http://www.thingsaregood.com Inspirational and good news. Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:40:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The United Nations and China have started a program this summer that will employ 1,000 youth to talk about the environment. The youth will teach people how to be more conscious about the environment and what individuals can do to protect it. Through a new training program called “One Thousand Environment-Friendly ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/07/03/1000-chinese-educating-people-about-the-environment/ Here's a novel idea: move all your belongings only using a bike. You can do it regardless of where you live, but in Montreal you can hire someone else to do the hard work for you. Transport Myette is a new moving company in Montreal that uses only bikes. Myette boasts ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/07/02/montreal-movers-use-only-bikes/ The Big Dig was a transportation infrastructure project for Boston that built a giant underground tunnel for automobiles. An architecture firm got their hands on left over building materials from the insanely expensive underground highway and decided to build a house. As a prototype building that demonstrates how infrastructural refuse can ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/07/01/house-made-from-big-dig-materials/ The African country of Malawi is expanding a successful program that gave out free drugs to fight AIDs. The country is founding a new company to make the drugs for their people and to export drugs to their neighbours. "Some 250,000 Malawians are receiving ARVs. We are doing well because ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/06/30/malawi-handing-out-free-drugs/ You may already now that Sears Tower is getting a huge energy retrofit costing $350 million because it's got a lot of media attention. Still, it's really good to see old office towers see the benefit of spending a lot of money on increasing efficiency of their buildings. Operators of the ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/06/29/sears-tower-to-undergo-350-million-green-retrofit/ Respect: A photo odyssey celebrating Canada's boreal forest is currently on exhibit at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto and it looks amazing. I encourage anyone in or near Toronto to check it out. Images tell stories that might otherwise not be heard. Nowadays, we like snapping pictures to capture our very ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/06/26/respect/ The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has done a study on the real cost of building a green home and they have busted the myth that building green is too costly. The bank has concluded that building green doesn't break the bank, so to speak. The intuitive view of most people ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/06/25/building-green-homes-is-cost-effective/ Mashable has put together a short collection of five good uses of social media this summer. It's good to see all these practical uses for social media and hopefully we'll see some real world changers come out of these initiatives. People are talking green online. Between the Obama administration’s unwavering ... http://www.thingsaregood.com/2009/06/24/this-summer-use-social-media-for-good/