Saturday's Uplifting News
- Editor OGN Daily
- Mar 4, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 23, 2023
Kick-starting the weekend with a worldwide collection of positive news nuggets.
Biodegradable Pods
For years, coffee pods were seen as the less environmentally friendly way to get your caffeine hit. But that’s all changing thanks to Nespresso’s new completely biodegradable pods. These can be easily composted at home, making it extremely easy to cut down on waste. That's very good news as, for example, more than 40 percent of U.S. households now own some kind of coffee pod machine and are currently sending around 29,000 eco-unfriendly coffee capsules to landfills every month.
New Discovery
Archaeologists have revealed the existence of a previously unknown, 30-foot-long chamber inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. Experts framed the find, which sits above the main entrance but is inaccessible from the outside, as one of the most exciting discoveries made in Egypt's pre-eminent pyramid in recent years. While the original purpose of the tunnel-like space is yet to be determined, officials noted the presence of limestone blocks at one end, indicating the possibility of further unexplored chambers. The pyramid was constructed more than 4,500 years ago as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu.
Tooth Fairy Inflation
Even the Tooth Fairy isn’t immune to inflation: The value of a single lost tooth is at a record high, with the average gift reaching $6.23, up from $5.36 in 2022. That's a whopping increase from 1998 when a lost tooth fetched $1.30 on average. Delta Dental’s 2023 annual poll found the average amount parents are doling out for single lost tooth is up 16 percent over last year.
Giving Hope
Having spent her life caring for livestock on her smallholding in the Carpathian Mountains, 80-year-old Silvia Dan is now starring in an album. Made by Romanian-born artist Nico de Transilvania, the album - Interbeing - was recorded in the remote village of Nucsoara where Dan is renowned for the pure beauty of her voice. Described as the Amazon of Europe, the area is renowned for its old-growth forests which support lynx, wolves, and bears, but was severely affected by illegal logging. Every copy of the album sold will go towards planting native trees that are properly protected in law, in a project overseen by nonprofit Forests without Frontiers. To Silvia, this means a lot: “It makes me proud that future generations will hear my ancestor’s songs.” “I am so happy that money raised will help to restore the landscape near my village - this project gives me hope.”
Obvious Solution
Environmental experts say that there is “huge, unharnessed potential” to the excess heat released into the air from a wide range of sources, including supermarkets, transport networks, data centers and commercial buildings. A recent report suggests that excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region, and, better yet, much of this surplus heat can be captured and used via existing heat recovery technologies.
Data Processing Heats Buildings: Data centres contain servers, which produce heat as they process information. It already being to good use in Dublin, Ireland. And it's free...
Disco Rubbish Bins
The Neat Streets campaign, which cut litter by a remarkable 75 percent in Bournemouth, England, has won gold for the best campaign of the year at the Global Good Awards. Hubbub used yellow and silver disco bins that played ABBA whenever someone deposited litter, among other choice tunes. They also installed glow-in-the-dark bins in unlit spaces, and larger, brightly-coloured refuse containers were placed close to smaller bins. All three solutions proved very effective. Other councils have now asked Hubbub to run similar campaigns.
Longest Ever Flight
Autoflight has debuted its 4th generation full-size "Prosperity I" eVTOL air taxi prototype with a bang, celebrating the longest-ever recorded flight of an electric Vertical Take Off and Landing aircraft. The 5-seater Prosperity flew 250 km (155 miles) on a single charge. It's a remarkable achievement, and Autocraft is expecting Prosperity to be certified and in service by 2025.
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
Kahlil Gibran
On this Day
4 March 1837: Chicago was incorporated as a city, with a population of about 4,200.
Apple has installed a climate benefitting new feature on its phones that charges them slowly when ‘clean’ energy sources are not available. Read on...
Best Ever Newspaper Headlines: Well, not all, but some particularly clever and entertaining ones. Read on...
Mood Booster
Is this the most hilarious response to a university rejection letter ever?