Category Archives: climate change
Climate change protester disrupts Louis Vuitton show in Paris
The climate crisis has made the idea of a better future impossible to imagine
5 Mega-Trends (World Economic Forum)
How to end the American obsession with driving
The environmental costs of iPhone culture (Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures)
By Lottie Limb • Updated: 22/09/2021 – 17:15
Millions of new iPhone 13s will be wending their way to excited customers this week, with the new model’s release on Friday.
Its new and improved features include a smaller carbon footprint: the iPhone 13 represents 64kg CO2e in greenhouse gases compared to 72kg CO2e for the equivalent iPhone 12.
But trading in your old smartphone for the newest model is the worst thing you could do. According to Apple’s own metrics, 81 per cent of the phone’s lifecycle carbon emissions are released during production.
The energy required to mine the rare materials for iPhones is huge. According to one report, “buying a new phone takes as much energy as recharging and operating a smartphone for an entire decade.”
Resisting the urge to own the latest iPhone won’t reverse emissions for the products hitting the shelves on Friday, but it will help to limit how many phones are made in the future.
Sustainability in the Pandemic Age
We use applied semiotics and cultural anthropology to understand how meaning is changing. This report applies the method to understanding sustainability in the Pandemic Age, framing the words and trends we are seeing into meaning spaces. Each meaning space fuels the next. The interplay is critical because meaning thrives in layers. Our analysis demonstrates the diversity of schemes existing within each unique layer. Sustainability is a vast, complex topic. Design initiatives need to know where they live within the bigger story. Learn more about the report
How the pandemic changed sustainability goals for Uber and Lyft
The ride-hailing companies have for years touted their services as alternatives to car ownership that could help reduce traffic, car accidents, and emissions. But as the popularity of the services grew, the companies instead worsened congestion in many cities, in some cases accounting for more than 13% of vehicle miles traveled, according to a 2018 study commissioned by the companies. With a large majority of drivers using gas-powered cars, more vehicle miles traveled means more greenhouse gas emissions.
https://fortune.com/2021/06/22/uber-lyft-sustainability-covid-pandemic/
