DayOne Response’s Waterbag can purify 10 liters of water in 30 minutes. Designed to be quickly distributed after a natural disaster, it’s a reusable EPA-approved system that prevents contamination, so a family of four can have clean drinking water for up to two months. The DayOne Waterbag has been used in disaster zones in 21 countries as an all-in-one solution that makes water drinkable and disease-free. Their global goal is to be ready to service one million individuals within 24 hours of a natural disaster. Meet more environmental innovators here.
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Produced in partnership with Mirai, Toyota’s very own Vehicle of Change. The power to change the world belongs to everyone who dreams about what’s next. NationSwell and Toyota teamed up to find 10 environmental entrepreneurs who are building solutions today that will change the world tomorrow.
d.light is delivering affordable solar-powered solutions to the 2 billion people in the developing world who lack access to reliable energy. Since 2007, d.light has evolved from a single lantern product and now offers a variety of options including full entertainment systems and solar-powered fans, allowing their consumers to leapfrog the grid and putting them on track for a sustainable future. To date, it’s enabled more than 82 million people to shift from kerosene to clean solar power. And switching to solar has generated more than $3.8 billion in savings for users. Meet more environmental innovators here.
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Produced in partnership with Mirai, Toyota’s very own Vehicle of Change. The power to change the world belongs to everyone who dreams about what’s next. NationSwell and Toyota teamed up to find 10 environmental entrepreneurs who are building solutions today that will change the world tomorrow.
After several of Brandi DeCarli’s loved ones passed away in 2008, she panicked. “If I don’t go after the things in life I want, when will I?” she asked. The Californian moved to South Africa to fulfill her “Big Impossible”: working with wildlife on a small game reserve. “Tracking and monitoring everything from lions and leopards to hyenas and elephants was one of the most humbling and igniting experiences I’ve had,” said DeCarli. “It also helped me understand the challenges that many communities in underdeveloped areas face.” One of the most concerning challenges: access to fresh, healthy food. When DeCarli returned to San Francisco 10 months later, she was eager to continue work in the nonprofit sector. A friend introduced her to Scott Thompson, who had 16 years of nonprofit work under his belt, and the two eventually had an epiphany. Why not outfit a shipping container for off-grid farm production? With that idea, Farm from a Box was born. “It’s the Swiss Army knife of sustainable farming,” DeCarli said. Inside each modified shipping container is everything a farmer needs to start a 2 acre farm. Basic tools are included, but so are solar panels, a water pump that can connect to either a ground source or a municipal water supply, cold storage space and a micro-drip irrigation system. There’s even internet connectivity. “We’re taking advancements in agricultural technology which are often made with large-scale farms in mind and bringing them down to small-scale community farmers,” DeCarli noted. “They’ve been a disappearing breed for a long time.” That’s a serious problem, and not only for locavores. An estimated 70 percent of the world’s food comes from small, rural farms, yet they’re the most defenseless against climate change. “Droughts have a massive impact on small farmers, since they usually don’t have the infrastructure that can help stabilize their crops through changing weather conditions,” said DeCarli. Farm from a Box allows a farm to be self-sustaining, no matter the location or climate. So far, five are up and running around the world. More are on the way as the systems become commercially available this year. And while they start as a powerful utilitarian tool to provide infrastructure, every Farm from a Box has the potential to become far more. “Our system can act as both a stabilizing anchor and a path to food sovereignty,” explained DeCarli. They can increase the biodiversity and health of the environment, help rebuild areas after a disaster and strengthen rural economies. The answer to the world’s food problem isn’t simply to grow more. “It’s how we can better integrate food production into the tapestry of our communities,” DeCarli clarified. For instance, after the housing market crashed, a 5 acre plot of land in the middle of a suburban subdivision in West Sacramento, California sat and sat. In 2017, thanks to Farm from a Box partnering with the International Rescue Committee, it became a bustling urban farm run by dozens of refugees from Nepal and Bhutan. Fifty different vegetables are grown on the plot. “It’s an agricultural oasis,” said DeCarli. “Local restaurants and chefs purchase crops grown there. Neighbors come and get to know the farmers. It’s revitalized the community in a beautiful way.” On the opposite side of the country, on a Virginia property that George Washington once owned, another Farm from a Box teaches military veterans the skills required to be a farmer. “It’s really healing for them,” DeCarli said of the program run by the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. “Again, the farm becomes the nexus of rebuilding a stronger sense of community and tying people together.” She and Thompson invite each box to be named by its farmers. “It gives it soul,” explained DeCarli. The urban farm in Sacramento, California? “Karma.” The veterans in Virginia named theirs “Independence.” “We could never have come up with names so poignant and beautiful,” DeCarli said. Meet more environmental innovators here.
