Miscellaneous
Seattle-based Gravity Payments raises its minimum wage to $70,000 a year
The United States has one of the world’s largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes. Despite new regulation embedded in the financial overhaul that Congress passed in 2010, publicly held companies have yet to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to the Read More...
How cheap street lights help create safe communities
According to the United Nations, 1.5 billion people around the world have to make do either with very poor quality light or no light at all. There are 1.3 billion who rely on kerosene lamps which emit toxic fumes, causing respiratory illnesses and killing an estimated 1.5 million people each year. Read More...
Lima’s engineering students show off creativity in water-harvesting billboard
In Peru, farms struggle with polluted soil and water that leaches heavy metals like lead and arsenic into vegetables. Hydroponics with filtered water is one answer. UTEC, Lima's University of Engineering and Technology, went to work. It put up a billboard that collects and purifies water from the Read More...
Electric cars and combustion engine vehicles reach cost parity 6 years early
Electric cars hooked to renewable sources of energy like roofsolar are a major component of the kind of carbon-free infrastructure required to keep temperatures below the critical ceiling as defined by the International Panel on Climate Change. The good news is that the market for electric cars has Read More...
Nepal leads by example on wildlife conservation
WWF Living Planet Report sounded the alarm, last September, when it revealed that Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years due to irresponsible human activity. Damaged ecosystems and shrinking biodiversity constitute a devastating trend for all of humanity as we ultimately depend on Read More...
The sharing economy inspires a new water conservation model in California
California is well into its fourth consecutive year of drought. Governor Jerry Brown called for the state's first mandatory water restrictions just last week, while acknowledging that "there's been fairly inadequate conservation so far.” Groundwater management regulation, which came into effect Read More...
The sharing economy is winning over the mainstream in urban transportation
Crowd-sourced business models, where individual vendors and consumers are connected through an app or a web platform, are not going anywhere. Last month, ride-hailing pioneer Uber accounted for 47 percent of all rides expensed by employees whose companies use Certify, the second-largest provider Read More...
Green, cheap hydrogen now ready for fuel-cell vehicles, say scientists
Hydrogen is as clean a fuel as they come… or not. Although it emits very little greenhouse gas, more than 90% of it is currently produced from fossil sources at a high cost. Virginia Tech scientists claim that is soon to be a thing of the past. They were able to produce hydrogen from waste Read More...
Sweet images from gentle Yemen
Yemen conjures up images of violence, mayhem and heartbreaking poverty. Photographer Stephanie Sinclair has paid several visits there in the past few years, immersing herself in the culture. She says of the people she’s met that their generosity, gentleness and thirst for peace were their most Read More...
The Good Country Index aims to promote transnational thinking and conversations
The world we live in has never been as connected as it is now. Trade, immigration, climate change—opportunities and issues bring the human family together like never before, whether we like it or not. Truth be told, many of us do not like it—if the growing trend towards strengthening borders or Read More...