Led by McKinsey’s Ben Sheppard, Design for Good is a new non-profit alliance of design leaders and their teams from eight of the world’s biggest companies plus the RCA, launched to develop open-source products and services that address some of society’s biggest challenges. The idea is to focus on one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals each year. General Mills, Logitech, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nedbank, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Philips, and the Royal College of Art have each committed funding and resource. Solutions will be worked on for six months, at which point they are submitted and assessed against the UN targets and indicators. More here

For this year’s Earth Day, Google created Timelapse sequences using some of the 24 million images taken via Google Earth over the past 37 years. The sequences highlight changes to the planet in that time and are hosted on a dedicated Timelapse website which links to further resources about key issues such as deforestation and warming oceans. Visit the site here

Earth Day was also the prompt for Twitter to announce that it will ban advertisements that deny the scientific consensus on climate crisis. “We recognize that misleading information about climate change can undermine efforts to protect the planet,” the company said. “We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis.” More here

Finally on Earth Day, Dezeen has included both URGE’s Sophie Thomas and Michael Pawlyn in its list of ‘Fifty architects and designers you need to know on Earth Day’. Full list here

TOPIA – the website that describes itself as “a kaleidoscopic look at culture, positive impact, and outrageously good stories” – has an intriguing and wide-ranging piece from Green Swans author John Elkington contrasting the strategies of Russia and Costa Rica as battle between the “forces of degeneration and regeneration”. Read it here

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