Author of more than 20 research papers in the environmental area, coordinator of public plans for recycling and waste collection in Brazil and emissary of the United Nations in sustainability projects in Asia, Africa and Europe, Brazilian Sabetai Calderoni says there is still much to do in the economic reuse of waste. But he is optimistic. “We are going through a quiet revolution”, he believes.
Humanity’s technological and industrial development has brought an increasing accumulation of waste. Now, companies, governments and citizens look for ways to break that paradigm and reuse those materials, generating wealth from what was once viewed only as garbage.
How can a corporation take advantage of innovative ideas that appear outside its domains? Through the open innovation, large and small companies share knowledge and develop joint technologic solutions to accelerate their own evolution.
In a world that is apparently condemned to traffic jams, mobility needs to work in our favour.
The status of Robert Cervero as a thinker of issues regarding mobility is rivaled by few other researchers in the world. Director of the Transport Center at the University of California, Cervero has already participated in urbanization and traffic projects and related issues in all four corners of the world (including Brazil, in the state of Ceará) and is the author of six books on the subject. He spoke to us about who is winning and who is losing the mobility battle.
In May, 1896, New-Yorker Henry Wells entered the history books by causing the first traffic accident of the automobile era. Driving his ‘horseless carriage’, he hit a cyclist. Skipping forward 114 years, in August, 2010 we witnessed the largest traffic jam of all time – in Henei province in China, a traffic congestion that extended for more than 100 km lasted 11 days, caused by excessive heavy goods vehicle traffic and by roadworks on the highway. Can we really call this ‘evolution’?
“The automobile users do not realize the cost that they impose on the rest of society because of their decision to enter the traffic flow”, summarizes Luiz Carlos Ramos Paim, mechanical engineer and consultant specialized in transport from the Legislative Chamber of Brasilia. Fewer cars on the streets, the change in emphasis from individual transport to collective transport and solutions that benefit non-motorized movement are ideas that will impact on the collective – from the quality of life of motorists and pedestrians to the air that we breathe in large cities.
Any big city, rush hour. Look around. You are stationary. It doesn’t matter where: inside your car, standing on a bus, waiting for the metro or a train at the platform. Everything around you seems to be standing still. Traffic jams, delays, too many vehicles and too many people. Everything conspires so that there is no movement around you.
