Lifeboat Foundation

Planedennig is a tiny home on wheels built for a mother and her young son to balance playtime with relaxation.

Considering the number of tiny homes to come out of recent years, distinguishing one tiny home from another can be hard. After all, there’s only so much space to work with, many tiny home builders prioritize efficiency and function over unique design. Then, there are always the unicorns that have it all.

New islands are being built in numbers and on a scale never seen before.

We are building more islands than ever before. In the latest edition of Anthropo-Scene, we explore the striking results of humanity’s attempts to colonise the world’s lakes and oceans.

Virginia mom April Stringfield is now the owner of Habitat for Humanity’s first 3D-printed home — built in record time, thanks to new construction tech.

The massive time and money savings from 3D printing means the nonprofit is very likely to print more in the future.

Continue reading “3D-printed home cuts construction time from 4 weeks to 28 hours, says Habitat for Humanity” »

KhalifaSat, the first entirely Emirati-made satellite, captured the impressively clear image, along with an array of other shots of some of Dubai’s most popular destinations.

Among the images released on Twitter included a full view of Downtown Dubai, with the shadow of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, cast over the Dubai Mall.

Several images of the Dubai Canal also featured among the snaps shared online on Friday.

Net-zero architecture is what will reduce emissions from the construction industry on a large scale. But make it inclusive as well as scalable and you also get a solution that can lift homeowners out of poverty while building a community! Created for that very purpose, these solar homes are aiming to help solve both the global housing and climate crises with one design. The houses produce their energy, harvest 100% of the rainwater, clean their sewage, and also have the potential to grow their own food!

It is called the PowerHYDE housing model and was created by Prasoon Kumar and Robert Verrijt of Billion Bricks from India and Singapore. The model explores sustainable solutions to empower and facilitate growth opportunities for people without homes around Southeast Asia which has a lot of rural and low-income populations. These homes not only provide shelter but are also a power module to scale sustainable communities that lift homeowners out of poverty!

A new study finds that installing solar farms could become a two birds, one stone situation, as these areas can also double as thriving pollinator habitats if land owners allow meadows to grow around the solar panels.

The study, from researchers at Lancaster University in the UK that will be presented today at an Ecology Across Borders conference, shows that installing solar farms could be greatly beneficial to nature.

“Our findings provide the first quantitative evidence that solar parks could be used as a conservation tool to support and boost pollinator populations. If they are managed in a way that provides resources, solar parks could become [a] valuable bumble bee habitat,” said Hollie Blaydes, associate lecturer and doctorate student at the university. “In the UK, pollinator habitat has been established on some solar parks, but there is currently little understanding of the effectiveness of these interventions. Our findings provide solar park owners and managers with evidence to suggest that providing floral and nesting resources for bumble bees could be effective.”

BayWa r.e., in partnership with Grüne Energien, has received planning permission for the development of the Rag Lane Solar Farm project near Bristol, UK.

Construction of the 49.9 MW solar project in South Gloucestershire is planned to commence at the beginning of 2023, with grid connection expected in the second half of 2023. When complete, Rag Lane will deliver approximately 52 GWh/year of clean renewable electricity for distribution to the national grid, the equivalent to the annual electrical needs of approximately 15,000 family homes.

BayWa r.e. is committed to ensuring maximum benefit to the local community and environment in the development of Rag Lane. As part of the construction of the project, BayWa r.e. will provide biodiversity enhancements to the local area including the reinforcement and planting of 1.7 km of new hedgerows as a haven for wildlife, as well as ecological connectivity and improvements to the public footpath that runs across the site.

Continue reading “49.9 MW solar farm with biodiversity enhancements” »

EV charging network, Blink, kicked off this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by sharing news of seven new charging products, the largest unveiling in its thirteen year history. Blink products include multiple versions of fleet and home chargers, as well as new public chargers and software for customers.

Blink Charging Co. ($BLNK) is an international EV charging network operating over 30,000 ports across thirteen different countries. In addition to charging hardware and services, the Blink Network uses proprietary, cloud-based software that operates and tracks charging stations connected to its network and the charging data they provide.

Blink charging’s strategy promotes mass EV adoption by supporting EV drivers with charging solutions everywhere, whether its at home, work, a public station, or even a fleet depot.

Some of the churn is transitory. It was hard to act on pent-up job dissatisfaction while economies were in free fall, so there is a post-pandemic backlog of job switches to clear. And more quitting now is not the same as sustained job-hopping later. As Melissa Swift of Mercer, a consultancy, notes, white-collar workers in search of higher purpose will choose a new employer carefully and stay longer.

But there is also reason to believe that higher rates of churn are here to stay. The prevalence of remote working means that more roles are plausible options for more jobseekers. And the pandemic has driven home the precariousness of life at the bottom of the income ladder. Resignation rates are highest in industries, like hospitality, that are full of low-wage workers who have lots of potentially risky face-to-face contact with colleagues and customers.

One conventional solution—identifying a few star performers and bunging them extra money—is not a retention strategy if large chunks of the workforce are thinking differently about their jobs. What should managers be doing?