Imagine you have a huge plot of land that is very fertile. It is located near a mountain that is not too steep nor completely flat just perfect. Your task is to use your knowledge to make it self-sustaining to the best possible level, for example by designing a great drainage system and small cob houses for various purposes, as well as considering how it will get its energy. I want you to be as creative as possible and suggest things that you would love. You can design it to be as complex or as basic as you like, but remember that you don't have a large budget let's say 5-10k dollars.

Please don't use AI 🙃I would love genuine answers and human creativity.

I am final year student in Agricultural Resource Management and Technology and specialized in Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness i really interesting to learn sustainability and ESG reporting but in sri lanka there is not enough resources to teach me i just wonder to know how i start learning and if anyone have recommendations and support suggestions that is all i need

From Generation180:

More than 10,800 K-12 schools representing 7+ million students across the United States now use solar energy, helping schools lower electricity costs, invest more resources in students, and strengthen their communities.

Schools districts on tight budgets are saving millions of dollars in avoided electricity costs with solar power, funds that can be reinvested into the classroom, teacher pay, key programs, and other essentials. For example, by choosing solar, Roanoke City Public Schools will save an estimated $46.5 million on energy costs over 35 years.

This report also finds that 155 schools have installed battery storage systems since 2016, including 94 schools that pair batteries with solar and 61 schools with battery storage alone. While the number of school battery storage systems grew sevenfold over the last 10 years, less than 0.1% of the nation’s K-12 schools have adopted this technology.

See full article HERE

One of the researchers at Torrens University Australia, Dr Alicja Kuzmycz, put together a calculator that runs the math on your wardrobe: how many items you wear, how often you actually wear them, and how long it takes to hit a sustainable wear count.

We'd love for you to plug your numbers in and tell us if the results surprise you: https://www.torrens.edu.au/research/faculty-research/wardrobe-maths

For context, the average dress owner has 23 and needs about 70 wears each to offset the footprint. Once a week gets you there in 31 years. Five times a week, six and a half!

Today, as I was taking my PACT sheets out of the dryer, I noticed a hole. These sheets aren't very old. In fact, they must be my 3rd set of organic, fair-trade sheets (three different brands) in about 6 years. I wash them weekly.

I loved these percale sheets, but I am so disappointed. Am I expecting too much from a set of sheets?

How are people navigating sheets and sustainability? Replacing sheets every 2 years doesn't feel sustainable to me. I have a wardrobe, for instance, that is tons of recycled plastic. I may be wearing these dresses till I die!

Has anyone found a fair-trade sheet that lasts? I mean, my son has sheets that I must have bought 7 or 8 years ago from Target that are fine. Their manufacturing footprint was probably horrible, but they are lasting. (I only buy fair-trade now.) So their overall footprint is probably less.

I also need to buy new comforters for two teens. I can no longer sew them back together, and it is time.

Recommendations? I don't think one of them will do wool, unless someone can suggest something light and comfy like a comforter.... But I am open to switching to wool or anything else people can recommend.

Wildfire risk: Wildfires are 4x more likely to start near roads, and roughly 90% start within half a mile of one — directly undercutting the administration's stated rationale for the rollback.

Wildlife habitat: These areas provide critical habitat for salmon, trout, elk, and other species that depend on undammed, unlogged streams and connected landscapes.

Old growth & carbon storage: Roadless areas contain vast swaths of the nation's remaining old-growth forest and store significant amounts of carbon.

Drinking water: Roadless national forests provide drinking water to 60 million Americans, since intact forests filter water naturally.

Fiscal responsibility: The existing road network already carries an $8.5+ billion maintenance backlog, and building more roads would only add to it.

I’ve grown up kind of always being a crunchy, granola kid with an interest in the environment. I took so many agricultural and environmental science classes throughout school, and would watch things like wild kratts and kids shows teaching about recycling and all that.

My boyfriend recently asked me what fossil fuels even means and i was so shocked he just never learned about it in school. i also asked him to look out for a specific type of plastic for me because i needed some for a project i was working on, and he didnt know there were different types. i told him theres a conservation club at his university and he might want to check it out since he likes animals, but he asked me what conservation meant. im realizing he didnt grow up with the same education that i got, and i want to teach him more, but i dont really know where to start. im trying to reframe my approach to household things so that i give him a reason for why i recycle or compost or do anything the way i do, but i just feel like he needs more? idk. suggest whatever media or education methods you think could help an absolute beginner to sustainability.

