Every day the Good Good Good team collects the best good news in the world and shares it with our community. Here are the highlights for this week!
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The Best Positive News We’re Celebrating This Week —
The UK is planting 20 million trees as part of the first of three new national forests
Helping meet its tree-planting goals as part of a “national forest” drive, the UK announced plans to plant 20 million trees, creating 2,500 hectares of new woodland area.
The new woodland area will join existing woodlands to make up the Western Forest, the first of three new national forests promised by the government, which has a legally-binding target of 16.5% forest cover in England by 2050.
Notably, the Western Forest project is the first new national forest in the UK in 30 years and it will target increasing tree cover in urban areas like Bristol, Swindon, and Gloucester.
Why is this good news? In some areas of the future Western Forest, there is only about 7% of land covered by trees. The project is aiming to achieve 20% forest cover, and up to 30% in some areas — which will result in a number of health benefits for wildlife, for the planet, and for human beings.
A special education teacher raised thousands of dollars to pay off students’ lunch debt by dancing on TikTok
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California added 26,000 electric vehicle chargers in just six months
Between August 2024 and February 2025, California saw a 17.1% increase in the number of public and shared private electric vehicle chargers across the state.
The state now boasts a network of more than 178,500 chargers, with 26,193 of them built just since August — making progress toward its charging infrastructure goal. This is important considering that starting next year, 35% of all new car models sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles.
While this is important progress, the state needs to work even faster to meet its target of 1 million public chargers by the end of 2030 to support the 7 million EVs it expects to have on its roads.
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In a world-first medical success, a man lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart
An Australian man made history as the first person in the world to receive a total artificial heart transplant and lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant earlier this month.
It’s a significant milestone for heart failure treatment and the longest-recorded survival with the artificial heart technology.
The device is made from titanium and is designed to replace both ventricles of a failing heart, pumping blood to both the body and lungs.
Why is this good news? More than 23 million people suffer from heart failure annually, and only about 6,000 receive a donor heart. This medical breakthrough could help give more people in need time to wait for a donor heart transplant, too — becoming a long-term solution in itself.
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A Goodwill van pulled up to a homeless man and offered a meal and $50 for four hours of work — and it completely changed his life
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A Colombian marine biologist has spent his life protecting endangered pink river dolphins and their ecosystems
Colombian marine biologist Fernando Trujillo co-founded the Fundación Omacha to conserve freshwater dolphins, manatees, and other aquatic animals and ecosystems.
River dolphins are some of the most endangered cetaceans in the world — and by monitoring their health, Trujillo and his team also get insight into the health of the ecosystem around them.
Trujillo and his team test for elements like mercury, which is naturally occurring in the Earth’s crust, but becomes highly toxic when released into the air or water through things like deforestation, wildfires, and mining. Their work not only protects the endangered animals, but the rivers they live in and humans who rely on the rivers, too.
In an ‘unprecedented’ discovery, researchers found a thriving, never-before-seen ecosystem under an Antarctic ice shelf
In January, an iceberg the size of Chicago broke away from an ice shelf attached to the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet — researchers nearby seized the opportunity to explore the ecosystem below that it left behind.
In addition to sea spiders, ice fish, and octopuses, the scientists discovered corals and sponges, whose size indicated that the ecosystem had been thriving for decades, if not hundreds of years.
With plans to return for further study, the initial expedition is providing insights into how ecosystems thrive beneath ice sheets, since deep-sea ecosystems typically rely on nutrients raining down from the surface.
What’s the nuance? While icebergs breaking off from ice sheets is normal, climate change is unnaturally accelerating the process and causing the ice sheet to shrink faster over the past few decades. Ice loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet “is a major contributor to sea level rise worldwide.”
The trees in Los Angeles are “kicking ass” — absorbing more carbon dioxide than expected
Using sensors set up across central Los Angeles, researchers found that over the course of a year, trees absorbed up to 60% of carbon dioxide on average during the day, and that’s much more than expected.
