Clean Technology

Japanese biotech startup Spiber has raised 5 billion yen ($44.1 million) to build a facility in Thailand for mass-producing synthetic spider silk protein.

Tourists have big shoes. Climate scientists and other experts suggest that the size of the footprint — carbon and otherwise — left by global travelers is about four times larger than previously thought. Sustainable tourism is a hot topic, and in light of Japan’s goals to grow the number of inbound tourists to 40 million by 2020 and all the way up to 60 million a decade later, it’s one that deserves attention. Fortunately, there are ways to ease the environmental impact of the tourism boom, and they’re not limited to planting trees to offset carbon emissions (though that’s a good place to start).

Houseflies, the Soviet space program and manned missions to Mars — these aren’t plot devices for a Cold War space thriller, but key terms to understand the history behind Fukuoka-based startup Musca Inc.’s project to provide a solution to some of the world’s most pressing agricultural problems: food and animal waste and dwindling supplies of livestock feed.

It is 5 p.m. on a weekday in Huizhou, a lake-studded city in China's Guangdong Province, and workers are streaming out of a BYD manufacturing plant looking weary after a day's work. Many head straight for the crowded street food stalls lined up in front of the factory for after-work noodles and drinks.

For Yumi Someya, Tokyo is an untapped oil field, full of potential to generate electricity.The precious fuel, however, doesn’t exist underground. It’s a resource sitting in the kitchens of millions of Japanese homes — cooking oil.