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Article produced in partnership with Mirai, Toyota’s very own Vehicle of Change. The power to change the world belongs to everyone who dreams about what’s next. NationSwell and Toyota teamed up to find 10 environmental entrepreneurs who are building solutions today that will change the world tomorrow.
Growing up in Wisconsin as a child of immigrants—her father’s from France, her mother from Manila— gave Nicole Chavas a unique perspective on the world. “There’s something about feeling ‘other’ that forces you to question the status quo and empathize with people different from yourself,” she said. It led Chavas toward social entrepreneurship — as she put it, “a stubborn belief that no matter how big a challenge seems, we can find a solution.” The problem Chavas is determined to fix? Stormwater management. After a decade in investment management, Chavas was inspired the work of her husband, an urban planner who specializes in sustainable solutions. When she started her company, Greenprint Partners, in 2014, its mission was to use nature-based solutions like urban forestry and agriculture to revitalize communities. But as she piloted projects, Chavas repeatedly heard clients complain about storm runoff. “We realized how urgent the issue was,” she said. As populations in U.S. cities have increased, buildings and pavement have replaced natural spaces, leaving rain nowhere to go. Municipalities have attempted to manage the runoff by building expansive (and expensive) underground storage systems, but “they’re outdated and failing,” Chavas said. “Today, hundreds of U.S. cities have sewer systems that routinely overflow, pouring polluted water — and even raw sewage — into our rivers, lakes and oceans.” And it’s not just hurricane-prone areas that are impacted. “Across the country, families are likely to encounter flooding walking through their neighborhoods, commuting to work — even in their basements,” noted Chavas. “Everyone loses in this situation: low-income communities that bear the brunt of urban flooding, families that want safe places to swim and wildlife that’s losing precious habitat because of pollution.” And outdated infrastructure now faces the additional threat of climate change, which spurs on storms that are both more frequent and more intense. Greenprint Partners offers “literally the world’s oldest stormwater technology: using nature to absorb rain right where it falls,” explained Chavas. Think rain gardens, waterfalls and permeable pavement. Chavas and her team see every project through from beginning to end. That includes partnering with landowners, including churches, schools, social service centers or public housing agencies; designing the project; securing funding; overseeing construction; and most importantly, engaging the community. “Our projects don’t just manage stormwater, but maximize the benefits that can have the most lasting impacts on the lives of the local community,” said Chavas. Take Peoria, Illinois, a city of 116,000 and one of the poorest ZIP codes in the country. “Its combined sewer system regularly overflows, sending polluted stormwater and untreated sewage into the Illinois River,” said Chavas. Greenprint Partners’ team met with residents of Peoria’s south side, many of whom are struggling to earn a living wage. “They came to us with stories about how they didn’t have enough access to fresh, healthy produce; safe outdoor spaces for community to gather and get exercise; and that they needed more access to jobs,” Chavas said. Those community-identified desires directly informed the design of the Well Farm site, one of the nation’s first “stormwater farms.” Today, 100 raised beds not only help reduce rain runoff, but also support an urban farming apprenticeship program that cultivates, harvests and sells crops at local farmers markets. Together with a flowering bioswale (a landscape element that removes pollution from the water), the Well Farm project manages 1.3 million gallons of Peoria’s stormwater each year. Greenprint continues to cultivate projects in low-to-moderate-income communities across the country. Said Chavas, “We’re committed to showing up wherever we’ll have the greatest impact.” Meet more environmental innovators here.
