Sustainability Guide To SXSW 2020
Hey – it’s me again! What’s on your agenda for SXSW this year? I wanted to share some sustainable related topics that will be covered at SXSW this year – some of them are weird but I wouldn’t expect anything less from Austin who’s motto is literally “Keep It Weird”. If you want more information about events I mentioned in this video check out our blog post below for more info.
Is Hemp the Answer to the Global Climate Crisis?
Due to its diverse applications, hemp is driving innovation across the globe. As technology and research develop, industries are looking to hemp as a solution to some of the most significant issues facing our world.
This presentation is an opportunity to discuss the many ways hemp can be applied as an alternative to plastics, fossil fuels, and other carbon intensive industries.
Why Plants are the Next Generation of Plastic
Plastics’ durability-once its greatest asset-is now its greatest curse. Scientists are quietly making tech breakthroughs that can halt our plastic problems at the source. Using plants and bacteria, materials that look and perform like plastic but break down like plants, are finally becoming commercialized.
Sustainability and reducing emissions are existential for aviation. Aviation is crucial in connecting the world and for us to continue creating economic growth and welfare. In the longer term, the transition toward zero emission aviation is dependent on new technologies such as electricity and hybrid aircraft.
The Data-Driven Food System: From Soil to Supper
Google has convened the Refresh Working Group—40 farmers, nutritionists, retailers, researchers, and consumers—to collectively examine how AI is helping to improve the U.S. food system. Farmers today are using image recognition technologies to detect signs of bacteria or fungus—such as color change, wilting, or spots—to identify pests and plant diseases. Predictive ordering algorithms are modernizing food retail and helping to cut food waste in half.
Bugs & Kelp, the Future Foods Feeding Us in 2030
Cellular meat and bleeding plant patties may be all the rage right now, but bugs and seaweed just might be our best bet to substantially change the way we feed our population on a global scale. Alternative crops like kelp, algae and seaweed, and alternative livestock like farmed insects are both often overshadowed by flashier techno-food solutions with wild valuations, but both are nutritionally dense and resource efficient methods to grow food that can be deployed today, with historic and cultural roots worldwide.
The Rise & Fall of the Green Building Movement
How did the host city of SXSW become the birthplace of the international Green Building movement? What were the drivers, and the unconventional approaches to solving a growing US city’s forecasted energy shortage, that created Energy Star, and then the nation’s first and most vetted Green Building program? This is a fascinating story of questioning long-held assumptions, creative thinking and lucky timing in the face of a looming crisis that gave birth to the concept of socially & economically diverse environmentalism – and it was not necessarily borne out of the environmental movement!
Carbon Pricing to Drive Innovation and Change
Taking climate action requires policy and technological innovation. Carbon pricing provides an economic signal to emitters, who determine whether to transform their activities or pay a price. These policies help mobilize financial investments to stimulate clean technology and market innovation, and incentivize low-carbon economic growth.
Decay and Diamonds: Your Body’s Life After Death
Gone are the days where consumers’ only options for their body’s life after death were ashes on a shelf or worm food. In 2020, your body can become a piece of priceless jewelry or an instrument for scientific development. Join us for a conversation with local business, Eterneva, and a head researcher from Central Texas’ own Body Farm to discuss how your body can live on after your heart stops beating.
Redesigning the Urban Environment for Extreme Heat
To adapt to climate change, we need to build our cities like we did in the past – moving towards a climate-responsive urban design. This includes large-scale efforts to increase greenery; lightening streets, rooftops, and the right of way (which can represent up to 30-35% of total land area in cities) to absorb less heat; and better building design.
Re-Imagine Death, Fight Climate Change
We understand that climate change will lead to more deaths among animals and humans in the coming years. But what if our very relationship to death is a systemic and addressable root cause of climate change? Eco-friendly funeral practices are necessary and can help reduce the environmental impact of funerals, but that only gets us so far. Artist, designer, and entrepreneur Jae Rhim Lee, inventor of one such funeral practice — the Mushroom Burial suit – will discuss the mindset shifts necessary to upend the core of our identity and relationship to self and planet.