Eddy's Good News: Tropical paradises getting saved and inventors create a new use for plastic!

Virgin Radio

22 Nov 2022, 10:09

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!Be sure to listen each day between 10am and 1pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Tuesday 22nd November 2022

Good news from the other side of the world as another island is added to the growing list of tropical paradise destinations that are now thankfully rat free.

Say hello to the Polynesian island of Tetiaroa, a cluster of 12 islands near Tahiti so beautiful that Marlon Brando bought them on a 99 year lease and the luxury Hotel le Brando is testament to his legacy. But like so many islands down under, its wildlife was devastated when rats were introduced. They preyed on rare seabirds, nesting turtles and native crabs. But thanks to 60 hotel staff and volunteers, 3 years of back breaking graft across 160 miles of pathways on all twelve islands, they’ve managed to lay enough rat poison to get rid of the invasive rodents once and for all. It’s a win-win because now the rare birds become much less rare, they raise the plankton levels on the reef, which means more small fish and more small fish means more big fish. 

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org

Inspiring news from the world of science and Dyson Award winners who’ve released their invention for free rather than patenting it, to give third world designers access to something brilliant.

Say hello to Reiten Cheng and Swaleh Owais, who’ve invented a way to turn used plastic bottles into filament for 3D printers. “Design something simple that solves a problem” is the ethos of the Dyson Awards and these guys have nailed it and it means an awful lot to them: “James Dyson is a personal hero to both of us,” said Cheng. “We have been actively following the James Dyson Award for our entire academic career, and are keen to follow in his footsteps of designing elegant and useful products”. Their elegant product takes plastic bottles and turns them into fuel for a 3D printer. This filament is normally prohibitively expensive, almost impossibly so for someone in the third world, so these guys have let people know how to build them cheaply, so designers in countries like Rwanda have access to 3D printing so inventors can prototype ideas wherever they are!

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org