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Article produced in partnership with Mirai, Toyota’s very own Vehicle of Change. The power to change the world belongs to everyone who dreams about what’s next. NationSwell and Toyota teamed up to find 10 environmental entrepreneurs who are building solutions today that will change the world tomorrow.
As the founder of a luxury special events agency in Manhattan, Jennifer Grove took pride in providing her clients with flawless food, beautiful flowers and fabulous style elements. Yet she wasn’t prepared for the waste left behind by each gorgeous event — or how much it bothered her. “No bride gets engaged and immediately begins to think about the combined volume of garbage that her bridal shower, engagement party, rehearsal dinner and wedding reception will create,” Grove allowed. More often than not, “clients care about their one big day and the ‘wow’ factor it leaves on their guests,” said Grove, “not the lingering negative impact it might leave on the environment.” But Grove couldn’t help but wonder if maybe someone should care. One evening in 2012, after a wedding reception at Baltimore’s Four Seasons Hotel had ended, Grove found herself lugging carts filled to the brim with flowers to the loading dock to be thrown out. It was a frustrating moment. Cut flowers already come with a high environmental cost: Cultivating them uses up land, water and chemicals — and leaves a surprisingly large carbon footprint. After all that had been expended to create these elegant arrangements of roses, hydrangeas and peonies, hundreds of pounds of flowers were going to be unceremoniously dumped in a landfill. Even worse, added Grove, “No one knew or cared, and the same thing was probably happening across the street at another hotel.” She decided that she would be the person to change the conversation about floral waste. In 2014, Grove founded Repeat Roses, a flower repurposing service. Immediately after a client’s special event, her team removes all the floral arrangements and carefully breaks them down into micro-bouquets. Within hours, they’re delivered to people who will benefit from the blooms, such as patients in hospices, cancer treatment centers and mental health facilities, or residents of homeless shelters. Repeat Roses staff later returns to pick up the twice-loved flowers to make sure they’re composted. The vases are even recycled and reused for the next delivery. It’s a veritable bounty of beauty: Repurposed flowers from a wedding can range from roses, roses and more roses to phalaenopsis orchids, hydrangeas, ranunculus flowers and peonies. Corporate events can “re-gift” hundreds of pounds of greenery, branches, ivy and plants in addition to table centerpieces. “No two events’ bounty is ever the same, which makes our jobs as matchmakers interesting,” Grove said. “We are flower logistics ninjas and we love it.” In the past four years, Repeat Roses has delivered over 46,000 repurposed floral arrangements to facilities across the United States and Canada. This year, their service will become available in international cities and for destination weddings. “As a parent, I aim to demonstrate for my 14-year-old daughter how I can make the world a better place,” said Grove. “One petal at a time, she sees how having a passion and taking personal responsibility for achieving your goals produces meaningful results for people and planet.” Meet more environmental innovators here.
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Article produced in partnership with Mirai, Toyota’s very own Vehicle of Change. The power to change the world belongs to everyone who dreams about what’s next. NationSwell and Toyota teamed up to find 10 environmental entrepreneurs who are building solutions today that will change the world tomorrow.
