Global climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather. “A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 mt) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 mt), enough to submerge London.” Flooding Rebranded will attempt to mitigate the impact of flooding on coastal regions within the United States. The objective being to foster a sustainable model for prevention & recovery. Our solution: REVERB, the integration of ‘eco-barriers’ into human settlements via a supporting framework. REVERB centers on two primary stakeholders: victims (or affected peoples) and natural ecosystems. Municipalities & federal government entities are considered as tertiary stakeholders in the implementation process. REVERB creates a framework for the implementation of natural/living systems to enhance (& protect) human settlement…
Our solution is an add-on kit that will have the capability to generate and store energy from renewable sources, provide wifi and electric outlets to residents, and increase community engagement. We plan to lease the streetlights from their owner and customize it based of the needs of their respective community. Each city light with the add-on kits will be equipped with EV charging stations, have capability to generate and store energy from renewable sources, provide wifi and electric outlets to residents, and increase community engagement. Our model of revenue will be through user memberships, pay per use charges, advertising, and selling the excess energy to the city. StreetLight kit of parts are the add-on to existing street lights. It gives flexibility for the owners to select specific streetlight to be leased. By providing multiple options of packages, the model promises scalability, it could fit into any cities in any geographic areas. We also use sustainably sourced or recycled materials for all our …
As cities strive to for an all-encompassing urban wellbeing, what role do inhabitants, visionaries and governments play in guiding us to find the intersection between sustainable environment, cultural lifestyle, and community? It’s always a challenge to bring a diverse group of people together to come to an agreement. The Living City Experiment addresses these complex issues by opening communication to create a greater understanding of the how decision makers, visionaries, and residents are currently interacting within cities. Our Objective: The Living City Experiment was created to provide a city's decision makers (ie. government leaders, legislators) and visionaries (ie. architects, urban planners) a framework to build a human centered city in order to bridge the divide between liveability and sustainability. It delivers enlightenment, community, duty and harmony to help better understand cities and its inhabitants’ (decision takers) needs. We imagine engaging cities that bring people together for conv…
EarthPact seeks to engage people in learning about their environmental footprint and prompt them to change their ways to reduce their ecological footprint. There are 5 physical, educational, and interactive exhibits, one for each topic area of the ecological footprint: food, shelter, mobility, goods, and services. EarthPact SF’s exhibits are located in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco, California and the exhibits also serve to activate the plaza, which is currently a ghost space most of the time. In addition to the series of exhibits, there’s an EarthPact app that people log into to track their footprint scores at each of the 5 stations. Each exhibit ties in a pledge to get participants to commit to change their behavior. The app allows people to complete the exhibits in one or multiple visits, track changes over time, receive reminders about their commitment to change, receive tips on how to lead a more sustainable lifestyle, and serve as a way to track metrics and see the collective impact of people’s …
After studying the sustainable Urban Metabolism model and methodology, we decided to create a product that provides one example of how business can make shifts towards being self-reliant within urban cities and avoid traditional practices of using viable resources such as fresh water. We developed a rainwater collection and filtration process that harvests enough useable water for the hydroponic hops we grow, harvest and produce into beer within our facility along with allocating enough collected rainwater for the beer production process itself with the goal of zero fresh water use.
Cultivar is the "AirBNB of gardens" - a garden sharing service served through an online platform (website and app) CULTIVAR builds more healthy, transparent and engaged communities by connecting people with little access to space and as a result little ability to garden, apartment dwellers, to those with access, home and land owners.CULTIVAR aims to dissolve the binary world of public and private space in an effort to build more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable communities for everyone. What CULTIVAR Does: - Connects people who are looking for space to garden with those who have excess and/or underutilized space that they would enjoy seeing being made use of. - This encourages community connection through increased opportunities for interaction with neighbors. - Reduces isolation and the associated negative health implications - Increases the amount of land being used to grow food and other plants in urban areas - Creates an urban collective of grower / farmers - Increases food …
The team has completed a case study of Palo Alto’s Roadmap to Zero Net Energy, with a focus on the opportunities to transition small to medium-sized retail-use commercial buildings to the City of Palo Alto’s energy efficiency standards as defined by their overall sustainability goals. The main contributor to the research effort was the department of Development Services at the City of Palo Alto; this paper has been compiled with their challenges in implementing their green building ordinance in mind. The specific challenge researched was on how to effectively transition Palo Alto’s small to medium-sized retail-use buildings in accordance with the Commercial Zero Net Energy Ordinance for Smaller Buildings, the City’s 2023 Green Building Vision milestone based on California state goals for 2030. Our research and analysis uncovered opportunities to reduce roadblocks to Palo Alto’s 2023 sustainability goals by reinvigorating energy audits for retail-use spaces, implementing and enforcing guidelines for landlord-…
Traditional funeral practices in the U.S. are not sustainable. They are designed to interrupt the natural process of death and decomposition. Traditional burials involve filling the body with synthetic preservatives and encasing them in wood or steel coffins that are then buried in concrete vaults. Instead of utilizing space for the living, thousands of acres of land are used every year for new cemetery grounds to house the dead. Each year 800,000 gallons of embalming fluid are used to preserve remains. An average embalming requires a minimum of three gallons of embalming solution. This fluid eventually seeps into our groundwater supplies. 1.6 million tons of concrete is produced each year for burial vaults. Production of concrete is responsible for 5% of the global CO2 footprint. 90,000 tons of steel is used each year for caskets. Steel is one of the most expensive metals to produce in terms of carbon footprint and toxicity (high cost to extract, refine, manufacture). Casket manufacturers are on the EPA’s l…
At the point of sale, people don’t choose sustainable products - even people who believe in sustainability. Through analyzing various stakeholders, Team Greendigo sought to explore consumer purchasing behaviors, the moment of decision-making at the shelf and how it’s influenced by individual values. We conducted secondary research focused on the consumer demographics and trends in their behavior for sustainable products. We enriched our findings through primary research by observing customers, conducting street intercepts, as well as surveying family and friends. Can we change consumer behavior? We believe so. By developing several different prototypes, Team Greendigo investigated multiple ways to explore how to get people to choose sustainable products when faced with the choice at the point of sale. We propose “GoodGuide+” as a cohesive ecosystem to provide consumers with the opportunity to source information on sustainable products, ability to navigate to those products in-store or online and the motivat…
You pay for every kilowatt of energy, every gallon of water and every therm of natural gas you use in your home every month. You feel the pain when you leave the lights on, take extra hot showers, or forget to fix a leak when your bill spikes as a result of your excesses. Even the people who claim to not care about sustainability feel the financial pressure to reduce their energy and water use. So why don’t we treat trash, recycling and compost waste the same way? If we want people to reduce their waste, we need to bring awareness and financial incentives and consequences, to our waste disposal system. We can no longer rely on the “toss it and forget it” model we are using today. According to the The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, plastics amount to 13 percent of the municipal waste stream and unfortunately, only about 9 percent of plastics are recycled. The EPA also estimates that each American throws away 1.3 pounds of food waste every day and that these compostable items, along with yard …