Anand Giridharadas, child of Indian parents who immigrated to the United States, returns to live in India as an adult. He encounters a culture shifting from traditional and collective values to a me-centric individualism. Giridharadas asks if the “American Dream” is better represented in places like the New India, rather than in our own increasingly calcified class system with limited upward mobility.

“What happens when science goes wrong?” asks psychology professor Kevin Dunbar. He studies how scientists approach the unexpected and learn from mistakes. Over the course of a year, Dunbar’s team examined the habits of four molecular biology labs. Watch his talk to discover their findings, including the surprising characteristics of successful labs.

In honor of Earth Day, check out David de Rothschild's incredible story about how he and his team built the Plastiki, a boat constructed from 12,000 plastic bottles. De Rothschild and his crew sailed halfway around the world to bring greater public awareness to the devastating impact of oceanic plastic pollutants and the need to reuse discarded plastics.

Tom Darden is the Executive Director of the Make It Right Foundation, an organization founded by actor Brad Pitt to build 150 green, high design homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Darden said he wants to take what has been a local conversation about green construction to the national level.

Materials matter. Everything we touch, taste, wear, drive, drink, eat — all of it is connected to the use, re-use, and ultimate disposal of materials. The health of the planet and the prosperity of its inhabitants rest largely on how we extract and use materials.

In July 2010 at Harvard Medical School, the first meeting of the Ecomaterials Lab network brought together 40 of these thought leaders and stakeholders for a facilitated dialogue regarding the drivers, constraints, opportunities, and challenges surrounding next-generation sustainable materials (with a particular emphasis on textiles). The gathering unearthed new insights and areas of disagreement, and helped form a network around sustainable ecomaterials.

Alphachimp Studio Inc. was honored to be onsite for graphic facilitation support and graphic capture of the personal insight, passion and urgency expressed by this stellar group of material scientists.

Fast Company has included the results of this event in there list of 8 of the Most Exciting Developments in Material Sustainability!

Download the full report here:

Ecomaterials Lab Report (PDF

Source: PopTech Ecomaterial Labs (http://poptech.org/ecomaterials_lab) by PopTech - As humanity’s footprint has grown, so too has the amount of materials consumed globally, and particularly in the United States. The average American consumes more than 46,000 pounds of materials in a year. It is difficult to fathom the toll: global warming, desertification, fishery depletion, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and increased levels of environmental and human toxicity are all potential consequences of our consumptive habits.
Source: Locally-Produced Cars, Biomimicry, and Mushroom-Based Packaging: 8 of the Most Exciting Developments in Material Sustainability (http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/locally-produced-cars-biomimicry-and-mushroom-based-packaging-8-most-exciting-developments-material-#0) by Ariel Schwartz - Between 2000 and 2050, the world’s population will grow 50%, global economic activity will grow by 500%, and global energy consumption and materials usage will both increase by 300%. Enter PopTech's Ecomaterials Innovation Lab, a gathering of thought leaders and stakeholders convened at Harvard Medical School last summer to look at the next-generation of sustainable materials innovation. In the slides ahead, we look at some of the most exciting innovations from PopTech's Ecomaterials Innovation