Call it the sit-in heard around the world. Greta Thunberg, a ninth-grader from Sweden, began protesting her country’s lack of action on the issue of climate change last summer. Thunberg sat on the steps outside of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm holding a protest sign, one small 15-year-old against some of the most powerful industries and political forces on the planet. “The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe — it doesn’t exist today,” Thunberg, since nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, told The New Yorker. “We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on.” Thunberg may not be a politician (yet), but her words have helped kickstart a global student movement, if not an all-out war, against the fossil fuel–guzzling status quo. On Friday, March 15, youth all over the globe walked out of school and took to the streets to raise awareness of the all-too-inconvenient, all-too-easily-skirted issue of climate change. An estimated 1.6 million students in more than 300 cities joined the protests, geographically dispersed but united under a single hashtag: #FridaysforFuture. Protests in New York rolled out over the five boroughs, attracting students of all ages, though the younger ones were chaperoned by parents and teachers. A few thousand mostly high school–aged students in Manhattan gathered first at Columbus Circle, then walked up Central Park West to the Museum of Natural History. On the front steps of the museum, they unfurled signs with slogans like THERE IS NO PLANET B and chanted “Climate change is not a lie / We won’t let our planet die!” NationSwell joined the protesters, seeking answers to one critical question: How do you think we can fix climate change and save the planet? One of the youngest protesters, a kindergartner named Nico Pascarella from the nearby Hudson Valley, was accompanied by his mom. He was aware of some of the problems caused by a changing climate, if a little short on actual solutions. “There’s trash in the ocean,” Nico said. “It can kill the animals, and if we throw out straws, the turtles can die.” Lucy Blum, a sophomore at Beacon High School in Manhattan, told NationSwell, “We’re going to grow up in this world, so we need to make it the way we want it.” Some students were more blunt. Anthony Prudent, a 10th-grader from Laguardia High School in Manhattan, had a message for adults not present at the protest and/or in denial about the catastrophic implications of global warming: “Show your fucking selves!” He went on, “Sorry to be selfish, but I want to have a future. Also, elect people who listen to people and not to their wallets.” Zero Hour NYC is a climate-justice nonprofit that helped organize the protest. Natalie Sweet, a sophomore at Horace Mann in the Bronx, volunteers with Zero Hour NYC and said that these strikes were an important first step, but that much more needs to be done by our government. “The IPCC [says that] we have 12 years to live, which is backed by science-based evidence,” Sweet said of the global-warming report released last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “We need reminders like these climate strikers to help push forward legislation, like a 100 percent switch to renewable energy by 2050,” Sweet added. The strikes are only as important as what happens afterwards. Call lawmakers and tell them the facts. It’s a bipartisan issue — it doesn’t take [just] Democrats or Republicans. To show that we have a common goal is an extremely powerful thing.” Ajani Stella, a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, is already an experienced activist. He runs his own informational website and is also a youth advisory board member of the Human Impact Institute. “We need to divest from fossil fuels now. By keeping our money in them, we’re basically saying that we don’t care,” Stella said. “Well, stop not caring!” Stella said that when he grows up, he wants to be a climate engineer and work on designs for an electric aircraft. “Batteries are heavy, but so is gasoline,” he said. “Once we switch to a clean-energy grid, the transportation sector will be close to zero emissions. Events like these make me hopeful that the next generation of voters and politicians are going to work to fix [climate change].” The next youth-led global protests are scheduled to take place on May 3. Keep up with the latest news on the strikes here, and watch NationSwell’s video above to learn about what solutions the next generation has to fight climate change.
