Eco Geek

South African court rules that clean air is a constitutional right: what needs to change Rebecca Garland, University of Pretoria A court in South Africa has confirmed the constitutional right of the country’s citizens to an environment that isn’t harmful to their health. This includes the right to clean air, as exposure to air pollution affects human health. Air pollution also affects land and water systems, and decreases agricultural yields. The […]

American high school student, Vera Wang, designed and built an ocean filter that removed sunscreen and microplastics from the ocean and at the same time discovered a new type of fungi. https://iono.fm/e/1715888 Read more here: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/teen-discovers-coconut-fungi-can-filter-plastic-and-sunscreen-from-sea/

Norwich-based biotech firm, QuberTech, is busy developing a natural rubber from specially designed dandelions that they are hoping will make sourcing rubber easier due to dandelions not only growing faster than rubber trees, but also being able to be planted a lot closer to factories and processing plants. https://iono.fm/e/1715385 Read more here: https://greenbusinessjournal.co.uk/dandelions-produce-sustainable-rubber/

Carlos Lopes, University of Cape Town African countries have committed themselves to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and protecting their people from the worsening effects of climate change. These commitments form part of the Paris Agreement, an international climate treaty adopted in 2015 in which countries agreed to take steps to limit global warming. Doing this requires billions of dollars in climate finance for clean energy and for making agriculture, water […]

Bus stops are usually not the prettiest things and are definitely not particularly environmentally friendly, but thanks to solar company Midsummer and Chulalongkorn University  that could all change - they've designed and built what they say is the world's first carbon-negative bus shelter. https://iono.fm/e/1714935 Find out more here: https://happyeconews.com/worlds-first-carbon-negative-bus-shelter-launches-at-bangkok-university/

While a lot of attention has been paid to electric cars, buses, and truck, the electrification of flight has quietly been getting closer and closer to reality and now, thanks in part to the situation in the Middle East, it could soon be the go to for certain European short haul routes. https://iono.fm/e/1714317 Read more here: https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/06/short-haul-electric-flights-could-be-a-european-reality-in-less-than-four-years

Our so-called 'dustbin-divers' are often vilified but they serve a vital role in the recycling of a lot of waste that would otherwise end up in the landfills and in fact in Portugal they have realised that motivating people to go through their trash to sort recyclables they can return for cash is a pretty good incentive. https://iono.fm/e/1713877 Read more about the scheme here: https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/31/i-dont-mind-begging-volta-offers-an-opportunity-to-many

  One of the most deeply rooted assumptions in civil engineering is that using recycled materials in structural concrete inevitably means sacrificing strength but researchers from Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, in collaboration with the University of Surrey, have found that this is not necessarily the case. https://iono.fm/e/1713445 You can find much more technical detail here: https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-recycled-aggregates-concrete-strength.html

Fittingly for Spring Day, research from America shows that Solar PV farms where wild grasses and flowers are allowed to bloom recorded nearly twice the number of ground nesting birds and bat species than commercial agricultural farms. https://iono.fm/e/1712979 Unchanged: Find out more here: https://www.ecoportal.net/en/grassland-bird-species-midwest-solar-farms-acoustic/34843/