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.
From molten salt to liquid air: clean energy’s weird storage revolution
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM There’s something strange about where the clean energy transition has gotten stuck. Generating power from the sun and wind? Mostly figured out. Storing it? That’s the part nobody has fully solved. When the sun sets and the wind drops, whatever energy Read More...
Fashion’s dirty secret: the EU just banned brands from incinerating unsold clothes
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Large fashion companies in the EU can no longer destroy unsold clothing, shoes, or accessories. As of this week, that’s illegal. The change is part of the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which applies to companies with more than 250 Read More...
In Cuba’s fuel crisis, solar tricycles took the streets
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Cuba has long been known for its vintage cars — the American ones that kept rolling through decades of embargo and scarcity, repaired with ingenuity and improvised parts. That ingenuity hasn’t gone anywhere. What it’s being directed at now is something Read More...
How environmental DNA turned river water into a global wildlife census
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM There’s something almost absurd about how we’ve always measured wildlife. Two trained ecologists visit the same river, spend days cataloguing what they can see, and come back with completely different species lists. Neither is wrong. The data just can’t Read More...
The bill that brings green hydrogen into California’s clean energy grid
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM California just closed a gap that’s been undermining its clean energy numbers for years. Governor Newsom signed SB 1350 into law, qualifying green hydrogen electricity as a renewable source under the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard. Power plants Read More...
California canal solar project reduces evaporation and generates power
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Shade from solar panels installed above two California irrigation canals reduced water evaporation by up to 70 percent and cut aquatic weed and algae growth by up to 85 percent over a full irrigation season, according to data from Project Nexus, a Read More...
Wet coffee waste becomes coal-grade fuel in under two minutes
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Researchers at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources developed a plasma-based process that converts wet coffee grounds into coal-grade biochar in under 90 seconds, with no pre-drying required. The system, described in Chemical Engineering Read More...
Solar fridges lift African farmers’ incomes by 50 percent
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Up to 40 percent of food produced in Africa is lost between harvest and market. Not from drought or pest damage, but from the absence of one thing: refrigeration. The early numbers from solar-powered cold storage are hard to argue with. Provider Soko Fresh Read More...
California’s first eight-hour grid battery just came online
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The California grid has a timing problem. Solar runs from mid-morning through early evening. Demand peaks later. Batteries have bridged part of that gap for years, but only about four hours’ worth. On June 1, a project in Kern County doubled that Read More...
Dinner scraps are rebuilding California’s lost oyster reefs
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM What if scraps from a dinner could become a habitat? That's the basic premise of the Shells for Shorelines program in a meaningful sense: the shells of oysters eaten at restaurants in Orange County can become the foundation on which new oysters settle and Read More...