The Top 5 Happy Eco News Stories for July 25, 2022

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The Top 5 Happy Eco News Stories for July 25, 2022

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This week we have two guest posts. The first is the founder of Happy Eco News, Grant Brown who explains how your financial investments have a big carbon footprint and how to invest with intent. The second post is by Jane Rylands-Bolton, a volunteer for the Tealby Village Green Woodland, Meadow and Wildlife Project who tells us about the inspiration for this project. We also have stories about a relationship between and eagle and a baby hawk, the world’s first sand battery, using human urine to fertilize crops, ExxonMobil’s new electric cars, and a sustainable alternative to avocados.

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The Footprint of Investing – Attention Boomers, this means You

Guest Post by: Grant Brown, founder of Happy Eco News

Capture 5 The Top 5 Happy Eco News Stories for July 25, 2022

The carbon footprint of investments and investing is huge and Baby Boomers can really move the needle. Do they want to?

When making decisions about our money, we often think about interest rates and returns, but most people never think about their investments’ carbon footprint, and they should. As an older Gen X, I am very interested in how I invest my money and how I can make it work for me in ways beyond traditional financial returns. I am part of a growing number of people learning how vital our financial decisions are to the planet.

As writer and activist Bill McKibben recently stated in an Outrage and Optimism podcast, the impact of money invested in traditional stock market accounts is shocking. A typical American with $125,000 in the bank generates more carbon from their investments than in all other areas of their life combined. Bill states that a recent study by 360.org indicates that “all the cooking, flying, heating, cooling, driving, in the course of a year is outdone just by the fact that your money is sitting there being leveraged to build pipelines and frack new oil wells”…[read more].

TEALBY Village Green Community Meadow and Wildlife Project

Guest Post by: Jane Rylands-Bolton, volunteer for the Tealby Village Green Woodland, Meadow and Wildlife Project

March 2020 and the first Covid Lockdown hit. The world paused, and, amidst the horror, bizarrely, a glorious Spring opened up to us. Suddenly, I had time to turn to ideas that had been swirling for a while. Depressing stories of species collapse and the steep decline of UK birdlife contrasted with the overwhelming sound of bird song on my solitary walks.

I live in Lincolnshire, a county of extensive agricultural land. Normally, we don’t hear many birds on walks or see many butterflies. Only remnants of the wildlife we remember from childhood remain in the countryside. As the RSPB says: “Today, the UK is among the 10% most nature-depleted countries worldwide.”

During my daily walks, I noticed a huge and welcome increase in the number of families accessing our local beauty spots. The downside seemed to be that visitors to rural areas appeared to have received no education in relating to, understanding or respecting nature. I began to consider whether the community in my village could make some small changes, both to open up our green space to people and to encourage learning, starting with the local children…[read more].

Happy Eco News Weekly Top 5

An Eagle Snatched a Baby Hawk for Dinner, Then Ended Up Adopting It

Takeaways:

A pair of bald eagles have adopted a baby red-tailed hawk and are raising it alongside their own eaglet.
The hawk was snatched up but as soon as it started begging for food, it was let go.
This is the second time this has happened, the first occurring in 2017 in Sidney. B.C…[read more].

2. Climate Change: ‘Sand Battery’ Could Solve Green Energy’s Big Problem

Takeaways:

Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first “sand battery”, which can store green power for months.
Using low-grade sand, the device is charged with the heat made from solar or wind.
The sand can store heat at around 500 degrees Celcius which can warm homes in the winter…[read more].

3. A Large-Scale Experiment Used Human Pee to Fertilize Crops. Here’s What Happened

Takeaways:

In response to depleting soil nutrients and harsher weather conditions, people in Niger are looking at using human pee as fertilizers.
Urine already consists of phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, found in traditional fertilizers, and is relatively sterile.
From 2014 to 2016, communities using pee as fertilizer saw an average 30 percent increase in pearl millet yield…[read more].

4. Exxon CEO: All New Cars Electric by 2040 — What That Actually Means

Takeaways:

The CEO of ExxonMobil announced that all new car sales will be electric by 2040.
This could mean that crossover to 100% electric could happen even before this deadline.
And although ExxonMobil is an oil giant, there is still an opportunity to make massive profits as they did a decade ago…[read more].

5. British-Made Ecovado Offers Low-Impact Alternative to “Unsustainable” Avocados

Takeaways:

Arina Shokouhi has invented an avocado alternative called Ecovado, which is meant to wean people off the resource-intensive imported fruit.
The Ecovado is made of a combination of local ingredients and packaged in fake avocado skin made of wax.
The product prototype comprises a mixture of broad beans, hazelnut, apple and rapeseed oil…[read more].

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The Top 5 Happy Eco News Stories for July 25, 2022

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