A backyard lab that turns Nairobi's plastic into paving stones
Kenyan engineer Nzambi Matee left her job, set up a lab in her mother's back yard and developed paving blocks made from waste plastic mixed with sand.
Stories
Stories of people making a difference
Real people, real places, and sources for every claim. Filter by country, problem or topic, or browse them all.
A lawyer and his neighbour start clearing a Mumbai beach
Mumbai lawyer Afroz Shah and an elderly neighbour began picking up rubbish on Versova Beach in 2015; weekly volunteer clean-ups grew into a long-running citizen movement.
A mountain town that sorts its rubbish into 45 categories
Kamikatsu, a small town in Tokushima, declared Japan's first zero-waste goal in 2003; residents wash, sort and bring their waste to a central station.
A teenager's scrap-metal windmill in rural Malawi
After famine forced him out of school, 14-year-old William Kamkwamba used a library book and scrap parts to build a windmill that brought electric light to his family's home.
A young Anishinaabe water protector speaks up for clean water
Inspired by boil-water notices she saw as a child, Autumn Peltier has spent her youth calling on leaders to protect water and guarantee safe drinking water for First Nations.
Birthday Trees: a Ugandan teenager's way to replant forests
Ugandan teenager Leah Namugerwa marked her 15th birthday by planting 200 trees, then started Birthday Trees, inviting others to celebrate birthdays by planting trees.
Bogotá's waste pickers organise to be paid for recycling
A third-generation waste picker, Nohra Padilla helped organise Bogotá's recyclers and won legal recognition and payment for their work in the city's waste system.
Cargo bikes and reward points for recycling in Lagos
Wecyclers sends riders on cargo tricycles into low-income Lagos neighbourhoods to collect recyclables, rewarding households with points they can swap for food, goods or cash.
Catching fog for water above Lima's hillside settlements
Abel Cruz and his movement put up nylon mesh nets on the hills around Lima to catch coastal fog, giving water-poor settlements a small, local supply.
If children can't reach school, the school comes by boat
Architect Mohammed Rezwan founded Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which runs solar-powered boats serving as schools, libraries and clinics for flood-prone villages in north-west Bangladesh.
Law students in Vanuatu take climate change to the World Court
In 2019, 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific began a campaign that led to the International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion on climate change.
Mayan beekeepers take the fight for their honey to Mexico's Supreme Court
Mayan beekeeper Leydy Pech built a coalition that challenged genetically modified soy permits in court, defending native bees, honey livelihoods and Indigenous communities' right to be consulted.
Niger's farmers who let the trees grow back
In southern Niger, farmers began protecting and pruning tree stumps that resprouted in their fields, regreening millions of hectares of farmland at very low cost.
Planting vegetables in public spaces across a Pennine town
Volunteers in Todmorden began planting herbs, fruit and vegetables in public spaces for anyone to pick, sparking a wider Incredible Edible movement.
Slowing meltwater to store ice for spring sowing in Ladakh
Retired engineer Chewang Norphel builds low-cost 'artificial glaciers' that freeze winter stream water near Ladakhi villages so it melts in time for spring sowing.
The Amsterdam meet-up that made repair social again
In 2009 Martine Postma held a free repair meet-up in Amsterdam. The idea of volunteers helping neighbours fix broken things has since spread to thousands of Repair Cafés worldwide.
The teenager who began planting bamboo on a bare sandbar
Since 1979 Jadav Payeng has planted and tended trees on an eroded Brahmaputra sandbar in Assam, growing a forest now known as Molai.
The women of N'jau who turned plastic bags into purses
In a Gambian village with no rubbish collection, Isatou Ceesay and a handful of women began crocheting discarded plastic bags into purses to sell, creating income and cleaner streets.
Two schoolgirls ask Bali to say goodbye to plastic bags
Sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen started Bye Bye Plastic Bags in Bali in 2013, campaigning with petitions and clean-ups until the province restricted single-use plastic.
Waorani communities map their forest and win a court case to keep oil out
Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo helped unite communities, map their territory and win a 2019 court ruling that protected about half a million acres of Amazon forest from an oil auction.
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