ADB Invests in Three Climate Change Technology Venture Capital Funds

    MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is investing $60 million to help set up three venture capital funds dedicated to nurturing new climate change technologies. The funds will primarily target the markets of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and India, which are actively promoting clean energy and sustainable technologies. via [...]

ADB, Partners Find Ways to Make Sanitation a Sustainable Business

    With nearly 2 billion people in Asia and the Pacific having no access to adequate sanitation, representatives of governments, the business community, nongovernment organizations and international organizations are meeting at the Asian Development Bank ADB to discuss ways to ramp up investments in the sector. via ADB.

Indonesia’s moratorium on logging, palm oil concessions may be inadequate

    …details of the moratorium, which was a condition under Indonesia’s billion dollar forest conservation partnership with Norway and was supposed to be signed January 1, won’t be released until Friday, leaving it unclear what types of forest will be protected from logging and conversion to plantations. The moratorium will certainly include primary forests, [...]

Shopping Conundrum: Transparency, Traceability and Tantalum

    Consumers interested in making greener and more ethical shopping decisions face numerous challenges. Perhaps the biggest is being able to instantly evaluate and compare products on a full range of sustainability criteria. Not just what brands choose to reveal about their products (say, things like plant-based packaging or some percentage of recycled or [...]

Sole trader takes recycling in his stride

    As protests continue across the Middle East, American shoemaker Bahman Irvani remembers 1979. That year, he and his family fled Iran after the revolution leaving behind their thriving footwear business.”We left Iran because the government took over not only our businesses but our personal assets as well,” said 59-year-old Irvani, whose family had [...]

Ethanol Jumps Most in Almost 6 Months After Corn Stockpiles Drop

Ethanol jumped the most in almost six months to cap its third quarterly gain after the U.S. government reported corn stockpiles fell to the lowest level in three years, signaling higher production costs for the fuel. via Bloomberg.

Where to after Earth Hour? BMW’s car sharing scheme is one

What are the other car sharing schemes we have in Singapore? Any in Jakarta? More signs that the era of the personal automobile may be slowly coming to an end: BMW is launching an interesting new car-sharing system in Munich next month, with plans to bring it worldwide. Called DriveNow, the system will use about [...]