Smart idea: Dump your waste, get paid

Tulsa Public Schools drew on expertise across many sectors and extensive neighborhood input to address the issue of thousands of empty seats in local schools. Through a community-focused process, they were able to mindfully close under-utilized schools and better maximize the community's resources for students.

In order to encourage people to properly dispose of their waste, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has installed smart vending machines for recyclable waste at Connaught Place and India Gate. In return for making the sustainable waste choice, users receive monetary rewards via e-wallet.

The Send Me SFMOMA program allows people to text a number with a request based on a variable such as a object, mood, or color and receive back an image of an appropriate work in the SFMOMA collection. Through this service, which SFMOMA has made open source for other museums to use, the museum is able to connect with the public and ‘display’ a much higher percentage of its holdings.

Readers on the BBC website can now find out more about select stories through “Appy Helper,” a module that provides background about an ongoing, complex story. The module works through both a chat-style interface that readers navigate via prompts or a more linear timeline display.

What do you get when you combine the efforts of an engineering company with an energy company? In the Netherlands, you get a new type of environmentally sustainable roads. PlasticRoads, a piloted initiative in the city of Zwolle, uses discarded plastic to build bike paths that help cut down on plastic waste.

Across the country, projects that mine landfills for reusable metals and soils are underway. Can such mining prove profitable enough to spur similar efforts on a grand scale? So far, some projects have seen profits while others have not. But as society increasingly values pollution and greenhouse gas reduction, incentives for refuse mining can only grow.

Unprecedented challenges are frequently popping up with the onset of climate change, so governments too have to adjust their processes and strategies. Some new procurement tools used by several different cities include requests for ideas, competitions, and performance contracts. This article looks at two places using these new and publicly accessible procurement tools—Prince Georges County, MD, and Norfolk, VA—to see how it impacts their success.

In Eskilstuna, Sweden, there is a different kind of shopping mall – one that sells used and upcycled goods. In an effort to combat consumerism and bolster sustainability, the mall, called ReTuna, is nicely curated and organized, making second-hand shopping mainstream. The mall sees 700 people each day, on average, and has sold nearly $3.5 million worth of items.

The online education platform Flowdiary is bridging a language gap in the industry by offering training courses in Hausa, so young people in Hausa-speaking communities across Africa can learn the necessary skills for a career in technology.

Poco a popo, el Fondo de Bienes Decomisados por tráfico ilícito de drogas, que el Plan Nacional sobre Drogas se creó en 2003, se han desviado los bienes confiscados a entidades con fines sociales. La asociación por la Salud Mental-Marina Alta es una de las organizaciones que se ha beneficiado hasta ahora.