Short Look at the Long View

Concrete has been used in construction for thousands of years, it's everywhere. But its production is a major contributor to global carbon emissions. A project spun out of VTT Finland is looking to make concrete manufacture carbon negative.

Researchers in China have demonstrated a new form of plastic that degrades in just a week when exposed to sunlight and oxygen, which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of at the end of their lives.

The rise of tall timber towers worldwide continues with Urban Agency's Dock Mill proposal for Dublin, Ireland. Assuming it goes ahead as planned, the building will be built on top of an existing mill on the city's waterfront.

Back In August we saw the world's very first "fossil-free" steel delivery makes its way to Volvo in Sweden, which the automaker has now fashioned into a mining lorry as a beacon of greener vehicle construction.

A new white paint keeps surfaces up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their surroundings—almost life AC or a refrigerator, but without using any energy.

Scientists investigating more eco-friendly forms of plastic production have made an exciting breakthrough, with the discovery of a bacterial system that generates one of the material's key building blocks through its natural metabolic process.

A new study mapping the movement of plastic waste has projected that 1.3 billion tonnes of it will be dumped on land and in the oceans by 2040, unless some significant steps are taken to address the trend.

Classic Recreations is again tuning its vintage expertise to an icon of American motoring and this time with a decidedly high-performance twist, with a new line of Shelby GT500CR models featuring carbon fiber bodies for the first time.

Soft robots and prosthetics could benefit from a new material that's conductive, lightweight, and heat-tolerant. Learn more in the video.

Mother of pearl is the coating found on the outside of pearls, and the inside of certain mollusc’s shells. It's one of nature's hardest, stiffest, most stable materials – and scientists have now figured out how to make an artificial version of it, which can be "tuned" for different applications.

A new method quickly converts carbon dioxide into solid carbon, which can be stored indefinitely or turned into useful materials. The technology works by bubbling CO2 up through a tube of liquid metal, and could be used at the source of emissions.

Scientists have turned plastic into diamonds. Using high-powered lasers, the team zapped samples of common PET plastic, which produces intense heat and pressure to form tiny diamonds that may naturally rain down on planets like Uranus and Neptune.

The researchers took hard-to-recycle plastic and turned it into a material that can soak up excess carbon dioxide from the ...

Driven by the huge burden they place on the environment, scientists are continually looking for new ways to manufacture plastic materials that make them easier to recycle, and MIT researchers are now claiming a significant breakthrough in this area.

A versatile new kind of polymer can be used on its own like regular rubber, or mixed with filler materials including used PVC and carbon fiber to create brand new composites, which can in turn be recycled in an almost endless loop.

​Wood is an established and versatile construction material, used to build everything from high-rises and airports to apartment buildings. It also, however, is not immune to catching fire. A new coating could help keep that from happening, and it's actually made from wood.