Core77

The New York Times Magazine has published its 7th annual Year in Ideas issue, full of "many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months." We were thoroughly enlightened to learn about UPS' loop-de-loop routes, which are specially mapped out to avoid left-hand turns, resulting in a considerable decrease in emissions.

Last year, according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.

image: Tamara Shopsin @ NYT

thanks bryman!