Environmental Solutions

Between gift wrap, decorations, lights, food, and Christmas trees, the holidays create a shocking amount of waste. But what actually belongs in the trash, and what doesn’t?

A site-specific installation has opened in Millennium Park as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s “Shift: Architecture in Times of Radical Change.”

As AI data centers spring up across the country, their energy demand and resulting greenhouse gas emissions are raising concerns.

A year ago the city worked out a settlement with EPA and DOJ after allegations of leaving sewer water flooding people’s homes

Upon the open grasslands of what is now Kazakhstan, there once stood a Bronze Age settlement that may have served as a center of exchange and power around 1600 BC.

Scientists are exploring how to manufacture beer brewing waste into useful products.

The Brown School initiative is modeled on a first-of-its-kind program at USC that’s had a big impact.

On the banks of the Mississippi near its confluence with the Missouri River, visitors have a new place to go to experience the sight of migratory birds, including Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans, and Great Blue Herons.

Professor Marcus Foston, of Washington University St. Louis, helped develop a new process using byproducts from soybean oil, paper, and biodiesel production to produce stronger, more flexible plastics. The resulting hardened material is still biodegradable, but has three times the strength and flexibility as basic soy-based plastics.

While consumers can probably go to a local lumberyard to buy lumber from sustainably grown trees cut at nearby sawmills, no one asks for local glass.