The 2012 Arch Competition is underway- designs for a new cultural center will be accepted from March 1st - August 31st. Check MNPG Arch for further details.

Image source Puma has published a paper detailing its impact on the environment, becoming the first major corporation in the world to do so. The combined cost of the company’s carbon emissions and water used in 2010 was €94.4 million / £82.9 million. The figure included both Puma itself and its suppliers. The sports and leisure group said that they expected the report to help it build “a more resilient and sustainable business model” and to prepare for environmental taxes that could potentially occur in the future. Puma’s chief executive Jochen Zitz said at the launch of the environmental profit and loss accounts: “Sustainability is essential to the health and future of our business. The business implication of failing to address nature in decision making is clear - since ecosystem services are vital to the performance of most companies, integrating the true cost for these services in the future could have significant impacts on corporate bottom lines.” (Source)

Last year’s contest was responsible for helping create almost 1,400 businesses which accounted for 66,503 total orders and over $3.5 million in revenue. The winner of last year’s contest was San Francisco’s DODOcase - a company that makes stylish iPad cases using traditional book-binding techniques.

.:techvibes.com->

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 As Ross Perlin writes in this sharp new study, today’s teens and twenty-somethings have been taught that they must first work for free if they ever hope to get paid—and they are getting a raw deal. In what he bills as “the first book-length analysis of internships,” Perlin puts the annual value of intern labor at a conservative estimate of almost $2 billion, performed free of charge, often for companies that could probably afford a minimum-wage employee or two. The economic and legal problems with this arrangement are glaring. Internships exclude those whose families cannot afford to support them; they displace paid workers; they allow companies to dodge liability and colleges to cash in on “internship for credit” tuition dollars. Perlin is at his best delineating the systemic flaws of an “intern nation.” It is satisfying—I say this without rage or resentment, I think—to see obvious truths forcefully articulated and persistent myths dispelled.

.:tnr.com->