research we accomplished in phase one by deploying a full-scale datacenter module in the North Sea, powered by renewable energy.
Dubbed “America’s Greenest CEO,” Anderson dedicated his twilight years to proving that businesses could turn a profit without “digging up the earth and converting it to pollution.”
In a tribute to their late father’s vision, Anderson’s daughters have turned an 18-mile stretch of rural Georgia highway named after Anderson into a living laboratory for clean energy innovation. The Ray, as it’s known, aims to be “a zero carbon, zero deaths, zero waste, zero impact highway,” and it is deploying a slate of cutting-edge technologies to achieve these goals.
“We’re not putting solar panels on the side of the road and calling it green,” said Anderson’s daughter Harriet Langford, president of the Ray. “We’re fundamentally changing our assumptions and expectations of highway infrastructure. Roads can be safe, sustainable and regenerative. We’re proving that, and the world is starting to notice.”
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