If you’ve gone for takeout recently and received your food in cardboard-like takeout boxes, then you may have met “bagasse” in real life. Many eco-friendly restaurants and companies are prioritizing sustainability within their single-use containers, choosing packaging that is made from environmentally-friendly materials. While bamboo is well-known for eco-friendly packages, bagasse is a lesser-known material.

No matter the size of your holiday gatherings this year, you’ll probably be going through a lot of paper products and plastic. As presents and letters make their way to family and friends via mail and package delivery, it’s time to make a plan on how to keep your holidays sustainable and recycle packaging waste the right way.

If you’re mailing out Christmas cards or wrapping up presents to ship across the country, consider the materials used to wrap your gifts, construct your Christmas cards, and keep your holiday gifts safe on their journey to your loved ones.

One of the most revolutionary changes to happen to the sustainability of manufacturing, 3D printing technology, is taking the world by storm. In recent years, 3D printing has been developed for constructing homes that can take as little as two days to complete and at half the price of traditional construction costs.

Sustainability is about to skyrocket — Chevron and Gevo, a renewable chemicals company, are partnering to create a sustainable aviation fuel. 

A not-so-pretty statistic from the beauty industry is the thousands of tons of plastic waste produced and discarded by production every year. By design, beauty packaging is made to be striking on shelves while still being as temporary as the products inside. But all of that plastic waste has to go somewhere, and whether it ends up in a landfill or the ocean, it will remain there exponentially longer than its use cycle.

Ordering takeout or picking up dinner curbside has been a staple of the pandemic thus far but comes with a flood of harmful plastic and styrofoam packaging. But a new startup is trying to reduce damage to the environment by highlighting takeout options that use Earth-friendly packaging.

At-home meal prep services effectively did away with night after night of plastic utensils, straws, lids, and bags from delivery and takeout, but now meal prep services like Blue Apron are preparing to get even more sustainable. 

The supply chain is becoming more sustainable, one innovative step at a time. Mercedes-Benz already announced plans to release ten new EV models by next year, in line with many other auto manufacturers committing to greener vehicles.

As cryptocurrencies grow more mainstream, few financial analysts can deny their real-world benefits for businesses and consumers alike. Contrary to their popularity and value, cryptocurrencies do not offer a perfect solution — many of them currently require dangerous amounts of energy to collect and store. Before energy expenditure gets out of control, we must look towards a sustainability plan.

Imagine a shopping platform that directs consumers to products that are actually sustainable as they shop — Home Goods did just that with their new website called Shades of Green. 

According to Business Wire, Shades of Green uses a proprietary five-point evaluation system to screen products, only showcasing products that meet a minimum sustainability standard on their site. Each product is subject to evaluation based on sourcing, manufacturing, shipping, use and performance, and lifecycle.