Atlanta plans to transform 7 acres of vacant forested land into a public food forest; the illegal killing of elephants in Africa has decreased by 6 percent since 2011; Jacqueville, a small coastal city on the Ivory Coast, is testing solar-powered taxis.
The south Indian state of Kerala has used 9,700 tonnes of non-recyclable, shredded plastic waste to pave 246 km of roads; more than 500 Palestinian and Israeli students put aside their political differences in order to protest climate change inaction; Ethiopia launches ambitious reforestation project seeking to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change.
A new Filipino law requires every student to plant 10 trees each before graduating; Ken Wyatt is Australia’s first indigenous cabinet minister; a Filipino startup produces pencils that can grow into plants.
In the northeast Indian state of Assam, the Akshar School is accepting plastic waste as payment for school; according to the WHO, Argentina and Algeria have officially defeated Malaria.
Paris is creating the city’s largest garden near Eiffel Tower; the UK government will fund the planting of 130,000 trees in English cities and towns; a new desalination system uses solar power to turn ocean water into drinking water.
Washington legalizes ‘natural organic reduction’, a process turns a body into soil; according to new research, the British tradition of feeding garden birds helps maintain and reshape urban bird populations; due to iterative evolution, an extinct bird from an island near Madagascar evolved a second time.
South Korea will switch government computers from Windows to Linux in order to lower costs and reduce the dependency on a single operating system; the Amsterdam-based co-op ‘Fairbnb’ plans to be a sustainable alternative to Airbnb and its competitors; the technology behind the new leather brand ‘Mirus’ could make biodegradable, plant-based leather mainstream.
Tanzania bans plastic bag ban in an effort to tackle plastic pollution; Taiwan legalizes same-sex marriages in historic first for Asia; San Francisco is the first city in the US to ban high-tech surveillance from being used by local agencies.
Amsterdam plans to ban all gas and diesel vehicles by 2030; Mexico City decided to ban businesses from selling or giving customers single-use plastic items; the first ever ‘cocktail’ of genetically engineered phages was successfully used to fight a Mycobacterium and save a girl’s life.
186 countries agreed to amend the Basel Convention by adding thousands of types of plastic as hazardous waste; a team of researchers at Columbia University created a new desalination method called “temperature swing solvent extraction”; Scotland’s new deposit scheme will include aluminium and steel cans as well as containers made of glass and PET.
In India, a Tinder initiative and a Facebook group are revolutionizing pet adoption; Germany has opened the world’s first “eHighway” on the autobahn near Frankfurt; a new study shows that educating children on the effects of climate change might be the most effective way to change their parents’ opinions.
A new study suggests air conditioners could be used to remove carbon from the air instead of putting it in; London Marathon replaced hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles with edible seaweed water pouches; every Sunday, a restaurant in Toronto is lowering menu prices in order to sell out of perishable food.
A new law in Maine prohibits restaurants and grocery stores from using the to-go styrofoam containers; a Ghanaian project plans to use cocoa pod husks as feedstock in bio-fuel energy installations; German researchers have managed to transform eggshell powder into a powerful battery.
By publishing online maps of environmental violations, Ma Jun has pushed over 1,300 Chinese factories to address pollution problems; a new device uses computer models to produce speech from brain signals; social entrepreneurs in New Zealand regard the booming “cannabusiness” as an effective way to empower disadvantaged Maori communities.
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