Over the past few years it has felt a lot like the traditional taxi industry is being forced out into the wilderness. The industry might not yet be dying, but the irresistible modernising force of technology is certainly changing the game....

MUJI is one of the most interesting companies in the world. Formed in Japan in the 1980s, Muji has a philosophy based on design minimalism, and emphasis on recycling and avoidance of waste, and a policy of not imposing a logo or brand on their products.

2017 was the very first year since the advent of industrialisation that the UK generated more than half of its total energy from low carbon sources. The big winner was wind power which supplied twice as much power as coal, and the big loser was coal which plummeted to new lows. In fact, the UK had its first totally coal free day since 1882, the year the first residential coal power plant was switched on....

It is no secret that the global meat industry is unimaginably wasteful. The cost to the planet of our  escalating meat production is extreme, and the price animals themselves pay throughout their short lives and death is a cruel one....

The European Union and a worldwide collection of financial and insurance giants have decided to give the planet an early Christmas present by upping their investments in the fight against destructive climate change....

Olive oil is a staple part of the diet for millions of people across the world. The olive tree is native to the Mediterranean basin and there is evidence that people have been cultivating and collecting the fruit since at least 8000 BC. After 10,000 years countries such as Spain, Italy, Morocco and Greece are still the home of olive oil production which has become a global industry....

Many cities around the world are seeing their populations swell as more and more people become urbanised and move to the most built up areas. In response to the inevitable housing difficulties this creates, cities are building vertically instead of horizontally in an attempt to maximise the available space; Manchester is no exception to this trend.

The Guardian Cities column recently reported on a fascinating aspect of Japan’s built environment – the country’s preoccupation with prefabricated houses. Indeed, this feature of the Japanese housing market is so entrenched that it is not uncommon for homes in the country to hold no value after about 30 years due to a model where houses older than that are simply knocked down and replaced....

The World Bank recently published its Global Infrastructure Outlook, which compares seven sectors across 50 countries, and the results are extremely interesting. The aim is to use the data to forecast what infrastructure investment will be needed around the world by 2040, as well as putting a number on the cap between what is currently being spent and what will have to be spent by that time....

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is by far the largest in the world. Valued at US$1tr, any move it makes tend to have a significant impact on whatever industry is in its path. This week, Norway has been advised by its central bank that it should consider divesting from oil and gas....

An investment firm headed up by Bill Gates, the former head of Microsoft and a multi-billionaire, has invested US$80m into a proposed ‘smart city’ in Arizona, USA. The community, to be known as Belmont, “will create a forward-thinking community...

The 15th UN climate conference met in Copenhagen in 2009 and started to get serious about helping the developing world deal with climate change. The agreement made at the conference stated that developing countries would spend US$100bn a year by 2020 tackling climate change around the world....

Iraq is not a country which often gets mentioned in architecture dispatches for obvious reasons. The US-led invasion in 2003 began a decade and a half of devastation in the country which only seems to be coming to some sort of conclusion now....

There are more than one billion people across the world who still do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The total number of people has reportedly dropped by a third since the turn of the millennium, but there are still many who are missing out on all the benefits of electrification....

The idea of a Hyperloop system is quite captivating: super-fast transport which is based on vacuum tubes and little capsules which can theoretically contain people or cargo. Unlike most new transport innovations, Hyperloop is a completely new idea rather than an improvement on an existing system, and perception of it being clean and out of the way has got people very excited....

As we all know by now, the island of Puerto Rico has been devastated by Hurricane Maria and suffered extensive damage. The majority of the Puerto Ricans are without electricity, not to mention food and water. Schools are closed, highways are broken, and the ports are mostly closed....

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) provides yearly updates as to the state of our energy markets which show our progress in decarbonising our power supply. Removing fossil fuels from our lives as soon as possible is, of course, a vital goal, and a good report from the IEA can go a long way to dispel the general doom and gloom which often surrounds climate change news....

In recent years it is fair to say that the UK’s progress in promoting the construction of environmentally sustainable homes has ground to a halt. The success of initiatives such as the Code for Sustainable Homes was reversed by a Conservative government more concerned with the profits of housebuilders than with the long term effects of energy inefficient homes....

The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park is a 106 acre reservoir which holds one billion gallons of heavily contaminated water. The reservoir encompasses an eighth of the whole area of what is probably the most famous park in the world, but it is currently pretty much unusable. It sits mostly stagnant and is fenced off as a health risk to millions of people and animals....

The temptation to throw old clothing out is strong. It can be a hassle to recycle them and it is understandable why many to not even bother to try and simply throw them out instead. Unfortunately, this is a big problem....