There is good news surrounding the COVID-19 crisis. It has brought out the best in societies: solidarity among neighbors, colleagues and health professionals, and emergency relief and treatments. And its lessons are clear, despite taking hundreds of thousands of lives and creating the worst economic recession since the 1930s, resulting in lost employment, income, health, […]
Portland, Oregon, on the West Coast of the United States, is powering its electricity grid using … drinking water. Yes, you read that right. The city’s main energy company, Portland General Electric, is partnering with Lucid Energy to generate electricity from the water flowing under its streets and through its pipes. How so? By integrating […]
Some 4.5 billion people worldwide live with unsafely managed sanitation, according to the World Health Organization. And in countries with water stresses, flushing toilets only exacerbates the problem, which means this issue affects nearly the entire planet. Enter the EcoLoo EcoLoo with its waterless and odorless sustainable toilet was founded by Zuraina Zaharin, a Malaysian […]
“What we have done is totally wrong. We think we can use concrete to channelize a river. We think we can use dykes to protect the city from being flooded.” According to Professor Kongjian Yu, a Chinese ecological urbanist, draining all the water away from cities is a bad idea and not effective in containing […]
There’s much good news to be happy about, even related to the coronavirus. Measures to curb the coronavirus are having a positive effect on our planet. Shut factories and clear streets have dramatically reduced nitrogen dioxide emissions. Satellite pictures by NASA and the European Space Agency show that these emissions from vehicles, power plants and […]
Water IS everything and water is IN everything. Surge UAE is making sure we all keep the importance of water in mind. Ahead of World Water Day 2019 on 22 March, the non-profit organization announced its new name: Water Alliance. Despite the rebranding, the goal remains the same: to raise awareness of the global water crisis. […]
By Danielle Carpenter – According to UNICEF, “Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition, translating into the loss of about 3 million young lives a year. Undernutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and delays recovery.” Malnutrition can be […]
Water is the most precious resource we have. We cannot survive, let alone thrive, without it. Yet, we often don’t give it much thought and continue living as if we will never run out of this indispensable commodity. The recent events in Cape Town, South Africa have brought the issue more in focus. Surge has […]
Some 844 million people worldwide have no access to clean, safe water – meaning one in every nine people (water.org figures). Yet about 13,000 cubic kilometers (3,100 cubic miles) of fresh, clean water in the atmosphere are just waiting to be used. That is more than what is in all the rivers and freshwater reservoirs […]
If you only read the headlines, which in general focus on the bad rather than the good news because it is deemed “more newsworthy”, then you would think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. “Given the rising risk of nuclear war with North Korea, the paralysis in Congress, warfare in Yemen […]
