Halcyon Impacts

HALCYON IMPACTS HELPS YOU MAKE SOCIALLY- AND ENVIRONMENTALLY-CONSCIOUS CHOICES.

Green Oscars

 

 

In a process that some are terming the "green Oscars", a leading media group's Ethical Awards give the public the chance to vote for the people and companies putting the environment first.

Future tensions between biofuel and food demand

 

Meeting the world's biofuel targets could reportedly divert a tenth of the world’s cereal output from food to fuels.  Alternatively, if food-crop production were to remain stable, a huge amount of extra land would be needed for the fuels, meaning food prices could rise by anything from 15-40%.

Open source design for sustainable micro-communities

 

The Global Village Construction set, developed by a network of "farmer-scientists", provides small communities with a growing range of machines that can help them start to build off-grid micro-civilisations from scratch.

Global Village Construction Set in 2 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

Turn your packaging into a homegrown harvest

 

An art student has invented new vegetable packaging which is 100% biodegradable, with the label text created through laser cutting to avoid the use of ink.  What's more, the labels are embedded with seeds, so that your supermarket purchase can also result in a homegrown harvest.

How much CO2 Is created by...

 

..well, almost anything, really?

Every action, every event, every person, everything emits a certain amount of carbon.  A new, interactive visualisation examines some of those scenarios.  Play around to learn some interesting and surprising information about how much carbon is released during various activities.

 

Since 2000, global meat production has risen by 20%.  With varied growth in production volume in different geographic regions, global meat trade is expected to rise further: by 2019, world meat exports are projected to be 22% higher than in 2007–09.

 

While traceability often deals with issues like product recalls and contaminated food, a new product tracking app aims to protect not consumers, but manufacturers: specifically, the children and adults who make the products we buy.

 

Global use of materials - the food, feed, forest products, metals, and minerals that constitute the foundation of modern economies - was up 2.7% in 2007, the latest year for which global data are available. Worldwatch warns that materials use is a proxy indicator for environmental impact: the greater the tonnage of virgin materials extracted, processed, consumed, and disposed of, the greater an economy's environmental footprint.

 

Organisations can significantly reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions through better planning.  For example, as nearly 6% of greenhouse gases generated by humans are due to the flow of products to consumers, corporations could significantly lower these emissions by systematically analysing their supply chain logistics.

 

A systematic attempt to try all sorts of energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly, money-saving improvements led the tester to two contradictory conclusions: (1) that some improvements are so simple and cost-effective that it's dumb not to make the change, yet, at the same time (2) some trendy practices are difficult, expensive, and probably not as good for the environment as a lot of people think.