Tag Archives: nutrition

Innovation and Social Sustainability

We recently curated and added to the EarthSayers.tv collection two video interviews of women seeking out innovation in nutrition and community development the more social or people aspect of sustainability.

Isabel Hoffman

Isabel Hoffman

TellSpec -What’s in Your Food? (Video here)

Isabel Hoffmann CEO of TellSpec updates with her CTO Stephen Watson, their progress over the last  three months on the TellSpec handheld device. The device tellspecbeams a low-powered laser at the food you wish to analyze, measures the reflected light with a spectrometer, and sends the data via your smart phone, computer, or tablet to TellSpec’s servers in the cloud.  Know more about what you eat as the information captured is then displayed on your computer, tablet or smart phone so you can intelligently decide if you want to buy or eat the food. While we tend to see hardware solutions as being in the the  realm of tech innovation, and it is, sustainability suggests we emphasize the social path and its use for maintaining the health of our citizens and food safety.  Sustainability > People > Health > Nutrition and Wellness.

Karen Litfin

Karen Litfin

Ecovillages – Integrating people, planet, and prosperity at the community level (video here)

Karen Litfin is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She specializes in global environmental politics, with core interests in green theory, the science/policy interface, and “person/planet politics.” In this interview she talks about her book, Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community having traveled to ecovillages on five continents.

Sustainability > People > Cities and Communities> Community Development >EcoVillages

Sustainability Alerts and the Financial Times

FT Prepare for Natural DisasterI am signed up to receive news alerts on the term, sustainability, from the Financial Times.  This last week I received seven alerts, several in the same day. What caught my attention was not so much the quantity, it was not that unusual actually, but the range of subjects in such a short period as well as the emotional content of the headlines. Warnings, critical roles, calls to prepare, and, to get things started, the most sweeping topic, the price (as in costly) of civilization.

October 14 The Price of Civilization (Jeffrey Sachs)
October 14 Prepare for More Natural Disasters (e.g. Volcanoes)
October 14 Adjusting UK Energy and climate change Policy
October 13, Waster: Dislike of leftovers makes households worst offenders
October 13, Climate change: Countries plan for unpredictable weather (agriculture and food production)
October 13, Nutrition: Ways to enhance its quality (technology improving nutritional value)
October 12, Small farmers have a critical role

You can search Google on the headlines to access the articles.