In an effort to show North Americans that train travel can be both good for the environment and getting around Alstom has sent a train to Quebec. The train company has been making a hydrogen powered train to replace diesel engines on routes that don’t support electric operations. Hydrogen isn’t
Continue readingAuthor: Adam Clare
Things Are Good: Collision 2023 Day 3
The final day of Collision conference and there are still more startups to write about. It’s neat that there are so many companies looking to address the UN SDGs! Loop wants to be the so called middleman, and that’s good. They are on a mission to make it super easy
Continue readingThings Are Good: Collision Day 2
I’m back at Collision Conference for another day of finding startups doing good in the world. Let’s see what today brings. Ensogo provides a system for teams to track and ensure they are meeting their ESG and sustainability goals. They do this by breaking down an abstract goal like better
Continue readingThings Are Good: Collision 2023 Day 1
I’m at Collision conference today in Toronto looking for some cool new good things to share. I’ll update this post as I find stuff. A record-breaking 30 percent of startups this year at Collision are women-founded. The first company that’s a good one is Unwrapit. They want gift giving to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Speed Cameras = Safer Streets
I live in a city where the police stopped enforcing traffic laws, so we’ve seen increased harm done by car drivers on people outside of cars. When the laws of the road aren’t enforced then drivers will break them – and more! So to make our streets safer politicians have
Continue readingThings Are Good: Multiple Sclerosis Nerve Damage Repaired by Antihistamine
Just released research findings from the University of California San Francisco found that nerve damage in people suffering from multiple sclerosis can be repaired by an over the counter antihistamine. MS damages nerves by removing a protective sheath around nerves which typically can’t be fixed, this new research may provide
Continue readingThings Are Good: Accurately Capturing the Social Cost of Carbon
When policy makers think about climate change they sometimes take into consideration the whole impact of carbon regulation and reduction. The commonly held myth is that reducing carbon emissions will negatively impact the economy, now we have better numbers to help people no longer fall into believing that myth. Indeed,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rural and Urban Areas Have Less Depressions
Where you live matters in almost every way imaginable, and there’s now more evidence that your location impacts your mental health. We now know that what has been colloquially known is now provably true: rates of depression are higher in suburban communities than elsewhere. Of course, you’re probably thinking that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Oil is a Source of Wildfires
The wildfires burning from coast to coast in Canada have Canadians worried about their livelihood, neighbours, and the planet itself. Finding good news in fires is tough, but in the context of the climate crisis knowledge about to fight fire is good news. The best way to stop wildfires is
Continue readingThings Are Good: No Mow May No Mo’?
Maybe, maybe not. It’s the end of May and hopefully you haven’t been mowing. The No Mow May campaign encourages people with lawns to let them grow during the month of May to let insects and other critters thrive. This makes sense, and if you have a lawn then you
Continue readingThings Are Good: How Quebec Will Defeat AirBnB
The global housing crisis has numerous causes, and one of them is AirBnB. Of course there are competitors to the short term rental company but the impact of their presence on the housing market has been staggering in places with high level of tourism like Montreal. Back in March people
Continue readingThings Are Good: Indoor Plants That Eliminate Carcinogenics
Plants are one of the most obvious good things that there can be, and certain plants are excellent at cleaning specific chemicals out of the air. We all know that plants clean the air, but what aspects of air they clean can change from plant to plant. Researchers tried to
Continue readingThings Are Good: An Interview with a Cat
Those frisky felines are at it again! This time one of them is dishing out advice on how to improve your working life by communicating and acting with others. Jorts the cat is a Twitter celebrity that helps students understand their rights and workers understand theirs too. The key thing
Continue readingThings Are Good: It’s Simple to Install Solar Panels
Efficient of solar panels continues to increase and the costs of installing them keep going down, meaning that there’s never been a better time than now to install solar panels. One of the great things about solar is how scalable it is, you can install a small system on a
Continue readingThings Are Good: Trichloroethylene Exposure Linked to Parkinson’s
Finding the source of Parkinson’s disease has been a challenge for many researchers and this year we’ve gotten a lot closer to figuring it out. There are multiple ways that one can get the neurodegenerative disease with no one factor being the deciding one. This year alone researchers have found
Continue readingThings Are Good: Humans Should Rank Higher Than Drivers
Hey @CityofVancouver? this is second incident I’ve seen caused by these useless ‘slow street’ barricades installed last month. They don’t slow down traffic; they cause crashes and traffic chaos. pic.twitter.com/A4xZOwMCGi — Jill Bennett (@jillreports) March 23, 2023 In North American cities the disease known as Car Brain infected urban planners
Continue readingThings Are Good: Don’t Move to Paradise, Make a Paradise Instead
A man in New Zealand thinks it’s better to create your own piece of paradise than to move to a natural one and just taking it over. Back in 1987 Hugh Wilson moved to a neglected part of the country where the natural environment was not doing well and has
Continue readingThings Are Good: Dads That Stay Home Are Less Sexist
Moms and dads both can take parental leave in the majority of countries around the world, and researchers have found in places that men take parental leave that the dads become less sexist. Turns out when dads are the primary caregiver for their children learn more about the gendered roles
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cutting Construction Carbon
Building buildings takes a lot of energy and once done the built structure continues to consume energy and have a carbon footprint. Many options exist to reduce the carbon impact of buildings from the point of construction all the way to deconstruction, but the industry still needs to adopt these
Continue readingThings Are Good: Rate Your Landlord
Landlords run a business that profits off a basic human need: shelter. As a result of the basic power imbalance between those who can own multiple homes and those who can’t even afford one the whole landlord tenet relationship is prone to exploitation. The power imbalance is furthered by landlord
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