Things Are Good

In very unsurprising news: Starbucks has opened a new coffee shop. In surprising news: that Starbucks store is made from repurposed cargo containers!

With many containers scrapped at the end of an average lifespan of 20 years, the Starbucks solution served to convert a potential waste stream from the company’s supply chain into shop space.

This Tukwila store is also the first LEED-certified structure in town. It uses fully reclaimed material for the exterior. Rainwater collected from the roof reduces water consumption and nourishes surrounding “xeriscaping” — landscapes and plants that naturally require less water.

More info and pictures.

Thanks to Mike!

Being a chicken who’s sole purpose is egg-laying can be hard because of the horrible living conditions. Too many animals, in this case chickens, are held in enclosures that don’t allow for movement. This is starting to change for chickens in Europe as they have now been granted better enclosures thanks to some ethical activists!

On the first day of 2012, keeping hens in such cages became illegal, in all 27 countries of the European Union. Hens can still be kept in cages, but they must have more space, and the cages must have nest boxes and a scratching post. Last month, members of the British Hen Welfare Trust provided a new home for a hen they named “Liberty”. She was, they said, among the last hens in Britain still living in the type of cages we had opposed.

In the early 1970s, when the modern animal-liberation movement began, no major organisation was campaigning against the battery cage. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the mother of all animal-protection organisations, had lost its early radicalism long before. It focused on isolated cases of abuse, and failed to challenge well-established ways of mistreating animals on farms or in laboratories. It took a concerted effort by the new animal radicals of the 1970s to stir the RSPCA from its complacency towards the battery cage and other forms of intensive animal rearing.

Read Europe’s ethical eggs-ample.

A new study from MIT has concluded that female politicians boosts aspirations, educational achievement of young women. There have been a few international initiatives that look to improve the world by empowering women and now we know that getting more women into politics actually does make the world better!

Based on a survey of roughly 8,000 Indian adolescents and parents, the research paper, appearing this week in Science, notes that having women serve as the leader, or pradhan, of a village council erases the prevailing “gender gap” that tends to work in favor of young men, provided that female politicians remain visible in local government for an extended period of time.

“We think this is due to a role-model effect: Seeing women in charge persuaded parents and teens that women can run things, and increased their ambitions,” says Duflo, who is a co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She adds: “Changing perceptions and giving hope can have an impact on reality.”

Read more here.

This is certainly good news for people who eat: organic and sustainable food production is just as good – or even better – than the standard factory farming setup.

After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of transition, Rodale Institute claims the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long term potential of the two systems.

*Organic yields match conventional yields.

*Organic outperforms conventional in years of drought. Organic fields increased groundwater recharge and reduced run-off.

Read more at Friends Eat.

Board Game Jam is happening in Toronto February 25-26! If you’ve ever wanted to make a game then this is a place to start!

Here’s a special challenge to Things Are Good readers: make a game that is designed to educate or empower people to make the world a better place. If you do, find me at the event and I’ll post all the good games later on!

Board Game Jam

At the same time, even while videogames seem to occupy the headlines, the world of board gaming is seeing a resurgence in some smaller part of our collective consciousness. All the hipsters know how to play Settlers of Catan, and Snakes & Lattes seems to be packed every single day. If you ask me, it’s part of some broader reconnection to real social interaction in so-called “meatspace,” but I’ll spare you the philosophizin’.

The point is that board games are both wonderfully accessible and quite deep. Everyone can intuitively understand the basics of what goes into making a board game. On a mechanical level, it’s simple arts and crafts. For people looking to be creative, that can be a great change from making a film or any kind of digital media, which require significant technical knowledge and a team of specialists. But making a board game can be lead you down a rabbit-hole into a world of rich creative exploration and sophisticated design. Like the best games of any sort, making a board game is both easy to learn, and tough to master.

Board Game Jam is a low-barrier way to enter the world of gamemaking, and have fun doing it.

Check out Board Game Jam!