Mid week round up of good news nuggets to brighten the day.
Earthshot
The Prince and Princess of Wales are flying to the US today for a three day trip that culminates with the staging of the Earthshot Prize awards in Boston on Friday. The Prince of Wales, together with Sir David Attenborough, founded Earthshot in 2020 to discover and scale up environmental solutions to repair the planet. Earthshot Prize makes five awards of £1m ($1.2m) each year to individuals and organisations whose innovations help repair the planet. With £50m set to be awarded over 10 years, it's claimed to be the biggest environmental prize ever.
Zero Food Waste
South Korea has achieved almost zero food waste thanks to a mandatory composting scheme. It’s a staggering achievement considering in 1996, the country recycled only 3 percent of food scraps. Residents buy designated food waste bags for around 20 cents each - creating a 'pay-as-you-throw' tax to help pay for the process - and stopping tons of methane leaking into the atmosphere from landfills.
Trash: Sweden Sends Only 1 Percent to Landfills. As the world seeks out ways to shrink its open mountains of garbage, Sweden, a country that dumps less than one percent of all its waste to landfills, offers an alternate path. Read on...
Giant Goldfish
An English angler has managed to land one of the world’s largest goldfish. Known as the Carrot, for its colouring, the fish (a hybrid species of a leather carp and a koi) was put in a lake in Champagne, France, 20 years ago, to give anglers something different to fish for. Since then, the Carrot has grown into quite a whopper, weighing in at more than 30kg (five stone), yet it is rarely seen and, until last week, it had never been caught. Andy Hackett spent 25 minutes reeling the Carrot in, before posing for photos and then putting the fish back.
Fun Fact
Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
Watch Hummingbirds in Ultra Slow-Mo - and discover 20 amazing facts about these remarkable little creatures.
Conservation Success
Efforts to save the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly in Oregon have reaped double rewards - quadrupling not only the population, but saving its host plant, the Kincaid’s lupine, from extinction as well. The butterfly is slated to be downlisted from endangered to threatened, making it the second insect in the history of the Endangered Species Act to ever recover.
ICE Parity
When Tesla's Model S launched in 2012, the battery in the car cost approximately $30,000. But the price has fallen rapidly, by 90 percent since 2010 according to Bloomberg. If Wright's Law holds true, it will continue to fall as total production increases. This means that electric cars will cost the same as petrol cars by 2025. During the second half of the 20s, it will be cheaper to buy an electric car than a petrol car. How many would still choose an internal combustion engine (ICE) car in that scenario? It will be good news for our wallets and our planet.
RAF Cooking Oil
An RAF fighter jet has completed the force’s first net-zero flight. The RAF Voyager - the military equivalent of an Airbus A330 - flew over Oxfordshire for 90 minutes, powered entirely by fully sustainable aviation fuel made from cooking oil. It was the first time that a military aircraft of its size had completed such a feat, reports The Daily Telegraph. The RAF says that waste-based fuels could reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent, and help it reach net zero by 2040, while also reducing its reliance on global supply chains.
“Science knows no country because knowledge belongs to humanity and is the torch which illuminates the world.” Louis Pasteur
On this Day
30 November 1874: British statesman, orator, and author Sir Winston Churchill, who as prime minister (1940–45, 1951–55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory, was born in Oxfordshire, England.
Thousands of Tesla cars have been found to be secretly meeting up at night while owners are asleep. What's going on?
In Frankfurt, Germany, there’s a horse that locals see happily walking the streets alone on a daily basis. Read on...
Mood Booster
Cleverly synced old Hollywood footage cut to Footloose.