Critical Mass: Read All Our Stories Here
Discover changemakers, innovators and everyday heroes leading the way towards a
sustainable future. And gain inspiration for your own climate action journey.
Be the Change
Citizen champions of sustainability
Mumbai
What Building a Circular Material Taught Us About Waste, Trust and Design
It began with a question. As architects, we’re trained to notice what’s built, not what’s discarded. We admire the finished building, the polished stone floor and the carefully crafted detail. We rarely pay attention to the thin layer of dust left behind after the cutting and polishing are done. Yet wherever we went – construction […]
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New Delhi
Five Uncomfortable Truths about Making Climate Evidence Count
In November 2022, at the American University in Cairo’s pavilion at COP27, a film I co-directed had its premiere. Emissions Market India: Surat Leading the Way told the story of the world’s first emissions trading scheme for particulate matter in seven minutes, through the lens of the researchers and regulators who built it. The story […]
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Bengaluru
What Is The Sustainability Mafia? Inside India’s Founder-Led Climate Startup Network
India’s climate startup ecosystem has no shortage of incubators, investors and accelerators. So why did a group of founders decide to create yet another network? The answer, says The Sustainability Mafia co-founder Ganesh Shankar, was that founders were still building largely in isolation. Today, the Bengaluru-based network brings together founders working across sectors including clean […]
View detailsSolution Deep-Dives
In-depth explorations of climate solutions
Bengaluru
Can Farm Waste Reinvent the Circuit Board?
Every smartphone, washing machine, inverter, LED bulb and industrial controller hides a component few consumers ever notice. The printed circuit board, or PCB, is the platform that holds electronic components together and allows them to communicate. Almost every electronic device depends on one. Yet the material at the heart of most PCBs has changed remarkably […]
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Bengaluru
Off the Charts: What Climate Communicators Can Learn from Data Visualisers
The climate movement has never had more data. Satellites map shrinking glaciers in real time. Sensors record rising temperatures by the hour. Researchers can estimate everything from groundwater depletion to carbon emissions with remarkable precision. Yet much of climate communication still struggles with a fundamental problem: people don’t experience gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. They experience […]
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Hyderabad
The Rs 1.75 Lakh Crore Question: Can Andhra Pradesh’s Natural Farming Model Transform Indian Agriculture?
The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme, which involves over a million farmers practising forms of natural farming, recently won the 2026 Food Planet Prize. Awarded by the Curt Bergfors Foundation, this is the world’s largest environmental award for changing global food systems. As governments across India invest in programmes to reduce farmers’ […]
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Stories from the frontlines of the planet
What India Can Learn from Brazil’s Long Ethanol Journey
At Posto Dallas, a fuel station in northern Brazil’s Belém city, a car pulls in. The driver checks the price board, then picks a fuel. The 27-year-old station attendant, John, sees this happen all day. “Mostly flex-fuel vehicles come here,” he said. “People see the price and ask us to fill the fuel in their […]
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Scientists Test Turning Aquatic Weeds into Liquid Fertilisers
The uncontrolled growth of aquatic plants has become a major environmental challenge in Dal lake, an important freshwater lake in the Kashmir Himalaya. A new study has tested a way to convert these excess plants into fermented liquid fertilisers, offering a potential solution to manage weed overgrowth while producing a useful agricultural input. Dal, a culturally and […]
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Dholavira’s Water Wisdom: What a 4,500-Year-Old City Teaches Modern India about Managing Scarcity
Standing atop the massive citadel of Dholavira, a 4500-year-old city, in the arid expanse of Gujarat’s Rann of Kachchh, it is difficult not to be struck by a paradox. This was a city built in one of the most water-scarce landscapes of the Indian subcontinent, yet it flourished for nearly a millennium. Looking down from […]
View detailsFuture Makers
Innovators in action
Dehradun
Meet the Chandrayaan-2 Scientist Solving the Water Crisis on Earth
In India’s vast but fragmented agricultural landscape, where livelihoods tilt with the monsoon winds, water is both lifeline and gamble. Riddhish Soni set out to change this through Aumsat Technologies, with tools forged for space exploration turned towards the Earth. Using radar, remote sensing and technologies that can detect resources under the surface of heavenly […]
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Net Positive
Meet the startups making climate action profitable
Explainers
Breaking down complex climate topics simply
Bengaluru
The Hidden Plastic in Vegan Fashion
“Vegan leather.” Few labels carry as much moral weight as the word “vegan”. For many shoppers, it has become shorthand not only for compassion towards animals, but also for environmental responsibility. If a handbag isn’t made from animal hide, surely it must be better for the planet. That assumption has helped turn vegan fashion into […]
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The Floating Answer to the Green Steel Challenge
Rushi Kanakiya recycles ships from a 50-metre beachside plot overlooking the sea in Alang, India. Since 1985 his family enterprise, Triveni Shipbreakers, has been receiving and dismantling old vessels here, in the world’s largest ship-breaking yard. Triveni is capable of processing some 2,000 metric tonnes of steel every month. There is a mind-boggling amount of […]
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Hyderabad
The Rs 1.75 Lakh Crore Question: Can Andhra Pradesh’s Natural Farming Model Transform Indian Agriculture?
The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme, which involves over a million farmers practising forms of natural farming, recently won the 2026 Food Planet Prize. Awarded by the Curt Bergfors Foundation, this is the world’s largest environmental award for changing global food systems. As governments across India invest in programmes to reduce farmers’ […]
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