Not everything has to be about technical debt, monopolies, or the latest AI hype. Every now and then, I like to share a couple of stories that feel… well, hopeful.
I picked these up from the Good News podcast (worth tuning in to if you want proof that the world isn’t entirely going to hell). Two simple ideas caught my ear:
• Seaweed packaging: Notpla and others are making compostable wrappers from kelp. They’re already in stadiums and sandwich boxes, and the goal is to cut billions of single-use plastics. People · Planet · Progress in a sandwich wrapper.
• A sand battery in Finland: In Pornainen, a silo of sand stores surplus renewable heat and pipes it into homes, cutting carbon emissions by 70 %. Not sexy, but it works.
Neither of these will get the hype of a Silicon Valley moonshot. But they’re clever, human-scale innovations that just… make sense.
Off-Ledger thought: Maybe progress isn’t about big tech promises or trillion-dollar valuations. Sometimes it’s seaweed and sand, re-engineered with a bit of imagination.
This is REAL innovation💪🏼
Got to start somewhere. The mindset of ‘what do I matter if USA, India, China don’t follow suit?’ doesn’t help shift the dial at all!!