The area they studied wasn’t “all that green” either, showing how even what might be considered a minimal addition of trees can make a big difference in air quality, which has been shown to have other important health benefits for the planet and people.
The researchers are hoping their study could be used to help L.A. and other cities in their approach to urban tree planting.
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Further helping the city improve air quality, residents in Paris voted to make 500 more streets car-free
In a referendum, residents of Paris voted to pedestrianize 500 more streets in the city as part of the local government’s efforts to reduce the use of cars and improve air quality.
The additional car-free Parisian streets will bring the total number to nearly 700, with another 10,000 parking spots removed in addition to the 10,000 that have already been removed. Residents will help decide which streets will be impacted.
While Paris has made incredible strides, its green infrastructure — including private gardens, parks, tree-lined streets, and more — makes up about 26% of the city, lagging behind the 41% average in other European capital cities.
Why is this good news? Not only does taking cars off the road help improve air quality, but it also improves overall well-being with more people walking, biking, skating, and more. The lack of emissions and traffic also helps people connect more with their neighbors.
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Carolina the giant rat is officially retired — she spent years detecting thousands of cases of tuberculosis, saving countless lives
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Women’s sports bars are expected to quadruple across the U.S. this year
At the beginning of 2025, there were six bars dedicated to showing women’s sports in the entire United States. By the end of the year, there will be almost two dozen.
Already this year, three women’s sports bars have opened, and 14 more are expected to open their doors in the coming months, spanning cities from New York to San Francisco, Cleveland to Kansas City.
The exponential growth of women’s sports bars is happening alongside a surge of support for women’s college and professional sports — leading to more women’s sports events being aired on television, too.
In 2024, global renewable energy capacity saw the largest expansion ever recorded
In 2024, global renewable energy capacity increased by 15.1% year-over-year, representing the largest expansion ever recorded.
Around 92.5% of new energy capacity added last year came from renewables, with 585 total gigawatts added and bringing the total global capacity to 4,448 GW. Solar and wind accounted for more than 96% of those new renewables additions.
China built nearly 64% of this new renewable capacity, adding 278 GW of solar capacity alone last year.
What’s the nuance? While the progress is remarkable and important, the pace of growth still falls short of what’s needed to meet the COP28 goal of tripling capacity by 2030 — requiring an annual growth rate of 16.6%. Still, the growth of renewable energy is happening exponentially, so experts still project the world is on track to hit renewable energy targets by 2030.
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A first-of-its-kind “vehicle-to-everything” program is giving away 100 free chargers to test how EVs can earn money by sending backup power to the grid
High school students in Chicago built a tiny home village for homeless veterans in Georgia
In Brunswick, Georgia, a new tiny home village composed of 30 tiny houses and a community center has just opened to serve local veterans facing homelessness — and it was all built states away by Chicago’s Northwest Suburban High School District 214 students.
A joint effort between the Nine Line Foundation, the organization behind the village, and teachers from area high schools, the project became “a great civics lesson” for Geometry Through Construction students.
The students even raised funds to help pay to send the tiny homes on their 1,052-mile trip to Georgia.
More good news of the week —
A Florida village’s composting program will reduce waste, fertilize a Native tribe’s community garden, and restore the Everglades. The “Everglades Earth Cycle” program in the village of Pinecrest is the first in the county to be sponsored by the local government, and it has already collected 90,000 pounds of food waste in just one year.
A contraceptive pill, endometriosis treatment, and IVF drug will be cheaper for thousands of Australians thanks to new health funding. The three new listings in the country’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are in addition to a $500 million package of women’s health measures introduced last month.
A new first-of-its-kind map of the London Underground helps cyclists discover the city’s green spaces. Created as a free resource by a graphic designer, the newest edition of the Greenground Map connects London’s National Cycle Network, Cycleways and the extended cycle network to parks and waterways.
More U.S. states are requiring paid medical leave, which has been shown to reduce stress and improve productivity. There is no federal law requiring paid leave in the U.S., only unpaid time off — and it doesn’t apply to everyone, like employees of small businesses — which makes the U.S. a “major outlier” amidst 95% of countries providing some form of paid leave for personal health.
