Sustainable Cities and Communities

How the competition will play out is still unclear. What is evident is that the state perceived as the winner in this race will likely become a regional hub for energy storage, attracting investment and jobs, while leaving the other state in its shadow. This puts policy makers in the hot seat.

Keep America Beautiful, the nation’s iconic community improvement nonprofit organization, today announced the distribution of 21 grants totaling $120,000 from The UPS Foundation for the 2017 Keep America Beautiful/UPS Community Tree and Recovery Tree Planting Grants program. The grant recipients’ projects will result in more than 1,200 trees being planted in support of locally-relevant initiatives.

A new garden is coming to life in Phoenix! Keep Phoenix Beautiful is launching a crowdsourcing campaign to raise $25,000 for their new Keep Phoenix Beautiful Community Garden. Funds raised will be matched dollar-for-dollar by Keep America Beautiful and Lowe’s, up to $25,000, bringing the potential total amount to invest in sustainable practices here in Central Phoenix and nationwide to $50,000. Donate now through Aug. 31st at http://bit.ly/helpkpbgrow.

The Green City Vote is part of JetBlue’s One Thing That’s Green initiative which highlights our commitment to environmentalism. Since 2007, the campaign encourages customers and crewmembers to undertake at least one green initiative in their daily lives to help reduce their carbon footprint.

Cindy Wallis-Lage, President of Black & Veatch’s water business, discusses the importance of industry collaboration for more sustainable water systems.

In July 2016, Xylem collaborated with Tetra Tech, the WateReuse Association, and GE to design, build, and operate a pilot purification process for direct potable reuse. The process would treat reclaimed effluent wastewater to comply with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drinking water standards.

Be it a yard, a nearby park or a terrace, outdoor space is a much desired amenity for house hunters everywhere. Combine that with an increased awareness and interest in where our food is coming from, and you’ve got a fertile environment for community gardens.

And while such spots are unquestionably great for growing vegetables, builders and developers are finding that they might also be good for growing sales.

Customer education, infrastructure modernization and the use of data analytics will be key tools to overcoming the water industry’s perennial challenges posed by aging infrastructure, according to Black & Veatch's 2017 Strategic Directions: Water Industry Report. A combination of investment and new business process approaches will also be critical to closing the gap between costs and consumer expectation.

I’ve received many questions over the past few months about Ingersoll Rand’s commitment to reducing energy demand and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Those questions intensified this week with news of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Air pollution remains an unseen global killer – with nearly 6.5 million deaths a year attributed to pollution we breathe every day – that's four times the amount of people killed on the world's roads, according to The Guardian. In fact, in the U.K. alone, high levels of NO2 cause more than 60 premature deaths a day. Now, one company is harnessing its passive advertising to help reduce that number – not only transforming a static image into a NO2 trapping powerhouse, but also raising awareness of an important new technology.