🌟 The Good News Times – 19th July 2025 Edition
A Forest in the Desert, a Bacteria That Eats Plastic and the City That’s Giving Kids a Vote
1. 🌳 Greening the Impossible - How the Sahara is Slowly Turning Green
In a breathtaking blend of ambition and biology, the Great Green Wall of Africa is not just a dream, it’s becoming a living, breathing ecosystem.
Stretching across the width of the continent, from Senegal to Djibouti, the Great Green Wall is a massive reforestation project planting trees, restoring land, and reviving communities. And in the last year, something wonderful happened - for the first time since the project began, satellite imagery has shown uninterrupted green corridors blooming where desert once crept.
Local farmers are reporting more fertile soil, shade for livestock, and even the return of wild honeybees. In Niger, one farmer named Hajara planted drought-resistant acacia trees around her family’s land. Three years later, she’s harvesting gum arabic, feeding her goats with surplus leaves and sending her daughters to school with the profits.
“We planted trees,” she said in an interview with Positive News UK, “but we also planted our dignity again.”
It’s slow, hard work - but it’s working.
2. 🧪 The Little Bacteria That Could - Nature’s Answer to Plastic Waste
At a university lab in Osaka, Japan, a team of researchers has discovered a bacterium that not only eats plastic - it lives off it. And now, with a few tweaks, it’s doing it even faster.
The bacteria, named Ideonella sakaiensis, was first discovered munching away at old PET bottles in a recycling plant. But here’s the good part - scientists have now bioengineered a “super enzyme” based on this bacterium’s natural plastic-digesting ability and it can break down plastic in days instead of centuries.
The implications? Microplastic-free oceans. Degradable packaging. A world where plastic doesn't outlive us by 500 years.
And the cherry on top? The byproducts of the digestion process can be reused to make fresh plastic again, completing a truly circular loop.
It’s nature meeting nurture in the most inspiring way.
3. 🗳️ Let the Children Speak - A City in France is Giving Kids a Voice
In the city of Poitiers, France, something beautiful is happening. Children as young as 7 now have a formal voice in local decision-making through their very own “Youth Assembly.”
Every few months, 20 local schoolchildren gather in Poitiers’ town hall, not to play pretend, but to discuss real policies on playgrounds, pedestrian zones and urban planning. Their ideas are imaginative, practical, and bursting with empathy.
Among their recent wins?
Child-height buttons at pedestrian crossings
More trees around school zones for shade and climate cooling
Public water fountains designed for dogs and small children
The mayor said, “Children remind us of the future we keep talking about. So why not invite them into the conversation now?”
Imagine if every city in the world had a youth cabinet. Imagine what we’d learn.
4. 🐬 Bonus Glimmer - Dolphins Return to the Thames
For the first time in decades, bottlenose dolphins have been spotted leaping from the River Thames just outside London. Thanks to cleaner water, stricter marine protections and a decline in industrial waste, species once thought lost to the murky waters are returning home.
And it’s not just dolphins. Eels, otters, and even seahorses have joined the quiet parade of nature reclaiming space in the heart of the city.
Londoners walking along the riverbank gasped as one dolphin leapt high above the surface last week. One child yelled, “It’s like a real-life magic trick!”
Maybe it is.
Final Thought - What If This Is Just the Beginning?
We live in a world that can sometimes feel heavy with grief and uncertainty. But beneath the headlines, through the cracks, and inside the soil, good things are growing.
🌱 Trees are reclaiming deserts.
🧫 Tiny organisms are solving giant problems.
🧒 Children are shaping cities.
🐬 Dolphins are swimming in waters we once gave up on.
What if wonder is not a rare spark, but a quiet light that never really goes out?
Here’s to watching, tending, and celebrating that light - together.