The sharing economy is transforming the ways in which people access and use goods and services, and challenges traditional, ownership-based, business models. This short article from the World Economic Forum explores how people in 5 cities across the world are embracing the concept of sharing economy, and highlights the scale and scope of goods and services being ‘shared’ today. If […]
There are now apps and websites which encourage you to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet, such as Part-Time Carnivore and The Climatarian Challenge. They ‘gamify’ the challenge of reducing your “meaty days”. You can set monthly targets to reduce your meat consumption or form teams to compete against each other. It is a fun way to tackle a serious problem!
Zap-Map, a UK – based multi-platform map showing charging points for electric vehicles (EV), has launched 2 new peer–to–peer charging networks. Zap-Home allows people who own an EV charge point to share their charge point with other EV users, possibly for a fee, which the owner determines. Similarly, Zap-Work is targeted at businesses with charging points who can choose to share […]
This week’s Big Issue (issue 1303) has an interesting piece entitled ‘Vertical farms won’t save us…yet’. While several small-scale vertical farms are achieving modest success, larger scale production is still proving difficult despite significant technological advances in recent years. The problem for producers is the cost; set-up and production costs are high, but salad and vegetables are […]
This interesting article in Fresh Produce Journal discusses the current situation regarding food waste in the UK. Despite a lot of media and public attention to this issue in recent years, the UK still only rescues less than 10% of its surplus food. A lot of food is sent to anaerobic digesters to produce energy, which is of course better than sending it to landfill. However, food […]
Smart ride by Citymapper and Chariot by Ford are ride hailing services currently running in London. This article discusses how private companies such as Uber and Citymapper are challenging or taking over mass transit. The Transport sector is moving towards public private partnerships and mobility as a service is one of them. To convince people to give up their cars […]
3.5 million people in the UK now eat a plant-based diet, according to a poll by Professor Carolyn Roberts and comparethemarket.com. This is around 7% of the population, which is a surprisingly high proportion and a significant increase in numbers compared to research conducted by The Vegan Society in 2016. The desire to combat climate change appears to be an important motivation in changing consumer behaviour.
Can you imagine buying your electricity directly from the neighbour using their solar PV panels? Or from the local farmer with wind turbines in their fields? The Dutch start–up Vandebron (meaning ‘from the source’) enables consumers to do just that. By paying a monthly fee to Vandebron, the 100,000 current consumers can view the profiles of local renewable electricity producers with excess capacity and […]
An online survey of over 3,000 people living in Denmark reveals self-driving vehicles have most appeal to young, highly educated men living in cities. This study published in Transport Policy identifies a small cluster of people who are excited and fascinated about self-driving cars. For the full analysis and segmentation see the article here.
‘Cultured meat’ may be coming to a supermarket near you within the next few years! In an effort to de-couple meat production from its negative environmental impacts, a number of US companies are attempting to produce beef and chicken in bioreactors. If that isn’t sci-fi enough for you, the Dutch company ByFlow already has a 3D food printer on the market. But, as this BBC […]