From sustainable refrigerators in Africa, to roads made out of recycled coffee cups in Australia, and all the way to self-powered wildfire detectors in the U.S., this is this week’s edition of 5 Good News in 5 Minutes:

1. Nigerian Entrepreneur Invents Giant Solar-Powered Refrigerators to Help Farmers

Nnaemeka C. Ikegwuonu, a Nigerian entrepreneur, won a prize in the “water and sanitation” category of the 2020 Waislitz Global Citizen Award competition, a global competition based in Australia that aims to end extreme poverty by 2030. Ikegwuonu’s solar-powered modular cold room project, called “ColdHubs”, enables users to improve food preservation, while simultaneously improving vendors and farmer’s profits by roughly 25%.

“In Nigeria, a 35 per cent reduction in post-harvest tomato losses alone would have an impact on vitamin A deficiency for 1.1 million children a day.”

Nnaemeka C. Ikegwuonu

Due to the tropical climate, only 2,000 tonnes of fresh fish are sold out of the 6,000 tonnes that are harvested every day in the Niger Delta’s rural area. Thanks to ColdHubs, which 3,517 Nigerian farmers and fishermen already benefit from, larger amounts of food can be sold fresh while using a clean energy source. The equipment has already preserved 20,000 tonnes of food by “prolonging the shelf life of fruit and vegetables from 2 to 21 days.”

2. Self-Powered Wildfire Detector Uses the Motion of Trees for Power

Firefighters in the U.S. monitor wildfires with manned watchtowers, aircraft, ground patrols, and satellites. Sadly, these systems are all very expensive and require significant manpower, while low-cost fire sensors would need to be regularly replaced with batteries, consequently polluting the environment through harmful metals in the 81,000 units in California alone.

Thanks to Changyong Cao, a mechanical engineer from the University of Michigan, and his team, there is now a new way to monitor wildfires. Through quite the process, Cao and his team engineered a device as small as a can that costs just $20 to produce. The prototype fire detector doesn’t need batteries and runs on triboelectric energy, meaning it harnesses the motions of tree branches in order to produce energy. Even the slightest breeze could power these detectors.

This device, aside from being both waterproof and fireproof, can detect temperature and the presence of carbon monoxide released from wildfires. If set up, it would also be connected to a wireless transmitter that alerts emergency services and have extra sensors in place to pick up on toxic gases.

3. Australia Builds Roads with Recycled Coffee Cups

John Kypreos, director of State Asphalt Services in Australia, has been testing a 50-meter strip of road in Sydney. Why is this road being tested? Well, it is made, or partially made, out of lids, liners and coffee cups that were originally going to be sent to a landfill. This could mean that Australia, in collaboration with the recycling program Simply Cups, could have its first roads surfaced with recycled plastic waste from coffee cups.

By making the roads out of already existing waste, not only are the coffee cups not sent to cover more space in a landfill, but fewer virgin resources are needed to manufacture new products, and less energy and greenhouse emissions needed to produce these new products. If this weren’t enough of a reason to do it, there are huge economic benefits to doing this. Every 10,000 tonnes of waste that is recovered for projects like these creates 9.2 jobs, as opposed to 2.4 jobs if the materials were sent to a landfill.

Kypreos’ goal is to eventually reach a road that is 100% made out of recycled materials. So far, these roads have passed every test a road surface is expected to pass, and it has even better performance than what the State Asphalt Services were producing before using these materials.

“The ultimate goal is to reproduce the same product with recycled material.”

Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia

4. United Kingdom passes law to curb deforestation in supply chains

On August 25, the UK published plans to prohibit larger businesses from using products grown on land that was deforested illegally. Producing resources like cocoa, rubber, soy and palm oil will now require businesses to publish information to show where these were extracted. If a business fails to comply it will become subject to fines.

The protection of forests is crucial to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions. This new strategy tackles deforestation and exploitation of natural resources, since the overwhelming majority of deforestation is caused by the production of agricultural commodities. By making companies show where and how they manufacture their products, a huge amount of forests could be saved from illegal practices.

Tackling climate change with bolder measures could make the goals we have to achieve easier to reach; plans such as these benefit everyone greatly.

“We have all seen the devastating pictures of the world’s most precious forests being cleared, often illegally, and we can’t afford not to act as a country.”

International Environment Minster Lord Goldsmith

5. How Biodiversity in Latin America Promotes Economic Growth

According to a new study from Cambridge University, biodiversity conservation could actually increase economic output in Latin America, opposing a traditional view that conservation and economic growth are inversely related. Protected areas would see an expansion in economic growth anywhere from 8 to 10 times the levels of other sectors.

Anthony Waldron, lead author of the study, posed the following question: What happens to economic output if we expand protected areas to 30 percent of land and sea worldwide? His study found that the ecotourism sector would rapidly increase, paralleling the expansions seen in protected areas. With tourists eating, staying and exploring in local areas, they would consequently create numerous jobs.

By investing in protected areas in the tropics, governments save a fortune by preventing damage from climate-related events, such as floods and extreme storms. Waldron completely opposes the idea that by prioritizing the protection of nature the economy slows down; he says that they are not as exclusive as many sources will make them out to be.

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