Tucked inside an old gymnasium, hundreds of wooden boxes are stacked along a far wall. The space, formerly home base for a summer camp, is now host to labs and classrooms filled with bright, freshly painted blue boxes. But children won’t be playing here this summer. Instead, among the boxes and stainless steel vats, displaced coal miners and low-income West Virginians will learn a new trade — beekeeping. It’s part of a program run by the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective, a program for low-income West Virginians to make supplemental income through beekeeping. While beekeeping may seem like an odd choice for former coal miners, it’s a viable and increasingly popular way for people in rural areas to make money. In West Virginia, where poverty is high and jobs are scarce, a large part of the population is struggling to make ends meet. Coal mining once bolstered the region, but between 2005 and 2015, employment in the coal industry decreased by about 27 percent, according to research by West Virginia University. Across the nation, states like Kentucky, Wyoming and Pennsylvania have to find jobs to fill the employment gap left by the coal industry. Enter the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective. The collective operates across 17 counties in southern West Virginia and offers classes in subjects like, Is Beekeeping Right for Me?, bee basics and advanced beekeeping. It’s a branch of the Appalachian Headwaters, a nonprofit formed to develop sustainable economic opportunities across the region. Interested beekeepers can take Beekeeping 101, which is a five-week course where they learn the basics of beekeeping, bee biology and solutions to common problems. Once the new beekeeper has completed this course, he or she can become a partner in the collective. The partnership offers training, mentorship, equipment and bees for free or at a reduced cost. Here a honey bee forages on clover. But the startup cost to becoming a beekeeper can be a barrier of entry. This was the case for Jason Young, a resident of White Oak, West Virginia. Young originally started beekeeping as a hobby but quickly realized it could turn into a small business. “We had decided that we wanted to move forward,” he says. “But it was really the money that was holding us back.” When Young discovered the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective offered training and equipment at low cost, he leapt at the opportunity. Young and his daughter enrolled in the free Beekeeping 101 course and received 12 hives from the collective for a reduced price. From there, he formed White Oak Bee Co. Last spring was their first harvest. It produced enough honey for his family and his honey-roasted coffee, which is White Oak Bee Co.’s signature item. This season, however, he has 14 hives ready to harvest and hopes to make a profit that he can reinvest in the business. “Beekeeping and our relationship with the collective has really made that possible,” Young says. Beekeepers examine a frame of mature honey. The Appalachian Beekeeping Collective successfully trained 35 beekeepers this past year and plans to train another 55 this spring. When it’s harvest time, the nonprofit will process, market and distribute the honey for its beekeepers for free. That can result in a nice chunk of change. In 2018, the market value for a pound of honey was about $7.33. A single hive can produce 20 to 100 pounds of honey a year, which means a single productive hive could earn its owner over $700 a year. With multiple hives, a beekeeper has the potential to make thousands of dollars every year. And the bees do more than produce income for their owners. The forests provide nectar for the bees, and in turn, the bees pollinate these key natural habitats and create more plant diversity, says Parry Kietzman, an entomologist and educator at the collective. Kietzman says she’s noticed people are more aware of the land and plants once they have bees. “It seems to give people more of a handle on environmental concerns,” she says. “Simply because they’re worried about their bees.” For others, like Young, it’s a chance to accomplish goals. “What I feel most thankful for is the opportunity to take some dreams we’ve had for a really long time,” Young said. “And to really see them, kind of, come to be.”
