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 government announced a ban on single-use, disposable vapes starting in June
In an effort to both protect the environment and curb the use of vapes by young people, the UK announced new legislation that would ban single-use, disposable vapes starting in June 2025.
The government reported vape usage in England had grown by more than 400% from 2012 to 2023 — and notably, the number of people who vape, but had never smoked cigarettes before increased, driven primarily by young adults.
In 2022, vapes were discarded containing a total of more than 40 tonnes of lithium, which would be enough to power 5,000 electric vehicles.
Why is this good news? An estimated nearly 5 million single-use vapes are thrown away every week, four times higher than last year’s estimate. Not only is it an incredible amount of plastic waste, their batteries can leak harmful waste into the environment, too. Plus, they cause hundreds of household waste-related fires every year.
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Over a decade in the making, a deaf engineer debuted an AI model that transcribes sign language to text in seconds
Intel software engineer Adam Munder and his wife — who are both Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers.
In Arizona alone (where Munder lives) there are 1.1 million people with hearing loss and only 400 licensed interpreters. Plus, they’re expensive, and alternatives like writing or texting leave out emotion and detail in conversations.
Following thousands of frustrating interactions and miscommunications — including one key, pivotal one — Munder got to work developing an AI-powered platform called Omnibridge.
A “bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world,” Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds.
Saved by a grassroots letter-writing campaign, a midwestern U.S. wildlife refuge is now celebrating 100 years of habitat protection
In 1922, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set plans in motion to drain wetlands along 300 miles of the Mississippi River.
Knowing the critical importance of the wetlands, a local conservation group led a grassroots effort to safeguard the land as a wildlife refuge instead. After two years of campaigning, Congress passed the “Upper Mississippi River Wild Life and Fish Refuge Act.”
Today, that refuge stretches across 261 river miles from Minnesota to Illinois and protects more than 240,000 acres of Mississippi River floodplain. It’s home to 518 distinct species, including 306 types of birds, 119 fish, 51 mammals, and 42 freshwater mussels.
Why is this good news? Aside from protecting critical habitat for countless wildlife species, the refuge is also a migration corridor for millions of birds each year, including 60% of all North American birds, and 40% of all North American waterfowl.
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The Arctic is still melting rapidly, but slowing ocean currents provide hope — and time
A man in Brazil has planted over 41,000 trees in Sao Paolo over the last two decades, single-handedly creating a park
Retired business executive Helio da Silva single-handedly built a 3.2-kilometer-long and 100-meter-wide park known as Tiquatira Linear Park.
He did it by planting more than 41,000 trees over the course of 20 years to turn what was a dilapidated area of Sao Paolo into a strip of green space nestled between two of the city’s busiest roads.
His work started in 2002 with a mission to transform the banks of the Tiquatira River into a “green oasis” for his neighbors. And for every 12 trees, one is fruit-bearing to attract birds and animals — an effort that also paid off as there are now 45 different birds in the park.
In just the first four years, da Silva had planted 5,000 trees — a feat that impressed the city so much, it recognized his efforts and acknowledged the area as the first linear park in Sao Paolo.
The NPS released new templates for its annual pumpkin carving challenge — along with an important safety message
The National Park Service released a new slew of pumpkin carving templates for Halloween festivities as a part of its annual pumpkin carving challenge.
While most templates are mostly just festive depictions of wildlife, one design depicts a tourist being tossed in the air by a frightened bison, inspired by a number of viral videos depicting irresponsible visitors getting too close for comfort.
Along with the design, called “Close Encounter,” NPS shared a link to wildlife safety tips, encouraging visitors to have “unscary” wildlife encounters on park sites.
Even more good: All of this year’s designs come with an important safety reminder, educational material, resources to learn more about iconic species like bats and bears, and more.
→ Read more (and get the templates!)
Life expectancy is returning to pre-pandemic levels worldwide
From 2020 to 2021, life expectancy at birth dropped significantly all across the globe due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, there were around 5 million more deaths than in 2019, and in 2021, there were another 10 million more.
As a result, life expectancy dropped globally. But now, based on the latest data from the United Nations, life expectancy rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels — and that’s true globally.
Globally life expectancy had already matched the 2019 figure in 2022 at 72.6 years old, and it increased to 73.2 years in 2023.
While people are still being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, this life expectancy recovery is a hopeful improvement.
The Teal Pumpkin Project helps homes make Halloween more inclusive for trick-or-treaters with food allergies
Tonight, kids across the country will participate in a beloved Halloween tradition, but for children with food allergies, trick-or-treating can be life-threatening.
But they deserve to participate too — so the Teal Pumpkin Project was launched to help. Teal is the color of food allergy awareness, so neighbors set out a plastic or painted teal pumpkin to let trick-or-treating families know that their house is safe to stop at on Halloween night.
The program inspires neighbors to offer food alternatives like toys, trinkets, and games to hand out on Halloween.
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More scary good news:
- Creating more opportunities for people to find their next furry family member, shelter pets are posing in donated Halloween costumes to dazzle potential adopters.
- Weeks before Halloween, scientists released their findings of a new “orange and black” colored newt species to the public.
- Superstar model and “Queen of Halloween,” Heidi Klum is supporting the return of UNICEF’s “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” program in its 75th year.