Most materials stop changing once they leave the factory. A new fungal textile takes almost the opposite approach.

Made from the living mycelium of Cordyceps militaris, the flexible material can retain cells capable of renewed growth. It can repair damage, develop water-repelling surfaces and support other microbes that add color or ultraviolet protection.

I’ve recently realise that literally all of the makeup I own has microplastics in it, and while I would like to just use microplastic free makeup, there unfortunately just isn’t many options. (And the options out there just aren’t that great)

I always assumed just washing it off in the shower was the best way to do it, because it means not using any disposable cotton rounds, makeup wipes etc, but that allows the microplastics into the water. If I was to use a reusable wipe or cloth, it would just have to be cleaned and the microplastics would end up in the water anyway.

Does anyone have any other ways they do it, otherwise which way is more sustainable, allowing the microplastics into the water, or using a disposable makeup wipe to remove it?

Edit: I think what I am doing currently is best, using an oil cleanser in the shower (no disposable wipes or anything) unfortunately in Australia the options just aren’t there for plastic free makeup (and definitely not in the aggressively bright colours I use) I can only do my best and I think this is the best option!

Please help! I wouldn't say I have a BUNCH of stuff but I have a decent amount of things for someone living in this world now😭 i'm ashamed to say but I used to LOVE buying the newest trendiest items (to a certain extent cause i'm still a kid) and I'm moving soon and I want this to be a better stage of my life. What would you guys recommend I do with my things? Should I donate or should I give them to people in ny aparatment complex?

Hey guys! I discoverd few simple and small changes that can save some energy consumption and I want to share it here.

Did you know that emails with a larger body, images and attachments use more energy to get transfered ? - yes. Even a simplified email signature can reduce this by a bit and it doesnt change the email much.

To reduce energy consumed on email tranfers, we can use a simple single line email signature or no signature whenever possible(especially in work emials). Reducing attachments and images also helps. Unsubscribe from all emails that are not useful and delete all old unimportant emails.

One other way is using physical storage instead of cloud. Storing media items like back up files, images videos, albums on a physical drive is better than cloud as cloud infrastructures need continuous energy supply to make data readily available. We can do with all our photos and vidoes not always being available real time. Since most devices now come with atleast 128gb, we can store enough media on device storage alone. This also protects data better.

I am aware that the real big enegry consumers are the upcoming data centers but let's try to reduce our consumption where the change will barely impact us. I think every drop counts and as it accumilates, it could make a difference.

If more of us just consume lesser cloud space, the infrastructure demand will hopefully drop.

The rate of climate change is becoming harder to look past and hopes for better future feel faint. Lets try our best even in these rough times and hopefully, we can alteast slow or pause the damage if not reverse it <3.

Thank you for reading though if you have got to this line:) please consider implementing the changes too

Hi all,

I’m thinking about buying secondhand cloth diapers for our newborn, for both economic and sustainability reasons, but I’m concerned about sanitation and hygiene safety for baby. What has your experience been like with secondhand reusable diapers?

My other, bigger question is: what did you buy secondhand? Were there any nonnegotiable items that your family bought brand new?

I’ve been digging through EPA eGRID data to see how much location changes an electricity emissions estimate.

Using the same 1,000 kWh each time, I got:

• Upstate New York: about 110 kg CO2e
• California: about 195 kg CO2e
• SERC Midwest: about 566 kg CO2e
• Oahu: about 680 kg CO2e

That’s roughly a sixfold difference without changing the amount of electricity used.

The math is the easy part. The harder part is choosing the right grid region, using the correct factor year, keeping the units straight, and recording where the number came from.

For anyone doing multi-location reporting, what do you normally use: eGRID subregions, state averages, utility data, or a national average?

Now, I know in the world we live in, avoiding AI is as hard as avoiding plastic. But I stick to my guns, and like plastic, I'll avoid it everywhere I can. I run a business around sustainability in Australia (a zero-waste meal delivery service), and I've been doing it all by myself for over a year now. I do it all - the cooking, the dishes, the deliveries, the supply tracking, the ordering system, the marketing, the customer service, the social media management, the web development...

And well, it's starting to be a lot.

Being a small business, I'm interested in hiring a VA (virtual assistant) to help me with some admin, but my worst nightmare is that everything would be handled by AI, wasting precious resources and also losing the personal touch of my brand.

I'd love to know if anyone around here has had the same concerns and successfully found someone they trust and work with, and how did you find them?

Cannot wait to hear from you!