Things Are Good

Let’s Live in Mushrooms – It’ll be Fungi

Our current selection of building materials tend to be carbon intensive and can have long lasting unhealthy impacts on humans. This issue (and others) have led some to look into alternative forms of building which are healthier and sturdier than what we currently use. There have been attempts at this in the past and with each iteration of research we get better at figuring out alternative building materials. One of the most interesting is to use mushrooms to build the entire structure, and to let it keep growing.

Joe Dahmen, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture, said people first became interested in mycelium for construction about 15 years ago as a substitute for foam insulation, which isn’t biodegradable and can pose a potential health hazard.

“There’s a real tie-in here with healthy buildings,” he said, noting that he became interested in mycelium as a replacement for formaldehyde-based glues.

Mycelium can be used for a variety of building elements. For example, the Italian firm Mogu already sellsÂ flooring tiles and soundproofing wall panelsÂ made from mycelium. The British biotech firm BIOHM is working to developÂ mycelium-based insulation panels.

Stop Mowing Your Lawn to Save the Planet and Your Time

Lawns are unnatural and require a lot of maintenance, so why do we have them? As a non-lawn person I just don’t get the appeal of a lawn when there are so many better alternatives which require less work to maintain. It turns out I’m not the only one baffled by the obsession with barely keeping grass alive through. There’s a growing movement in the UK (and elsewhere) to replace labour intensive lawn care with easy to maintain landscaping. Instead of a lawn you can plant clover, switch to xeriscaping, or any of these alternatives.

The no-mow trend is gaining momentum across the gardening community. The wildflower conservation charity Plantlife runs an annual No Mow May challenge, which encourages people to share their experiences of letting the grass and wildflowers grow, or even learning how to plant a wildflower meadow in the process.
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Sarah makes an important point: not mowing your lawn this spring may help redefine your relationship with your garden, making it more about relaxation and quiet â€“ and watching bee friendly plants grow. If you do like keeping active in the garden, you can always give yourself a challenge by growing a new plant, starting a vegetable patch, or building a bird box or a home for a hedgehog.

UN: After the Pandemic Sustainable Cities will Succeed

Like the rest of the world, the United Nations is looking forward to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and they’re projecting what our future may hold. The UN sees a consistent theme of ecological thinking as a way for cities to succeed in all the sustainable development goals. Most people live in cities, and in those urban settings people can see the clear interaction between societal forces like governments, commerce, the built environment, and so on. As a result, if we focus on making our cities sustainable and a wonderful place to live then the whole world can benefit.

Theâ€¯report explores how well-planned cities combining residential and commercial with public spaces, along with affordable housing, can improve public health, the local economy and the environment.

Itâ€¯calls for cities to be at the forefront of moves towards a Social Contract between governments, the public, civil society and private sector.

Theâ€¯new social contractâ€¯shouldâ€¯â€œexplore the role of theâ€¯state and cities to finance universal basic income, universal health insurance, universal housingâ€,â€¯said Sharif.

For one real-world example, Claudia Lopez Hernandez, Mayor of Bogota, explained how in the Colombian capital, their new social contract prioritises women and children.

It is aâ€¯â€œsocial contract that includes women, that provides them with time, with time to take care of themselves, with time to educate themselves, and with time and education skills to come back to the labour marketâ€.

â€œTo have self-sustainable women is to have self-sustainable societiesâ€,â€¯Hernandez explained.

Carbon Pricing in Canada is Constitutional

A few years ago the federal government in Canada started charging for carbon wastage by people and companies. The 2018 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act was passed to ensure that every province in Canada is doing the bare minimum to avoid catastrophic climate change. This led Conservative leaders of a couple provinces to challenge the government’s ability to do this (yes, the same Conservative party which recently decided to not acknowledge climate change, and the same Ontario Conservative government which paid millions of dollars to illegally break a cap and trade business deal with California and Quebec, sigh). The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the federal government’s approach to reducing carbon emissions by putting a price on carbon.

Carbon pricing isn’t taking direct climate action, but it’s a good step in the right direction and signals to the world that Canada is at least willing to do something.

The full impact of this ruling will be felt over the coming years as this opens up more climate-friendly action and cases to move forward.

How PayUp Got Fashion Companies to Payout $22 Billion

Capitalism works when companies pay for good and services, when companies make deals and don’t pay for what they ordered then things fall apart. This is exactly what happened last year in the fashion industry, and it was the workers who suffered the most. The owners of companies like JCPenney, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, and others had deals in place with factories to produce clothing which they should have paid for but failed to do so. These were international deals which smaller countries have a hard time enforcing (meaning the large multinationals got away with breaking the law due to their size).

Then the #PayUp movement started and campaigned against these unethical companies. By March of last year they got pledges from many companies to honour their contracts (valued at $22 billion). This money would go to pay the owners and workers of the companies originally sourced by the large multinationals. To date many of paid, but there are still a few outliers.

By the summer of 2020, #PayUp had been shared on social media millions of times. A Change.org petition, which was sent to over 200 fashion executives directly, garnered nearly 300,000 signatures calling on companies to pay for the cancellations. Behind the scenes, NGOs and activist groups like Remake, the Worker Rights Consortium and Clean Clothes Campaign moved in tandem to negotiate with brands.

This pressure was combined with direct action by workers around the world. In response to factory shutdowns that left thousands in the apparel industry without jobs, workers in Myanmar went on strike, eventually securing a wage bonus and union recognition through a two-week sit-in. In Cambodia, around one hundred workers marched to the Ministry of Labor to submit a petition requesting compensation after their factory shut down. When they werenâ€™t offered a resolution, protesters continued their march to the prime ministerâ€™s house, where they were blocked by nearly 50 police officers.