The One and Only Texas Wind Boom

Water:Charity assumed that money and celebrity exposure would be able to solve the world’s access-to-clean-water crisis. But this approach often led to more abandoned water pumps. Charities – and journalists who cover them – are now working to concentrate on making their solutions sustainable.

To the two social entrepreneurs who founded nonprofit Feedback, the massive amounts of food waste being tossed into landfills in the UK and USA each year was a mounting challenge that required a creative solution. So they founded Toast Ale, a craft brewing company that not only reduced food waste by using unwanted bread from bakeries to brew their ales, but helps bring awareness to the issue through the brand, which is growing in popularity.

As technology advances, so does the electronic waste that it produces as people throw out their old products to make way for the new ones. To reduce their e-waste footprint and keep the materials out of landfills, companies such as Dell are pushing for closed-loop recycling – a process that reuses the recycled product to make the same product again.

Funded by federal grant money, the state, and the Office of Naval Research, Hawaii County public transit has developed its first hydrogen-powered shuttle bus. What’s been called the “fuel of the future,” hydrogen fuel cells create a power source that’s only emissions are clean water vapor. While a seemingly viable and scalable clean-energy source, such development and infrastructure requires large financial investments that many states have yet to prioritize.

Aiming to improve road conditions and cut down on plastic waste, a Scottish engineer found a way to blend the two. After testing a series of different recipes, he found the perfect recipe that is now being used across United Kingdom and the Gulf, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Strip mining, a method in which the entire top few hundred feet of mountain are blown up to expose coal seams, has left Virginia and other Appalachian states with nearly a million acres of flat, problematic lands. Environmental scientists have released a herd of elk at one of these former strip mine sites to enrich the habitat for diverse animal species and to revitalize the local economies through wildlife tourists and hunters.

In Western Uganda’s Budongo forest, the Budongo Conservation Field Station is saving chimpanzees by giving poachers the opportunity to do something different. The organization operates on two levels: First, employing former poachers to help scour the forest in search of traps, and second, by giving poachers goats in an effort to provide them with enough livelihood to stop poaching.

Localscapes is a program in Utah promoting more water-efficient landscaping. The program includes state-based horticulturists, landscape professionals, and water experts who help interested people make the most sustainable use of their yards and lawns. "The program focuses on five techniques: a central open space, gathering areas, activity zones, paths and planting beds."

The Flight of the Angel attraction has helped the area to create more jobs and improve the economy through tourism. In 2007, when the attraction opened, there were only two restaurants and two hotels in the city. But now, there are about 50 bed and breakfasts, eight restaurants and over 130,000 visitors annually.

Sausages made of fish processing waste and other bait alternatives are under development in Canada as members of the fishing industry work to save the declining populations of popular lobster bait fish like mackerel and herring.