Plastic Free

Plastic Free
Author: Rebecca Prince-Ruiz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0231552726

In July 2011, Rebecca Prince-Ruiz challenged herself to go plastic free for the whole month. Starting with a small group of people in the city of Perth, the Plastic Free July movement has grown into a 250-million strong community across 177 countries, empowering people to reduce single-use plastic consumption and create a cleaner future. This book explores how one of the world’s leading environmental campaigns took off and shares lessons from its success. From narrating marine-debris research expeditions to tracking what actually happens to our waste to sharing insights from behavioral research, it speaks to the massive scale of the plastic waste problem and how we can tackle it together. Interweaving interviews from participants, activists, and experts, Plastic Free tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people have created change in their homes, communities, workplaces, schools, businesses, and beyond. It is easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of global environmental problems and wonder what difference our own actions could possibly make. Plastic Free offers hope for the future through the stories of those who have taken on what looked like an insurmountable challenge and succeeded in innovative and practical ways, one step—and one piece of plastic—at a time.

Plan B 4.0

Plan B 4.0
Author: Lester R. Brown
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2009-09-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0393337197

Provides alternative solutions to such global problems as population control, emerging water shortages, eroding soil, and global warming, outlining a detailed survival strategy for the civilization of the future.

Sustainability Made Simple

Sustainability Made Simple
Author: Rosaly Byrd
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2017-03-17
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1442269103

Sustainability Made Simple is an introduction to sustainability and sustainable living that explores the relationship between everyday life and the intricate global environmental issues of today, including air and water pollution, deforestation, and climate change. Rosaly Byrd and Laurèn DeMates offer an optimistic yet realistic perspective on our impact on the environment, giving much needed guidance to those who are interested in finding new and relatively easy ways to incorporate sustainability into daily life. An excellent resource for those who are interested in learning what sustainability is about and picking up habits to be more sustainable, Sustainability Made Simple shows that adopting a sustainable lifestyle doesn’t require “going off the grid” or making drastic life changes that take time and cost money. Instead, Byrd and DeMates focus on the advantages and transformative changes associated with sustainability, demonstrating that although society is facing unprecedented environmental challenges, working towards sustainability is an opportunity to do things differently and do things better, enhancing aspects of life, such as health, work and community.

Inspired Sustainability

Inspired Sustainability
Author: Erin Lothes Biviano
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781626981638

In Inspired Sustainability, Lothes, a professor at the College of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey, analyzes the insights of activists and scholars who are deeply committed to environmental sustainability. Their insights illuminate the positive experiences and effective processes that empower community leaders to engage others and move past these conflicts. She combines empirically-based focus group data with interdisciplinary research and theological analysis. Inspired Sustainability's most important accomplishment is a unique analysis of the barriers to sustainable decision-making, including the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional conflicts inherent in confronting climate change. Lothes' focus groups show that scientific literacy, a commitment to social justice, awareness of global interdependencies, and the support of working in small communities foster new interpretations of traditional worldviews. These new interpretations are powered by an awareness of their complicity in a morally globalized world, and the possibility of consciously choosing to live in just and sustainable ways.

Sustainable Construction

Sustainable Construction
Author: Víctor Yepes
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3036504826

Construction is one of the main sectors that generates greenhouse gases. This industry consumes large amounts of raw materials, such as stone, timber, water, etc. Additionally, infrastructure should provide service over many years without safety problems. Therefore, their correct design, construction, maintenance, and dismantling are essential to reducing economic, environmental, and societal consequences. That is why promoting sustainable construction has recently become extremely important. To help address and resolve these types of questions, this book explores new ways of reducing the environmental impacts caused by the construction sector, as well promotes social progress and economic growth. The chapters collect the papers included in the “Sustainable Construction” Special Issue of the Sustainability journal. The papers cover a wide spectrum of issues related to the use of sustainable materials in construction, the optimization of designs based con sustainable indicators, the life-cycle assessment, the decision-making processes that integrate economic, social, and environmental aspects, and the promotion of durable materials that reduce future maintenance.

