This week the World Economic Forum is holding its Industry Strategy Meeting 2021.Leaders met to identify opportunities where sectors can collaborate on how industries can drive growth and put stakeholder capitalism into practice.Here are some of the takeaways from the four plenaries. More than 400 participants from the World Economic Forum's communities of Industry Strategy Officers, as well as senior deputies to the CEO Industry Action Groups, c...

Companies with better ESG ratings were in a better position than others in 2020.Only by measuring on common standards, will we be able to deliver a meaningful, quantifiable impact.It will take time for government agencies to fully adopt a unified system and may be difficult, and costly for some companies. 2021 doesn't yet feel that much different from 2020. Infection rates are spiking, healthcare systems are buckling, and people are suffering. Th...

It's hard to imagine navigating modern life without a mobile phone in hand. Computers, tablets and smartphones have transformed how we communicate, work, learn, share news and entertain ourselves. They became even more essential when the COVID-19 pandemic moved classes, meetings and social connections online. But few people realize that our reliance on electronics comes with steep environmental costs, from mining minerals to disposing of used dev...

We've probably all been there. We buy some new smart gadget and when we plug it in for the first time it requires an update to work. So we end up spending hours downloading and updating before we can even play with our new toy. But what happens when we can't update our gadgets any further? Vintage technology Every year vendors such as Apple and Google add to their list of vintage devices that no longer get operating system or security updates. Fo...

Mass unemployment will occur because of robotics and AI.Hospitality, management and creativity cannot be substituted by AI.We need to acquire and refine more sophisticated abilities in these areas. The COVID-19 crisis is going to accelerate a number of changes and transformations in human society. Notably, the pandemic is expected to significantly accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  This is because the coronavirus crisis forced peo...

Affluence is the biggest threat to our world, according to a new scientific report.True sustainability will only be achieved through drastic lifestyle changes, it argues.The World Economic Forum has called for a great reset of capitalism in the wake of the pandemic. A detailed analysis of environmental research has revealed the greatest threat to the world: affluence. That's one of the main conclusions of a team of scientists from Australia, Swit...

China's national emissions trading scheme (ETS) is expected to eclipse that of the European Union to become the world's largest carbon trading scheme.The scheme is designed to include all major industrial sectors, from construction to power generation.While first mentioned in 2015 ahead of the Paris climate agreement, technical problems have plagued the scheme, delaying it for a further 5 years. China is targeting the launch of a nationwide emiss...

More than 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic has been produced in the last six decades.However, recycling plastic can be difficult as the most common process involves melting and reworking the material.A new process developed by the University of California can turn polyethylene into useful smaller molecules. If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of pla...

Microsoft has concluded its 'Project Natick' experiment off the coast of Scotland's Orkney Islands.The shipping container sized underwater data center proved to be eight times more reliable than its dry-land counterparts.Its success could shape the future of scaling up data centers, while keeping energy and operation costs low. Microsoft has concluded a years-long experiment involving use of a shipping container-sized underwater data center, plac...

Our current economic system has failed to value nature.We need a new economic model: a circular bioeconomy.As part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative, HRH The Prince of Wales establishes Circular Bioeconomy Alliance to accelerate transformation to climate- and nature-positive economy. There is no future for business as usual. Our current economic system, which arguably has succeeded in creating unprecedented economic output, wealth and human w...