Morning all. What would your local city look like painted head to toe in white? Probably not as glamorous covered in Saturday nights’ kebabs, but why are the world’s cities considering it… find out below
In today’s edition:
🤖 Auto-picking robots
🦗 Drones to tackle desert locust swarms in East Africa
📈 Xi and Biden send clean energy stocks soaring
Big Business (2-minute read)
It’s been a busy week for Microsoft..
Tech giant Microsoft has been partnering with a range of stakeholders to develop solutions driving sustainability in the fields of healthcare, mining, and aviation.
- Project Breathe: A novel solution for managing Cystic Fibrosis, developed in partnership with the Cystic Fibrosis trust and the University of Cambridge. The smart-phone based solution allows patients to better monitor their health, while data stored in the cloud allows clinicians to determine when patients are becoming unwell. Ultimately, the project aims to prolong the life of those suffering with Cystic Fibrosis.
- Sustainable Air Travel: A partnership with Alaska Airlines will mean Microsoft will reduce the environmental impact of business travel through purchase of jet fuel made from oil waste by Dutch company SkyNRG, who in turn will supply the fuel to Alaskan Airlines.
- Improving Mining Standards: The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), in partnership with Microsoft, have created a set of standards covering major mining issues like the environment and workers’ rights. The standard is attractive for Microsoft, as it ensures transparency and verification in a traditionally ambiguous supply chain of materials required in their products.
On the menu today: Insect Burgers
Coop, one of the largest supermarket chains in Switzerland, has become the first food retailer in Europe to sell Insect burgers and balls. Insect production is more sustainable than traditional meat: 80% of insects are edible (compared with 40% of cows) and require less food, land and water. Coop’s decision has the potential to make insects part of our modern diets.
🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)
Drones to tackle desert locust swarms in East Africa
‘An alarming and unprecedented threat to food security’. That’s how the FAO described the swarms of up to 80 million locusts that swept through Kenya earlier this year. Swarms can consume the same food in one day as 35,000 people and without intervention can last for years. Current control measures (mass ground and air spraying) are high cost, indiscriminate and have potential impacts on human health. Frontier technologies hub partnered with Astral Aerial Solutions, are trialing ‘spraying drones’. These limit personnel involved in the spraying process and allow for nightime spraying, limiting exposure to nearby inhabited areas. Drones also enable swarm monitoring to enable early warning and preventive control before full swarms form.
Paint the town White
Air conditioning accounts for 10% of all global electricity consumption. With global warming leading to rising temperatures it’s not hard to imagine a vicious positive feedback loop of more air conditioning and more power. Engineers at Purdue University have developed a potential solution. A new ‘Super white’ paint that can keep surfaces up to 8 degrees Celcius cooler than their ambient surroundings. The paint is made with a high concentration of calcium carbonate particles of many different sizes, allowing it to reflect 95.5% of sunlight and efficiently radiate infrared heat. Most importantly the paint is affordable, long lasting and can be mass produced. Key to adoption is cost savings – The team estimate a 200 sqm home could save $50 a month on cooling costs.
How robots can empower growers and pickers
RobotAI is building an artificially intelligent robotic system to add predictability to farming operations. The AI robots inspect and pick crops, whilst capturing data to drive health insight for growers. RobotAI’s vision is agile robots which work across different crops and environments, so farmers only need to implement a single robotic system.
Our take: RobotAI may seem to support the age old belief of ‘robots taking our jobs’. New research is challenging this. The increased productivity achieved by robots (Essential to meeting increasing global food demand), leads to lower production costs reflected in lower customer prices. This research suggests this will drive up customer demand, and lead to firms hiring more workers elsewhere in the supply chain.
📈 Who’s Up, Who’s Down 📉
Up – ‘Clean Energy’ shares thanks to Xi and Biden
Shares in the S&P Global Clean Energy index are up 71% in 2021, and 22% in the month since China’s president Xi Jinping vowed China will be carbon neutral by 2060. At the same time expectations that the US election could reshape America’s energy sector have fuelled the fire. In July, US presidential hopeful Joe Biden put clean energy at the centre of a $2tn plan to revive the US economy, and is currently leading incumbent, Donald Trump, in the national polls.
Down – Non diverse investment teams
Asset managers have been put on notice to overhaul their ‘male and pale’ workforces. Willis Towers Watson, which advises on $2.6tn in assets, said its analysis of more than 2,400 individual investment teams globally found diverse groups outperformed those with no gender or ethnic minority employees by 20 basis points a year on average.
🎃 Three Truths, One Lie
Three of these stories are true, one we made up can you spot which?
- $300 million will be spent on Halloween pet costumes in the US
- 86% of parents admit to stealing their Kids’ Halloween Candy
- In Ireland the president addresses the people every Halloween wearing a costume
- In several American towns, Halloween was originally referred to as ‘Cabbage Night’
Little Bytes
Quote: “Ultimately, solving the climate change problem is a technological issue as it requires replacing currently used technologies with new alternatives.” Aleks Kudic, CTO, Funding Options
Stat: “The value of assets in the nature-based offsets market could swell to over $1.2 trillion by 2050.” Principles for Responsible Investment
See: How cocoons ensure trees grow in harsh environments
🗞 In other news…
Autonomous drones relieving warehouse staffing shortages
Wild Persian Leopards making roaring comeback in Russian mountains
An innovative project turns waste bread into beer
The 2024 Olympic Aquatic Centre will be powered by renewable energy
- ASDA trial plastic free ‘sustainability store’ in Leeds