In a “historic milestone for rewilding,” Chile and Argentina collaborated to save a giant flightless bird from extinction. The three-foot-tall Darwin’s rhea is locally endangered in Chile, and in turn, the country’s grasslands deteriorated, as the birds play a crucial role in dispersing seeds and renewing vegetation.
The largest supermarket in the U.K. is trialing giving away expiring food to shoppers at the end of the day. In an effort to further reduce food waste, applicable items would be offered to customers after first offering it to charities, food banks, and shop workers — and those donations could even help them make more money.
Filling in for workers who joined the war effort, women in Ukraine are working as coal miners to keep the country’s power on. While the country is still ramping up its renewable energy transition, coal is needed to meet existing demands for energy — and Ukrainian women are taking on the task, which was once considered only suitable for men.
A landmark ruling from an international human rights court protected Indigenous people from Ecuador’s powerful oil industry. Impacting at least three groups of Indigenous people, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Ecuadorian government to protect the groups from oil operations and to leave oil in the ground underneath their lands.
The world’s largest women’s prison launched an independent newspaper written by and for inmates. The Central California Women’s Facility is home to more than 2,000 women, nonbinary, and transgender people, and The Paper Trail is amplifying their voices.
A first-of-its-kind volunteer fire brigade is helping protect LA residents from wildfires. Serving as a bridge between professional firefighters and the community, the Community Brigade is trained in basic techniques but primarily works to aid with evacuations and fire prevention through home inspections.
To help protect shrinking coastal wetlands, a new conservation effort is preserving two salt marshes in Nova Scotia. The salt marshes provide essential habitat for migratory birds and act as natural protection against storm surges and sea-level rise — and are more critical than ever since the province has lost 60% of the wetlands to development.
To help protect pollinators, the use of pesticides on U.K. farms will be cut by 10% by 2030. While activists celebrated the news, they’d hoped it would go further, since the EU’s target for member states is to reduce the use of more hazardous pesticides by 50% by 2030.
A church transformed its vacant land into a massive urban garden, donating 65K pounds of food to people in need. After seeing an abundance of abandoned land and limited access to fresh, healthy produce in its community, Mission of Mary Cooperative now manages a network of six massive urban farming plots across four acres, growing over 75 different varieties of fruits and vegetables.
Installing safety nets on the Golden Gate Bridge has been shown to reduce suicides by 73% in a year. Studying a period of time before, during, and after the nets were installed, researchers found that there were 2.48 deaths by suicide per month before, 1.83 during installation, and just 0.67 after.
Leveraging trust built over time, doctors in Atlanta are talking to their patients about the health risks associated with climate change. Hoping to depolarize the issue and break through misinformation, the doctors are explaining how the issue intersects with healthcare, like the impacts of heatwaves, allergies, infectious diseases, and malnutrition from food supply changes.
A t-shirt that monitors vital signs could help cancer patients leave the hospital sooner to recover at home. The wearable technology sends data, for vitals like blood pressure, pulse rate, and blood glucose to an app and web-based software for hospitals to monitor remotely — and users in the test group felt safer and more cared for while recovering at home.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a regulation requiring serial numbers, background checks, and age verification for “ghost guns.” The number of ghost guns found at crime scenes around the country had been soaring, with 27,000 recovered by law enforcement in 2023 — up from fewer than 1,700 in 2017 — and that number had flattened out or declined since the regulation was finalized.
A federal judge ordered a Colorado school district to return 19 banned books to libraries. The judge also prohibited the district from further restricting access to books “because the district disagrees with the views expressed therein or merely to further their preferred political or religious orthodoxy.”
After the L.A. wildfires destroyed places of worship, Methodist, Muslim, and Jewish congregations are gathering under one roof. Already a satellite worship space for the Islamic Center of Southern California, First United Methodist church in Pasadena also welcomed the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, whose synagogue burned down in the Eaton fire.
