Several high-profile projects in recent years, such as Global Wind Atlas, seek to rank the wind power capacity of the world’s nations. It’s proven to be a tough thing to do, given how fast public policy can change and the frequency with which private and public investments move around in this fast-growing energy sector. Nevertheless,...
A friend sent me an ad from the Danish brand Carcel promoting that their silk was made by women in the prison of Chiang Mai, Thailand, and I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t parody. I looked it up, and they’re serious in their assertion that prison-made clothing is not only ethical, but an improvement to...
Manila, Philippines: The home is a sanctuary. People discard trash from their residences that no longer fit in with its ‘flow’. The best case scenario is when people are responsible enough to segregate their junk in the correct way. The reality is though, that some recyclables end up in the non-recycling bin headed for landfills...
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Authors: Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, The University of Queensland. In a scene right out of a thriller, agents from the Filipino National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided journalist and editor Maria Ressa’s Manila office at 5pm on Wednesday February 13, after most...
Just weeks after his three-storey art installation filled with a lifetime of clothing “World’s Tallest Closet” was displayed in Egypt exploring the first world’s obsession with consumption, visual engineer and ‘artivist’ Benjamin Von Wong is at it again, creating an art installation made from 168,000 used plastic straws in Vietnam. While the original design was...
SYDNEY, Australia: A new documentary “Protecting Paradise” investigating how the ocean plastic pollution issue is impacting remote paradises, reveals that one ton of plastic debris can be found for every kilometre of coastline in Far North Queensland. The documentary, a joint production effort by Corona, environmental charity Parley for the Oceans and National Geographic, shows an...
The U.S. federal government has been closed for 32 days (as of writing this) over a fight to fund Trump’s promised wall. So far, the Trump administration considered using a state of emergency to build it, and then signaled that they would offer temporary protections for DACA recipients or “dreamers” in exchange for the wall,...
A new survey reveals consumers are willing to pay up to five percent more for ethically produced clothing, but one in five don’t trust the information provided by brands. The poll also found that almost 74 percent of UK respondents believe that fashion brands should be responsible for ensuring garments are manufactured in an environmentally...
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Author: Tamara Wood, Centre Affiliate, Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun’s story has travelled around the world this week, highlighting Saudi Arabia’s repressive treatment of women and that not only those who seek asylum by sea face...
We live in a world constantly on the move, in seven billion different ways. Our daily errand-running, workday commutes, and vacation travels sometimes put us at odds with our surroundings. There’s traffic to worry about, which raises our stress levels, the rising gas prices, and insurance prices, that cost you a fortune. The impact of...
If you were to judge our civilisation by what’s being put forward by commercial broadcasters and mainstream news and media, you would be forgiven for coming away with a negative impression of human society (narcissistic, self-centred, materialistic, hedonistic, stupid) or feeling a sense of doom and gloom about the future of humankind. Thankfully, we –...
Telling people there’s a problem isn’t the same as showing people there’s a problem – the latter is way more effective in driving home an important message. And it’s exactly the strategy that social impact designer Laura Francois and visual engineer/photographer Benjamin Von Wong employed as they set about to communicate the scale of the...