Floating at the side of a river that winds through densely populated neighborhoods in Panama City, a 52-foot-long robotic “trash wheel” sucks up plastic from the water and pulls it up a conveyor belt to be recycled. (The design, which runs on hydropower and uses solar power as a backup, is a ... read more

The summer of 2022 started with a historic flood in Montana, brought on by heavy rain and melting snow, that tore up roads and caused large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated. It ended with a record-breaking heat wave in California and much of the West that pushed ... read more

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for the newsletter here. The United States gets about 40% of its electricity from carbon-free sources, including renewables and nuclear, and researchers have a pretty good idea of how to cost-effectively get to about ... read more

The market will be key to fighting the climate crisis at the enormous scale needed, according to experts at the Fast Company Innovation Festival. “What’s the one idea that humanity has come up with in the last 1,000 years that’s still transparent, cost efficient and verifiable?” asked Andrew Dailey, co-founder ... read more

In South Korea’s capital city, some streetlights have been replaced by “street lamp chargers” that can fully charge an electric car in an hour. It’s one part of a massive rollout of EV chargers across Seoul, which plans to have more than 200,000 charging stations in place in less than ... read more

From ingredients and the curation of meals to the ways food gets distributed, the food industry is undergoing rapid change. And as three food industry innovators told audiences at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Wednesday, the only way to keep up is continuous reinvention. From left: Jess Bursztynsky, staff ... read more

The efforts to unionize companies like Amazon and Starbucks have clearly been popular among workers, who have voted to unionize and helped organize locations across the country. But the CEOs of those companies have been less welcoming of the labor movement. When asked if he could ever see himself embracing ... read more

When she was in seventh grade, Jacqueline Prawira launched a five-year project to design a bio-based alternative to plastic, eventually using upcycled fish-scale waste to make it. Last year, before she became a high school senior, she started using the same material to tackle another problem: how to clean up ... read more

Last month, an Air Force drone took off on a first-of-a-kind test flight with a new kind of fuel: one made with captured CO2 and renewable energy. It looks and acts like standard jet fuel, but when it burns, it’s carbon neutral. Air Company, the New York-based startup that created the ... read more

“Food shortage and climate change are already a problem,” says Sara Menker, and they’re “about to get worse.” As the founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, which combines agricultural and climate data with AI and machine learning to create models that predict the future of global food security, Menker understands, ... read more

This article originally appeared in Nexus Media News and Next City, and was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. On very hot days, Victor Sanchez makes sure to leave his home in the afternoon. “The sun just pours in,” he said of his top-floor, west-facing apartment ... read more

Electric planes might seem futuristic, but they aren’t that far off, at least for short hops. The two-seater Velis Electro aircraft are already quietly buzzing around Europe, electric sea planes are being tested in British Columbia, and larger planes are coming. Air Canada announced on September 15, 2022, that it ... read more

Most vertical farms grow greens like lettuce or spinach, but a facility in a remote corner of Iceland, run by a startup called Vaxa Technologies, grows microalgae instead. A new study found that the farm’s process is carbon neutral. The farm is on the site of a geothermal power plant, ... read more

As a child, your parents may have discussed IQ with you because it was one of many aptitude tests we used to take in school. Since the new millennium, in the business world, EQ—referring to your ability to handle people with insight and compassion—has emerged as a valued trait. EQ ... read more

After Hurricane Fiona tore through Puerto Rico on Sunday, roads in the small mountain city of Caguas—hit with more than 20 inches of rain—were underwater. Landslides washed away some streets. As on the rest of the island, the electric grid went down, and it wasn’t clear how many homes had ... read more