The Inukai Family Boys & Girls Club in Hillsboro, Oregon, sits about 20 miles west of Portland. As one of ten Boys & Girls Clubs in the Portland Metro region, it provides after-school and summer programs for about 200 kids, most of whom come from low-income families. For the young people who attend, it’s a chance to develop leadership skills and participate in a range of activities, from the visual and fine arts to STEM, finance and nutrition classes. The club also offers sports and recreation, which until recently was a bit ironic, considering that the nearest green space was almost a mile away. Instead, the building sat adjacent to a little-used 4,500-square-foot parking lot. The lack of a suitable play area for the boys and girls of Inukai caught the attention of Ted Labbe, a conservation biologist and volunteer with Depave, a Portland nonprofit that transforms over-paved areas by breaking up asphalt and replacing it with natural vegetation. Since it was founded by Labbe and a friend more than a decade ago, Depave has worked with local schools, churches and businesses to turn concrete eyesores into lush landscapes replete with rain gardens, vegetable beds, tree groves and bioswales. Volunteers at the Depave project at the Inukai Family Boys & Girls Club. To repurpose the Inukai club’s parking lot, Labbe gathered a team of about 100 volunteers last fall to rip up the paved lot and make room for a revamped play area. Features of the new space include a rain garden, a stage, bike racks, garden beds and picnic tables. At the end of this month, more volunteers will assemble to plant additional vegetation, with the grand opening of the new green playspace set for April 12. Depave’s mission of re-greening urban spaces through the lens of community engagement is spreading. To date, the organization has completed about 70 projects in the Portland area (which collectively cover roughly 165,000 square feet of asphalt) and now counts five affiliate programs in its network, spanning from Cleveland to Canada. They believe their model has the potential to be scalable almost anywhere. And as the Green New Deal talks gain steam in Washington, communities have been beefing up efforts to address the impending threats from climate change. That includes New York’s Hudson Valley, where Arif Khan, one of Depave’s founders, now lives. Khan says he has seen a growing need for de-paving projects in his new community and has been consulting with municipal governments along the Hudson River. He believes that Depave’s model of tactical urbanism sits at the forefront of a bigger push to prioritize open spaces for people instead of paving them for cars. In cities like New York, for example, local neighborhood groups and business improvement districts have for several years been installing temporary parklets for use in warmer months. Also known as “street seats,” the idea is to repurpose parking spots into tiny but vibrant green spaces with public amenities like outdoor seating and food vendors. Similar street-seating efforts exist in cities across the U.S. The parking lot at the Inukai Family Boys & Girls Club after its transformation. But what makes Depave’s efforts stand out from typical parklets is that rather than constructing a new space on top of existing infrastructure, volunteers remove the concrete and asphalt first. In this way, Depave’s projects improve the environment. Because they’re impervious, paved surfaces divert stormwater into a region’s waterways, carrying with it toxic pollutants like oil, antifreeze and pesticides. Depave estimates that their efforts divert more than 4 million gallons of stormwater away from storm drains annually. “Parklets are all well and good but they are a band-aid, not a permanent fix,” says Labbe, adding that “elected officials are discussing how to scale up more general de-pave strategies to address the worsening climate crisis.” In addition to benefiting the environment, de-paving projects can inspire civic engagement. In its first decade of existence, Depave has worked with more than 4,800 volunteers around Portland. The act of de-paving satisfies a social need just as much as an environmental one, says Labbe, and a project’s success directly depends on a community’s involvement. “You can’t [de-pave] without a willing and engaged community,” he says.
More: Embracing Diversity In The Great Outdoors
Nate Fisher’s burial scene in the HBO series “Six Feet Under” was a watershed moment in the green-burial movement: It introduced the idea of human composting to a mainstream audience, says Mark Harris, author of a book about natural burials, in a blog post on the subject. “I’ve long believed that [the episode], which aired on August 21, 2005, did more to sell the idea to the greater public than any newspaper story, newscast or magazine piece at the time,” he writes. Yet despite such a prominent cultural marker (not to mention the myriad environmental benefits), human composting is not yet legal in any U.S. state. Over the last few years, 17 states have legalized a process called alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water cremation, where bodies are dissolved in a mix of water and lye. Alkaline hydrolysis is greener than regular cremation: While one single traditional cremation emits as much carbon dioxide as a 1,000-mile car trip, alkaline hydrolysis emits much lower rates of emissions and uses a quarter of the energy. But in most states, bodies must be buried, entombed, cremated or donated to science, which means you could be arrested for burying grandma beneath her favorite dogwood tree. This is why a