At least 16 U.S. states enacted laws restricting the use of “forever chemicals” in products so far this year
There was a historic amount of regulation passed to limit the use of toxic “forever chemicals” in states across the U.S. — with at least 16 adopting 22 PFAS-related measures.
Since 2007, 30 states have approved 155 PFAS-related policies — the vast majority have happened in the last five years.
Known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, PFAS are found in the blood of 97% of Americans. They’ve been found to harm the immune system, increase cancer risk, and decrease fertility.
To curb their impact, the EPA released new standards to limit PFAS in drinking water this year, scientists are working create solutions to remove PFAS from water (and even more solutions) — these legislative efforts to restrict their further use are good progress to prevent them from becoming even more pervasive.
The University of Chicago just opened a “groundbreaking,” first-of-its-kind climate institute
The University of Chicago just unveiled the first-of-its-kind institute dedicated to climate change in higher education: the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth.
The “groundbreaking” institute “will produce new and deeper understandings of the climate challenge, as well as practical, effective solutions,” and will include a number of new degree programs for undergraduate and graduate students.
The Institute also plans to hire 20 new faculty members over the next five years, in interdisciplinary fields like law, political science, economics, materials engineering, and AI.
Why is this good news? Climate change impacts every area of human life — and while universities around the world have implemented it into their curriculum, this dedicated institute will invest an unprecedented amount of time, resources, and study in areas like markets and policy, energy tech, engineering, and more.
→ Read more
Actress Anna Kendrick donated her earnings from her “Woman of the Hour” movie to sexual violence survivors
In addition to acting in the film, Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut in “Woman of the Hour,” a true-crime thriller about ‘The Dating Game Killer’ Rodney Alcala’s victims and survivors.
When it came time for the movie to make money, Kendrick said she “felt gross” being paid for a movie with this subject matter. Instead, she donated the money to RAINN and the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime, which was “the least that I should do.”
As the film’s director, Kendrick also handled the subject matter more thoughtfully than similar films have in the past, opting to use a “descending scale of violence” — and in some cases, not showing it at all.
More good news of the week —
In a world-first, researchers created a solar cell design that can convert 60% of sunlight into energy. We need more solar panels in more parts of the world to meet growing global energy demand, but a solar cell like this could also help make electricity generation more efficient.
Saving them from landfills, AI robots are helping recover recyclables from Chicago’s waste stream. The robots use an “optical scanner” trained to spot aluminum within 10-15 milliseconds, sending a robotic arm to grab it from the stream of trash.
A Colorado program is providing free tuition for students in in-demand fields. The state invested $40 million for free tuition at almost 20 community and technical colleges in the state for fields including forestry, construction, education, early childhood education, firefighting, law enforcement and nursing.
In the past four years, the U.S. power grid has added battery capacity equivalent to 20 nuclear reactors. Helping maintain renewable energy when the weather interferes with solar and wind generation, the batteries are already starting to help prevent power blackouts.
President Biden apologized for the government’s role in running abusive Native American boarding schools for more than 150 years. A recent investigation found that at least 973 children died in the schools, and this marks the first formal apology from a U.S. president.
A doctor is helping people in Ukraine continue to receive their fertility treatments — serving people in the military for free. Members of the military can preserve their reproductive cells for free, since, in addition to the risk of death, stress, extreme weather, and chemicals on the battlefield can impact those cells.
Thanks to Olympian Allyson Felix, parents across the U.S. can get free child care to vote on Election Day. Lack of access to childcare, especially for Black parents in underresourced communities, is a major barrier to voting for many people — Felix partnered with Chamber of Mothers to reimburse childcare costs.
With a goal of vaccinating over 45 million children, a week-long anti-polio drive is now underway in Pakistan. Pakistan has recorded 41 polio cases this year, adding new fears to the deepening crisis in one of only two countries, including Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic.
The Biden-Harris administration announced $2 billion in funding to strengthen the U.S. electric grid against extreme weather. Provided through a $10.5 billion initiative included in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the funding will go to 38 projects in 42 states.
Seven years after Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico, FEMA announced new aid for crucial nonprofits. Islands throughout the Caribbean were impacted by the storm, but Puerto Rico was hit the hardest — accounting for a staggering 97% of the 3,059 total deaths.
Empty Airbnbs will be used to house domestic abuse survivors in the UK free of charge as part of a new pilot program. More than half of domestic abuse survivors currently face homelessness after being turned away from traditional shelters due to a chronic national shortage of spaces.
The world’s largest geothermal project was just approved in the U.S. — it will produce enough power for 2 million homes. Geothermal is an abundant clean energy resource, and this new project will help the U.S. get closer to achieving its goal of a carbon-free power sector by 2035.
More restrooms in the U.S. have adult-sized changing tables for people with disabilities who need them. A new national effort is underway to make public bathrooms more accessible in places like airports, parks, arenas, and gas stations.
The U.S. is investing $428 million to expand clean energy projects in former coal communities. One of the downsides of the clean energy transition is the loss of jobs for those working in the fossil fuel industry — but investment like this helps revitalize those communities and help people keep working.
NASA is using new tools to detect methane and carbon dioxide “super-emitters” and prevent leaks. Originally intended for another use, the EMIT mission has also identified more than 50 “super-emitters” in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States that emit methane at high rates.
