Today’s Solutions: December 25, 2024

Circularity

Understanding the value of a circular economy and identifying circular solutions are essential to changing our world for good. Circularity, or the zero-waste principle of keeping materials in a closed loop and away from landfills and incinerators, is the future. Find out about the latest innovations and solutions accelerating the transition towards a circular economy in the articles here from The Optimist Daily.

Wind Farm Ship Charging

These buoys will be able to charge ships at sea with offshore wind energy

A lot of the world’s commerce is done at sea by huge cargo ships that burn enormous amounts of fuel idling near ports waiting to load up. This may change in the future with the development of Stillstrom charging buoy, a wind-powered solution.  Offshore wind-powered charging Read More...

Agroforesty vineyard trees

Countering climate change while making wine

When tackling the issues of climate change, the art of growing and cultivating wine is overlooked. Connoisseurs and social sippers the world over, though, would certainly miss reds, whites, and roses if the world became inhospitable for vineyards that make them.  As average temperatures Read More...

Solar power clean water

This solar-powered desalination system is a gamechanger

Desalination offers a lot of promise to communities that may face water scarcity in the future. For some, the problem is compounded by the potential scarcity of reliable electricity. As such, it has been the aim of many researchers to develop solar-powered desalination devices, which is a difficult Read More...

Montreal Convention Center Solar Material

This sustainable solar panel can go on buildings or your clothes

When you see the new sunlight-absorbing material developed by Carvey Ehren Maigue, an engineering student from the Philippines, the colors might remind you of the Aurora Borealis.  In fact, Auroras were what inspired Maigue when he named his new game-changing material, AuREUS. This is a new Read More...

Wind turbine in snow

100 percent renewable energy could prevent natural disaster blackouts

With storms growing in intensity the world over, such as Storm Eunice in Europe, solutions for enduring extreme weather are greater than ever. Adapting energy grids is particularly important to avoid blackouts.  Recent research shows, fortunately, that switching entirely to renewable energy Read More...

Three black women wearing golden goddess like clothing in a church like setting.

These refugee-owned businesses are flourishing

Contrary to popular belief, refugees actually benefit their host nation’s economies according to a study compiled from 30 years of data. Refugee-founded businesses have an enormous potential to invigorate economies, increase job opportunities, and reduce public spending. The Entrepreneurial Read More...

variety of broken glass items with a mountain of cullet in the background

UK man has a plan to reduce glass waste

Lately, and for obvious reasons, there’s been a lot of attention on figuring out what to do with all the plastic clogging up our oceans and waterways. While solving this problem is obviously important, the plastic issue also highlights an overarching problem, not necessarily with hard-to-recycle Read More...

Novoloop founders

Female-led start-up Novoloop figures out how to upcycle plastic waste

A new, female-led US-based start-up, Novoloop, has an exciting announcement— they’ve come up with an effective solution to problematic polyethylene (aka the regular everyday plastic that’s polluting our planet). Scientists and Novoloop founders Jeanny Yao and Miranda Wang have been working Read More...

ethnic woman reaches into laundry machine

UK households get paid to curb daily energy use

Households in the UK could soon be paid to curb their electricity usage for a certain time of day (during peak usage hours) under a new scheme to help reduce energy bills while pushing for a zero-carbon power supply system. Starting in this past week, the trial for this plan, led by Octopus Read More...

Pile of used, discarded batteries

This is how old batteries could help plants grow

Properly recycling our used batteries is key to preventing toxic waste from polluting the environment. With that said, recycling rates in Australia are quite discouraging, with about 97 percent of alkaline batteries ending up in landfills. A company called Envirostream wants to change that by Read More...