bill recently introduced to the Washington Legislature by state senator Jamie Pedersen is being watched very carefully by green burial enthusiasts. The bill — which seeks to expand the options for disposing of human remains after death, including the practice of composting human bodies — was passed in committee and may be up for a floor vote in the next few weeks, according to Chris West, Pedersen’s communications specialist. As we’ve previously covered, green burials arebecoming more popular in this country. In the U.S. in 2006, according to the Green Burial Council, there was only one council-approved provider of green burials; there are now more than 300 today, and that number is rising. Artist rendering of what a Recompose facility might look like. This makes sense for financial as well as environmental reasons. Traditional burials can easily cost upwards of $10,000, and embalming fluids leach toxins like formaldehyde into our soil and groundwater supplies. Space is also a major concern, especially in urban centers: in New York City, no new cemeteries have been established in over 50 years, so the cost of each individual plot is also rising. While cremation is already viewed by many as a more environmentally friendly option than a casket-and-concrete vault, it requires an input of fossil fuels and results in the production of CO2, around “a metric ton per body,” according to Katrina Spade, whose Seattle-based public benefit corporation, Recompose, is at the forefront of the human composting movement. “Recomposition uses one-eighth the energy of cremation,” Spade says. It also saves money: Spade estimates each human composting would cost a mere $5,500. “I started this work because I saw the funeral experience as something worth improving, and I’ve since had several deaths of loved ones really affirm that idea,” Spade says. “Decay and decomposition are amazing processes we are terrified of because they might seem icky and scary — your body aging, your food rotting — but without those processes, we would not be alive.” If you’re a funeral traditionalist but also have our planet’s best interests at heart, the negative environmental impact of the rituals surrounding death in this country might be enough to change your mind. In the U.S., according to Grist, 30 million board feet of wood, 1.6 million tons of concrete, 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid and 90,000 tons of steel are used every year for conventional burials. Cremation releases 250,000 tons of CO2 each year, the equivalent of burning nearly 30 million gallons of gasoline. By contrast, bodies that are cremated via composting generate about a cubic yard of compost per person, Spade says, nourishing the soil with needed minerals and other nutrients.In 2018, a team at Washington State University, led by compost science expert Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, showed that human bodies could be safely and efficiently converted to “earthy organic material.” The study used six bodies that were donated to the university for science. Carpenter-Boggs and Spade are currently working on an Urban Death prototype they anticipate to complete by 2023. While the “ick” factor might remain, it seems attitudes around human composting are changing. In 2014, green burials only made up about five percent of funerals, and there were about 40 certified green burial grounds in the U.S. But according to a 2017 National Funeral Director Association survey, 53.8 percent of respondents indicated an interest in exploring green funeral services, and 72 percent of cemeteries are reporting an increase in demand. “The funeral industry is a $20 billion industry,” says Spade, who was awarded an Ashoka “changemaker” fellowship in 2018. “The idea that every person can ‘own’ a piece of land for eternity, in the form of a cemetery plot… is not a sustainable model, especially for cities with space constraints.” More:Can Americans Accept This Environmentally-Friendly Burial Method? Correction: A previous version of this article featured outdated pricing for Recompose’s services.
Swiss company Climeworks has developed a system to remove carbon dioxide from the air and keep it from being re-released into the atmosphere. Their technology uses a process called direct air capture, which processes air through filters that can capture and trap carbon dioxide. The air exits the system with 90 percent less carbon than air entering the system. At a geothermal plant in Iceland, Climeworks technology has been used to create the world’s first negative emission power plant, which removes more CO2 from the air than it produces. While captured carbon can be used to create carbon-neutral fuel, plastic and a range of other materials, the Iceland plant has found a way to inject it underground and transform it into stone, preventing the carbon from being re-released into the atmosphere for millions of years. So far, direct air capture is only a small part of the global effort to mitigate climate change. It is currently prohibitively expensive and small in scale, but is developing quickly and attracting funding from power investors like Bill Gates. For the world to meet the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement, we’ll very likely need to not only reduce carbon emissions but also remove emissions from the air. Direct air capture plants like Climeworks and others aim to do so while providing jobs and powering a “new, clean economy.” Watch the video above to see the new technology in action. Homepage photo by Arni Saeberg. MORE:Can the U.S. Continue to Reduce Its Carbon Emissions?
