VERGE City Summit 2014 convened a select group of city, corporate, and NGO partner leaders to discuss strategies that will most effectively drive cities to achieve deep carbon-reduction goals. 

Home to more than half of the world’s population, cities are top contributors to growing greenhouse emissions. On the bright side, this means that cities can (and will) play a key role in taking a stance against climate change.

In the following article, City Summit participant Greg Kats points out 7 actionable ways for cites to make scalable impacts. You can check out his ideas here: http://grn.bz/1oRvUhK 

1. Adopt cool roof, green roof and solar harvesting strategies

2. Integrate smart-building platforms with existing systems

3. Enter into long-term agreements to buy new renewable energy

4. Insist that cities’ energy efficiency investments be counted in cap-and-trade programs

5. Measure, count and reduce the CO2 embedded in cities’ buildings and roads

6. Invest in new versions of ancient building products that can reduce or sequester CO2 in buildings

7. Incorporate best-estimate CO2 costs into design and investment decisions

Are you working on or have you heard about any impactful city initiatives to reduce carbon emissions?

t’s almost impossible to imagine life without flexible, transparent and water-resistant food packaging, without plastic sandwich bags, cling film or shelves filled with plastic jars, tubs and tubes and durable bags and boxes.

While storing food in containers dates back thousands of years, and food has been sold in bottles since the 1700s and cans since the 1800s, what might be considered the modern age of food packaging began in the 1890s, when crackers were first sold in sealed waxed paper bags inside a paperboard box. Plastics and other synthetics began to appear in the 1920s and ’30s, shortly after chemical companies started experimenting with petroleum-based compounds and pioneering new materials that could be used for household as well as industrial applications.

Fast forward to 2014: Upwards of 6,000 different manufactured substances are now listed by various government agencies as approved for use in food contact materials in the U.S. and Europe — materials that can legally go into consumer food packaging, household and commercial food containers, food processing equipment and other products.

Recent analyses have revealed substantial gaps in what is known about the health and environmental effects of many of these materials and raised questions about the safety of others. A study published this past July found that 175 chemicals used in food contact materials are also recognized by scientists and government agencies as chemicals of concern — chemicals known to have adverse health effects. Another published in December 2013 found that more than 50 percent of food contact materials in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration database of such substances lacked accompanying toxicology information filed with the FDA about the amount people can safely eat. This database is publicly available and searchable, but the database itself doesn’t include toxicology information about […]

A conversation between Monsanto’s CTO Robb Fraley and Seeds Matter Cultivator Matthew Dillon at last week’s VERGE San Francisco brought to light how the future of food relies on seeds.

Feeding the world’s population in the face of climate change is a remarkable challenge and there are innumerable discrepancies as to making it possible. Both Fraley and Dillon are advocates for using technology innovations to improve seeds, but their discussed strategies for doing so were far from similar.

You can learn more about their opposing views and read about the conversation here: http://grn.bz/1sjR6ZY 

How do you think technology in seed development can best be used for the future of food?