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Technology Meets the ‘Loo’: Women-led business utilizes bio-toilets to overcome infrastructure challenges
Namita Banka, a former jewelry designer, took a course in social entreprepreneurship in 2009 and emerged ready to make a difference in her community. A few years later, she incorporated Banka BioLoo to produce environmentally friendly bio-toilets. Here, Sanjay Banka, Namita's husband, talks about the business and the cultural obstacles it's working to overcome.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- public health
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Health innovations need much more than research
The Global Forum for Research and Innovation for Health recognised that health care innovations take more than research, but the challenges of "scaling up" and efficient collaboration were largely missed. We need to focus more on the development process following academic studies.
- Categories
- Education, Environment, Health Care
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Viewpoint: Drinkable Book: The Pages Contain Instructions and Can Be Used as High-Tech Water Filters
Here's a very clever idea: A book that not only contains information about clean drinking water printed on its pages, but the actual pages themselves can be torn off and used as high-tech filters that will remove 99% of bacteria from the filtered water. The idea came out of Dr. Theresa Dankovich's chemistry PhD work at McGill University in Montreal, during which she invented a new bactericidal silver nanoparticle paper and a green method of producing it using cheap and benign processes. She and her team are now trying to make the Drinkable Book a reality to contribute to the effort to bring clean water to the 663 million people who don't have access to it, according to the World Health Organization/ UNICEF Joint Monitoring Project.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Health Care, Impact Assessment
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Is #globaldev Optimism Over Big Data Based More on Hype Than Value?
As the global development community prepares to finalize a new set of goals and targets for the next 15 years, big data has become a key part of discussions. The post-2015 agenda has 17 sustainable development goals and 169 associated targets, and big data could be essential to monitoring and measuring progress.
- Categories
- Environment
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To save forests, a tea factory brews up a new way to dry tea
The first thing that strikes you as you enter the Makomboki Tea Factory is the air. It's clear, absent of the dark smoke that billows from the boilers of Kenya's other tea factories.Of the 66 tea factories under the management of the Kenya Tea Development Authority, Makomboki is the only one that doesn't use firewood in the processing of its tea.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Tags
- forests
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Intellecap Impact Investment Network and Rianta Capital invest Rs 10 million in Sampurn(e)arth Environmental Solutions
Intellecap Impact Investment Network has invested Rs 10 million in Mumbai-based waste management company Sampurn(e)arth in syndication with Zurich-based family office Rianta Capital and Primarc Group Director Siddharth Pansari of ah! Ventures.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- impact investing
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Norwegian fund giant to sell its stakes in companies over environmental concerns
Norway's $1.15 trillion Cdn sovereign-wealth oil fund announced this week that it will sell its stakes in four Asian companies over environmental concerns, underlining how willing it is to take an activist approach to companies that fail to meet its ethical standards.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Tags
- impact investing
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The New Math of Sustainable Investing
On May 17, 1984, Warren Buffett gave away the secret that has made his face the first result when you Google “the greatest investor of all time.” He opened a speech with the stories of ten investors, including himself, whose portfolios consistently outperformed the S&P 500. It’s no coincidence, Buffet insisted1, that their careers shared a common thread: tutelage under Benjamin Graham, who, as it happens, is the second person who comes up in the Google search.
- Categories
- Environment
- Tags
- impact investing