Boston has had problems with sewage and keeping water clean, and all of that is set to change thanks to a new initiative. They are are going to increase fines on people illegally dumping sewage and use that money to clean up the waterways surrounding the city. “Boston is entering
Continue readingAuthor: Adam
Things Are Good: A More Eco-Friendly Way to Distribute Beer
Local Toronto brewery Steam Whistle has taken another step to green their beer (previously) by using growlers to serve and distribute their beer. A growler is essentially a large bottle of beer which can be refilled – and there’s the green aspect. By using growlers people consume less resource-intensive cans
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Fossil Fuel Free Freighter
Cargo ships make the global economy work as goods need to be transported around the globe. These large ships have a large impact on the environment due to their fuel consumption and regulations around the ships can be lax. While the global maritime industry is responsible for three percent of
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Better Shower
People like to stay healthy and clean, well most people anyway, and the act of cleaning oneself can end up consuming a lot of resources. Showering and bathing can use up a lot of deliciously potable water and be quite wasteful in the process. There is tons of room for
Continue readingThings Are Good: Lars Von Trier Challenged by Gesamt
This year, as part of the Copenhagen Art Festival, film director Jenle Hallund will use crowd-sourced video from around the globe to make a film. Not just any film, but one that challenges the rules that Lars von Trier created for making a certain style of art house film. A
Continue readingThings Are Good: Australia Gets World’s Toughest Law on Cigarette Branding
It is common knowledge that smoking kills people and, in democracies, providing health care for citizens is important and unquestioned. In Australia, they clearly care about each other as they now make it harder than ever for cigarette companies to shill their destructive product. Starting in December, packs will instead
Continue readingThings Are Good: Young, Urban, and Farming in Rural Ontario
In Ontario women from the city are defying stereotypes and running farms. Once the purview of the stereotypical old white farmer who hates cow-tippers, now women raised in cities are buying and operating farms in rural Ontario. These young and educated farmers are using organic process and community driven opportunities
Continue readingThings Are Good: Paris Revitalizes the Seine for People
Paris is continuing it’s transition to be more people-focused. The city has a great plan to gut its highways in the city along the Seine and replace them with bike lanes, pedestrian walks, and cultural spaces. It’s bound to make a city known for its romantic appeal even more lovely.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Crowdsourcing the Meaning of Life
Some filmmakers are channelling the world to find out what the meaning of life is. Their project has started an Indiegogo campaign to fund their project and they can use your help. The world we live in is extremely confusing and precarious. With economic meltdowns, global terrorism, ecological disasters, civil
Continue readingThings Are Good: Charlottetown Transforms a Street for People
Residents of Charlottetown, P.E.I. decided to make their city nicer, more sustainable, and more fun by transforming one of their streets from car-dominated to people-friendly. They’ve made a great video showing what they did and hopefully it’ll inspire other communities to realize that streets are for people and we should
Continue readingThings Are Good: In New York City Gay Marriage is Worth $259 Million
You read that correctly, a $259 million (USD) boom in New York City’s economy is thanks to respecting human rights! Changing the law to reflect reality and letting homosexuals marry one another has generated some needed economic growth for the local economy. All of this in just one year! “Marriage
Continue readingThings Are Good: Germany’s Sustainable Energy Grid Keeps Improving
In May, Germany was able to supply 50% of their national energy consumption using renewable power sources. That was remarkable in itself given the size of Germany in both industrial and population size. Now, it’s been announced that for the first half 2012 Germany produced 67.9 billion kilowatt hours of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Homeowners Can Earn Cash From Solar Roofs
Energy is still delivered via large power stations which can fail and leave entire regions without electricity. The future requires a more distributed energy grid that is a combination of large and small electricity generators, doing so will ensure electricity is not so heavily impacted by a rise in the
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Stove That Uses Fire to Charge Electronics
BioLite is a company that focuses on creating clean-burning stoves. We’ve looked at stoves before and why it’s important to create efficient stoves for a better planet and healthier people. Recently, an employee of BioLite gave a presentation at TEDx Montreal about the importance of clean stoves. The company has
Continue readingThings Are Good: Use Your Smartphone to Advance Science
Smartphones aren’t just for games and checking your email anymore! Today, these mobile devices can be used to better the world around us by helping scientists understand more about it. Thanks to the distribution of mobiles research can be crowd-sourced to provide information that would otherwise go unnoticed. Below is
Continue readingThings Are Good: Copenhagen Gets Bike Superhighway
Copenhagen is known as the most bicycle friendly city on the planet and they keep getting better. Recently, the capital of Denmark has created a bicycle superhighway that is separated from car-dominated roads. The network of highways is designed to get people in the suburbs to get out of their
Continue readingThings Are Good: Ice Can Help Power Grids During Peak Use
Air conditioners use a ton of energy and when everyone has their’s running the load on the power grid can be pushed to the limit. At night, when it’s generally cooler, the power grid isn’t being used nearly as much. A company called Ice Energy is using that extra night
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Fine Example of Culture Jamming
The Yes Men are at it again and this time with Greenpeace to show how efficient Shell is….at killing all of us. They created a website called Arctic Ready that looks like Shell is looking for crowd sourced advertising content, and of course, people around the net have submitted some
Continue readingThings Are Good: Get Fit Through Self-Motivation
A lot of people use the nice weather of the summer as motivation to get fit, however, keeping oneself motivated can be a problem. One approach that is gaining popularity is to change your motivation from positive-reinforemecnt to negative encouragement. Worth a try at the very least. The basic message
Continue readingThings Are Good: Mobile Devices for Development
The use of mobiles in development is nothing new; however, it’s always good to remind ourselves how useful this technology can be. Mashable has a list of five reasons mobile devices are good for international development (and in developed nations too). 4. Preserving the Rainforest Brazil’s Surui tribe, a group
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