Australia
The Society for Conservation Biology Oceania partnered with Taronga Conservation Society to host an Earth Optimism “Soapbox Science” hour at Taronga Zoo in Sydney on Earth Day, April 22nd, 2021. The event featured success stories from leading conservationists in the Sydney area. Here are the highlights:
Alex Carthey, Habitat pods
Australia’s vast bushfires had huge direct impacts but the removal of ground cover also made surviving animals much more vulnerable to predation from cats and foxes. Alex Carthey from Macquarie University has developed an ingenious solution – made from recycled cardboard.
Roxane Francis, A bird’s eye view into waterbird breeding
How do you count large colonies of waterbirds while staying safe from crocodiles? Combining drones with new image-sensing technology means researchers can do so cheaply and speedily, shedding new light on the health of wetlands.
Enjoyed those videos? Want to be inspired by solutions that you can be a part of in your day to day life? Earth Optimism Australia is excited to be joining up with Taronga HATCH to feature solutions from passionate changemakers to tackle the most pressing environmental and conservation challenges currently facing our planet. Watch these videos for a taste of HATCH successes to date.
Naomi Tarszisz, Rethinking reuse with RePlated
RePlated is tackling the problem of single-use by creating reusable takeaway food containers. As a business that is circular by design, RePlated is trying to elevate reuse while making behaviour change simple.
Good-Edi
Meet Catherine and Aniyo, the founders of Good-Edi based in Melbourne, Australia. Good-Edi is the only takeaway coffee cup you can eat! Good-Edi want to change the way we enjoy takeaway coffee with their edible (and tasty!) grain-based coffee cup that you can enjoy as a post-coffee snack, or it will breakdown naturally in less than two weeks in your garden, compost or rubbish. With Good-Edi you can have your coffee and eat it too!
PoopLoop
Meet the PoopLoop team from Melbourne, Australia, who are committed to closing the waste loop by helping people to see dog poo as a resource, not a waste-product. The PoopLoop is a community-based composting system designed to manage the copious amounts of dog poo produced in parks and green spaces every day. It will divert dog poo away from landfill and, once processed, becomes a safe and productive compost for local parks and gardens. With 9 million dogs in Australia and more than 470 million pet dogs worldwide, that’s a lot of dog poo we can keep out of the trash and turn into compost treasure.