Global Good News Times

Every one of India’s 1.3 billion people uses an average 11kg of plastic each year. After being used, much of this plastic finds its way to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, where it can maim and kill fish, birds and other marine wildlife. Fisherman in India’s southern state of Kerala are taking on the battle to cut the level of plastic waste in the oceans. When the trawlers drag their nets through the water, they end up scooping out huge amounts of plastic along with the fish. Until recently the fishermen would simply throw the plastic junk back into the water. But last summer Kerala’s fisheries minister J. Mercykutty Amma started a scheme to change this. Under her direction, the state government launched a campaign called Suchitwa Sagaram, or Clean Sea, which trains fishermen to collect the plastic and bring it back to shore. In Suchitwa Sagaram’s first 10 months, fisherman have removed 25 tonnes of plastic from the Arabian Sean, including 10 tonnes of plastic bags and bottle...

„Sometimes the ability to send a single message can be the difference between life and death,” says Richard Thanki. He is part of Jangala, a four-person team that makes portable wifi boxes for displaced communities. In December 2015, their wifi network was switched on in the Calais Jungle, 11 months after the first refugees had arrived. Armed with a single 4G sim card and a homemade wifi system, Jangala was connecting 5,000 users each week until the camp’s demolition the following October. By blocking adverts and traffic shaping (limiting video streaming quality), they managed to stretch €30 (£22.80) worth of data, 75 gigabytes, each day to serve the camp. Jangala stemmed from The Worldwide Tribe, a charity founded by siblings Jaz and Nils O’Hara in 2015, when they were 25 and 24. Their parents had fostered a 15-year-old Eritrean boy, and the pair went on to visit the Calais Jungle. Inspired, Jaz wrote a Facebook post, asking for donations. It went viral, and when they went ...

Hundreds of Dutch bus stops are getting eco-friendly makeovers so they can be transformed into lush green sanctuaries for honeybees and humans alike. All 316 bus stops in the city of Utrecht are receiving green rooftops covered in sedum plants. Not only are the succulents good for improving air quality, they are also good for helping to support dwindling pollinator populations. The city also says that succulents are good for storing rain water, capturing dust particulates from the air, and providing a cooling environment in the summertime.

An ingenious new app is recruiting thousands of Good Samaritans as volunteers for medical emergencies. If an ambulance is dispatched in response to someone in the midst of cardiac arrest or some other life-threatening emergency, the “GoodSAM” app sends a cell phone alert to first responders and medically trained civilians who are nearby to the person in distress. The Ambulance Victoria website says that for every minute that a cardiac arrest patient doesn’t get CPR or defibrillation, their chances of survival fall by 10% – so recruiting the help of nearby pedestrians can often make a world of difference for a patient’s recovery. The app’s life-saving potential recently made headlines in Australia after an off-duty paramedic received a GoodSAM notification concerning a 49-year-old man who had collapsed at his Melbourne home in the dead of night. Since the man lived close to her home, the paramedic was able to rush to his side and give him CPR until the ambulance arriv...

In what is being called a “world-first”, Nestlé will begin wrapping their Yes! snack bar range in a new kind of recyclable paper that can biodegrade in six months. Researchers working at the company’s English confectionery R&D center in York have found a way to use a recyclable paper wrapper in a high-speed “flow wrap cold seal” packaging line, which – thus far – has been a process that has only been suitable for plastic films and laminates. The Yes! range of fruit- and nut-based bars, which will become the first brand to convert to the new recyclable paper wrapper, will be rolled out this month.

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