Biomimicry and Sustainable Building Performance

Biomimicry and Sustainable Building Performance
Author: Olusegun Aanuoluwapo Aanuoluwapo Oguntona
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2024-02-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1003838359

This book on biomimicry assessment tools studies the concepts of sustainability, sustainable construction practices, and the evaluation categories that constitute a sustainability assessment tool. By exploring and drawing lessons from biomimicry principles, the book provides a nature-inspired assessment tool to aid and guide the sustainable transformation of the built environment. The book encapsulates the attributes of the conceptualised biomimicry assessment tool, which is aimed at helping practitioners, regulatory bodies, and governmental and non-governmental agencies in greening the built environment. Owing to the dire need for country-specific and tailor-made tools that address developing countries' needs, this book serves as a practical reference and theoretical springboard for the development of sustainability assessment tools for the built environment. Furthermore, the book serves as a guide in navigating the path towards achieving the greening agendas of the built environment and other sectors and seeks to align the new biomimicry assessment tool with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is important reading for academics, professionals and advanced students in the built environment, engineering, and sustainable development.

Seeds of Sustainability

Seeds of Sustainability
Author: Pamela A. Matson
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-09-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1610911776

Seeds of Sustainability is a groundbreaking analysis of agricultural development and transitions toward more sustainable management in one region. An invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students alike, it examines new approaches to make agricultural landscapes healthier for both the environment and people. The Yaqui Valley is the birthplace of the Green Revolution and one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world, using irrigation, fertilizers, and other technologies to produce some of the highest yields of wheat anywhere. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. In short, the Yaqui Valley represents the challenge of modern agriculture: how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production while protecting the environment. Renowned scientist Pamela Matson and colleagues from leading institutions in the U.S. and Mexico spent fifteen years in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora, Mexico addressing this challenge. Seeds of Sustainability represents the culmination of their research, providing unparalleled information about the causes and consequences of current agricultural methods. Even more importantly, it shows how knowledge can translate into better practices, not just in the Yaqui Valley, but throughout the world.

Design Computing and Cognition '14

Design Computing and Cognition '14
Author: John S. Gero
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 671
Release: 2015-04-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319149563

This book details the state-of-the-art of research and development in design computing and design cognition. It features more than 35 papers that were presented at the Sixth International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition, DCC’14, held at University College, London, UK. Inside, readers will find the work of expert researchers and practitioners that explores both advances in theory and application as well as demonstrates the depth and breadth of design computing and design cognition. This interdisciplinary coverage, which includes material from international research groups, examines design synthesis, design cognition, design creativity, design processes, design theory, design grammars, design support and design ideation. Overall, the papers provide a bridge between design computing and design cognition. The confluence of these two fields continues to build the foundation for further advances and leads to an increased understanding of design as an activity whose influence continues to spread. As a result, the book will be of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of advanced computation in design and those who need to gain a better understanding of designing that can be obtained through empirical studies.

Biomimetic Research for Architecture and Building Construction

Biomimetic Research for Architecture and Building Construction
Author: Jan Knippers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2016-12-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319463748

This book comprises a first survey of the Collaborative Research Center SFB-TRR 141 ‘Biological Design and Integrative Structures – Analysis, Simulation and Implementation in Architecture’, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft since October 2014. The SFB-TRR 141 provides a collaborative framework for architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart, biologists and physicists from the University of Freiburg and geoscientists and evolutionary biologists from the University of Tübingen. The programm is conceptualized as a dialogue between the disciplines and is based on the belief that that biomimetic research has the potential to lead everyone involved to new findings far beyond his individual reach. During the last few decades, computational methods have been introduced into all fields of science and technology. In architecture, they enable the geometric differentiation of building components and allow the fabrication of porous or fibre-based materials with locally adjusted physical and chemical properties. Recent developments in simulation technologies focus on multi-scale models and the interplay of mechanical phenomena at various hierarchical levels. In the natural sciences, a multitude of quantitative methods covering diverse hierarchical levels have been introduced. These advances in computational methods have opened a new era in biomimetics: local differentiation at various scales, the main feature of natural constructions, can for the first time not only be analysed, but to a certain extent also be transferred to building construction. Computational methodologies enable the direct exchange of information between fields of science that, until now, have been widely separated. As a result they lead to a new approach to biomimetic research, which, hopefully, contributes to a more sustainable development in architecture and building construction.