A bold vision is becoming reality, combining ocean barriers and river Interceptors to tackle plastic pollution at its source and in the sea. When we last looked at The Ocean Cleanup in October 2022, Boyan Slat’s ambitious mission was still very much a work in progress. Today, the picture is considerably more encouraging. The nonprofit […]
Turning farm leftovers into leather alternatives, yarn, and plates — one leaf at a time Imagine the crown of a pineapple: prickly, green, and usually tossed aside after the fruit is eaten. What if those leaves could be a seed for something beautiful and sustainable: textiles, tableware, even durable “leather” alternatives? That’s exactly the story […]
No less than a “revolutionary solution to capture and convert industrial waste heat into sustainable electricity”: that’s what Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) has developed. For its efforts, the company has received the prestigious Earthshot Prize 2024, which recognizes innovators addressing the world’s most pressing challenges in five areas: protecting and restoring nature; cleaning our air; […]
Every year, an estimated $80 billion of valuable metals are discarded in consumer and industrial waste streams (known as the urban mine). This is all the more regrettable since humanity’s appetite for the electronics that use these metals is ever-growing, leading to increased needs to mine more metals. But traditional mining takes a real toll […]
An Indian engineer has invented a very quick waste segregator. The TrashBot sorts garbage into metals, plastic, and food waste. It can separate up to 200 tonnes of waste in one operating session, running for 24 hours non-stop, at a cost that is lower than dumping it in landfills. The TrashBot is described by its […]
Australian businesswoman and marathoner Mina Guli is on another mission. The Good Times already featured her incredible accomplishments in 2016 as the Wonder Woman for Water. She is addressing the world’s water crisis through her non-profit, Thirst Foundation, and to bring attention to this issue, on LinkedIn she attests to having “run 100s of marathons […]
Companies have produced more than 7 billion tons of plastic since production first started to ramp up in the 1950s. Unfortunately, all manner of plastics, such as helmets, single-use bottles, bottle caps, windsurf boards and even Christmas trees, have been finding their way into waterways and, from there, into the ocean, since the beginning. Up […]
Baptiste Dubanchet is a Frenchman who is determined to put an end to food waste. He rode his bike 3,000 km (about 1,865 miles) from Paris to Warsaw in 2014 without buying any food, eating only what he was given along the way. He stopped at supermakets, bakeries and restaurants for leftovers destined to be […]
Today is World Cleanup Day. Volunteers in 150 countries will pick up trash from beaches, rivers, forests and streets. Millions of people will “achieve incredible things by joining together”, starting in New Zealand and ending 36 hours later in Hawaii. According to the World Cleanup Day website, the event’s “beauty lies in cooperation and collaboration: […]
