Empowering consumers: Rio Tinto’s aluminum becomes accountable upstream and down, on the blockchain

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What if you want to buy items like smart phones, cars and even your favorite can of drink, knowing that they’re made from ethically and sustainable sourced materials? It’s about to become a reality with a radical new idea in the raw materials manufacturing space, started by a leading mining and metals company that deals in diamonds, copper, iron ore and aluminum.

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Students make AMENDS for a better Middle East

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The American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at California’s Stanford University (AMENDS) is a student-led initiative that enables young change agents from across the Middle East, North Africa, and United States to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and, through Ted-style talks, broadcast their experiences and learn from each other. This is a story about a platform for […]

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Middle East’s first rainforest coming to Dubai

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Dubai developers reach a new zenith in outrageous investment with just-announced plans to build a tropical rainforest on the desert outskirts of the city.  The forest will exist within a climate-controlled dome as a key feature of a new luxury housing development. But the real news within this news is that local environmentalists are complaining, finally.

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Bamboo Warka Water towers pull drinking water out of thin air

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Italian architect Arturo Vittori and his colleague Andreas Vogler designed a low-tech machine, based on passive design, that can produce between 50 and 100 liters of clean drinking water daily, without electrical equipment and independent of land-based water sources. This inexpensive, easily assembled tower was designed specifically for rural communities in Ethiopia that lack access to safe […]

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Pee in the shower, save the environment

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A new student campaign at a British university is urging people everywhere to “take the piss out of water shortages” by peeing in the shower. You heard right. The practice is pitched as a time-saving tool with a significant environmental payoff – each time you indulge in this guilty pleasure you stand to save up […]

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Mysterious Sinkholes Threaten to Sink the Dead Sea

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Watch your step, kibbutzniks and spa-mavens! Diminishing water levels in the Dead Sea are causing changes to surrounding groundwater flows.  Freshwater moves through the aquifer, dissolving subterranean salt deposits and creating underground voids, which cause surface collapse. Dramatic and unpredictable, sinkholes appear at the alarming rate of nearly one a day. First observed around the […]

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