Waxworm By Sam Droege - https://www.flickr.com/photos/54563451@N08/19051745004/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41690212

In the quest to solve the plastic pollution crisis, organizations of all types are working on solutions. The Good Times has highlighted a few on these pages in the past, such as the Ocean Cleanup removing plastics from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative to remove microplastics from water, bacteria that have […]

Areca palm leaf

In a natural cycle, leaves fall from Areca palm trees in the city of Hyderabad, India, to make room for new ones. For centuries, people have used these leaves as plates. Bollant Industries has taken this a step further, developing an ingenious system that takes these leaves and recycled paper and presses them into eco-friendly […]

Recycling carbon: it just makes sense This woman’s idea is all about turning garbage into gold. She’s Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, and her company has invented a technology that transforms pollution, including carbon emissions, into sustainable fuels, fabrics, packaging, and other products we use daily. She is transforming waste carbon into valuable and sustainable […]

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 […]

The news is full of stories about how plastics are further encroaching into even the most remote regions of the Earth, the latest example being the discovery of microplastics in fresh Antarctic snow, probably the result of traveling through the atmosphere. While the news is indeed dire and the need to curb the production and […]

Gjenge Makers

Nzambi Matee founded Gjenge Makers in Nairobi, Kenya in 2018, initially to sort and sell plastic waste to other recycling companies. Matee quickly realized that, because her enterprise was collecting waste faster than the recycling companies could use it, she needed to change business models, and fast. She pivoted directly to creating value-added products using […]

Guatemala is using plastic to trap plastic in its rivers. How? With plastic “biofences”. This video, produced by the World Economic Forum, circulated rapidly worldwide earlier this year. It shows the plastic-catching barriers stopping floating trash. This simple structure keeps 60% of the plastic from reaching the seas that lead to the ocean. Guatemala is […]

What on earth does “Upcycling the Oceans” mean? Upcycling the Oceans is “an unprecedented global adventure to help clean the oceans of debris through fishermen. It’s a unique, complex and groundbreaking project whose ultimate goal is to transform the plastic debris found in the Mediterranean into thread to make fabric.” With the help of the fishermen, the project recovers […]

Every AA battery contains enough zinc to save the lives of six children. A company called Teck launched the Zinc and Health program in 2014 to fight zinc deficiency. The lack of zinc can cause serious problems, such as growth retardation, loss of appetite, impaired immune function and slow wound healing. In severe cases, it can cause hair loss, […]