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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...
Scientists trial a painless brush test for oral cancer that returns results in 60 minutes
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A brush swab of the mouth. Four genes. Results in under an hour. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London, working with partners in India, have shown that this simple approach can match the diagnostic accuracy of a surgical biopsy, without a scalpel 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...
A cheap, homegrown catnip lotion could replace DEET for millions of Ugandans
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A lotion made from catnip oil matched DEET in field trials in Uganda, according to research presented at the Society for Experimental Biology conference in Florence last week. Catnip (Nepeta cataria), a common herb in the mint family, contains Read More...
Africa secures $900 million in new clean cooking commitments
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Nearly one billion people across Africa cook over charcoal or firewood every day. $3.1 billion in commitments is what it’s going to take to change that, and the number keeps climbing. African countries secured $900 million in new financial commitments to Read More...
How Paris uses the Seine to cool thousands of buildings without AC
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Every air conditioner does the same thing: pull heat from inside a building and dump it outside. On a hot day, millions of units doing that together push street temperatures up, which makes the next hot day worse. “Everything that requires energy releases Read More...
Illinois found a smarter way to close the menopause care gap
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton set up a series of financial wellness conversations with women around the state. She expected to hear about rent, wages, and the cost of groceries. What she kept hearing about was menopause: what it was doing to their work, Read More...
Greece launches nanosatellite system to catch wildfires early
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Conventional satellites can’t detect a wildfire until it’s roughly the size of a cruise ship. Greece just launched four that catch them when they’re four meters (about 13 feet) across. The four OroraTech nanosatellites, each smaller than a carry-on 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...
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...