Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
While serving a 90-year prison sentence for selling marijuana, Richard DeLisi's wife died, as did his 23-year-old son and both his parents. Yet, 71-year-old DeLisi walked out of a Florida prison Tuesday morning grateful and unresentful as he hugged his tearful family. After serving 31 years, he said he's just eager to restore the lost time. DeLisi was believed to be the longest-serving nonviolent cannabis prisoner, according to the The Last Prisoner Project which championed his release. DeLisi was sentenced to 90 years for marijuana trafficking in 1989 at the age of 40 even though the typical sentence was only 12 to 17 years. Now, he wants "to make the best of every bit of my time" fighting for the release of other inmates through his organization FreeDeLisi.com. "The system needs to change and I'm going to try my best to be an activist," he said. Chiara Juster, a former Florida prosecutor who handled the case pro bono for the The Last Prisoner Project, criticized DeLisi's lengthy sentence as "a sick indictment of our nation." The family has spent over $250,000 on attorneys' fees and over $80,000 on long-distance international collect calls over the past few decades. Rick DeLisi was only 11-years-old when he sat in the courtroom and said goodbye to his father. Now, he's a successful business owner with a wife and three children living in Amsterdam. "I can't believe they did this to my father," the grieving son said. His voice cracks and his eyes well up with tears as he talks about how grateful he is to finally see his dad.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
2020 marks the 82nd year that researchers at Harvard University began following 724 college age men as part of the longest running study in history on human development. Their objective? To determine what factors lead to healthy and happy lives. Key results suggest that happiness and health do not result from fame and fortune. Instead, as the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development Robert Waldinger put it, the clearest message to emerge is, “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.” Close relationships ... are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. Research from University College London found that people with a greater sense of purpose in life lived longer than those with the lowest sense of purpose. A study conducted with the elderly showed those who helped others lived longer lives. Researchers from Norway found that women who rated high for humor had a 48 percent lower risk of death from all causes. Research from University College London showed people who felt younger had a lower death rate than those who felt their own age or older. A Harvard study found the most optimistic people had a 16 percent lower risk of death from cancer, a 38 percent lower risk of death from heart disease and respiratory disease, and a 39 percent lower risk of dying from stroke. Research from UC Berkeley shows that experiencing awe can actually impact health by reducing inflammation and lowering the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.
Note: The above article contains a great list of questions designed to help improve wellbeing. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
When the U.N.’s 2019 World Happiness Report came out last month, Finland ranked on top for the second year in a row. Small Finland — about 75% the size of California with just 5.5 million people — consistently trounces the United States and other developed nations on ratings of life satisfaction, health, safety, governance, community and social progress. The underlying reason Finns are faring so well is because we have a different mindset about success — one that’s based on equity and community. In the United States, happiness and success are perceived as individual pursuits, indeed, even competitive ones. In Finland, success is a team sport. While Finland is by no means struggling financially, its GDP per capita is lower than those of its neighboring Nordic countries, and much lower than that of the U.S. The difference is, in the words of Meik Wiking of the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, “the Finns are good at converting wealth into well-being.” The more equal a society is, the happier its citizens are. Finland is ranked among the most equal of all the 36 OECD countries. This ... helps support overall high levels of trust. Finns trust one another and, perhaps more impressively, they trust their government. And although Finns pay some of the highest taxes worldwide, there is a transparency to the Finnish system that many other countries lack. Every year the government makes public the tax data of all its citizens and corporations on what has come to be called National Envy Day.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ever since our Paleolithic ancestors began painting caves, carving figurines, dancing and singing, engaging in the arts has been interwoven with health and healing. Look through the early writings of every major medical tradition around the world and you find the arts. What is much newer – and rapidly accelerating over the past two decades – is a blossoming scientific evidence-base identifying and quantifying exactly what the health benefits of the arts are. Randomised trials on the mental health benefits of the arts now number in triple figures, with regular singing, dancing, reading, crafts, and cultural pursuits shown to reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress for people of all ages. Some studies suggest that combining creative arts therapies such as music therapy with antidepressants and counselling can nearly double the improvements in depressive symptoms compared with standard treatments alone. But the arts can also be beneficial preventatively. People who regularly go to the theatre, live music events, museums, galleries and the cinema have nearly half the risk of developing depression. People who are regularly engaged in cultural activities perform better on cognitive tests as they age, showing slower rates of decline in ability and a lower risk of developing dementia, and they are on average older if and when they do get that diagnosis than people who aren't engaged in the arts.
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Almost two decades after the first iPhone was released, a trend for lower tech devices appears to be taking shape, with a growing minority swapping their smartphones for "dumb phones". With new models such as the Boring Phone, the trend is partly being fuelled by young people's suspicion of the data- and attention-harvesting tech they have grown up with, as well as a bid to live more offline. And while smartphones are the obvious target for this trend, the "newtro" (a portmanteau of "new" and "retro") movement is heralding a revival of analogue media, including cassettes and fanzines, against the backdrop of the enduring, and much-heralded, vinyl boom. While Jess Perriam, 39, had become exhausted by her Instagram feed, she knew she wanted to keep a window into the lives of others. So she turned to Postcrossing, a site that connects people who want to send and receive postcards from strangers around the world. "I still wanted to have that connection with people and learn more about different cultures, but not necessarily while being aggressively marketed at," she said, adding that she receives "stacks of reading recommendations" through the post. The community has more than 800,000 members across 207 countries, with 77 million postcards received since it launched in 2005. As well as writing to people she has never met, she also corresponds with an old friend in the US. "It forces me to sit down and think, what do I want to communicate to my friend?"
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
Kenya's highest court recently struck down as unconstitutional a law that forbade seed sharing, a long practiced traditional means of diversifying crop production and resilience. The law, whether inadvertently or by design, made Kenya another country within the network of those whose seed industry is virtually controlled by a small group of international conglomerates like Bayer–or Monsanto before it was bought out. Advocates on behalf of small-scale farmers and indigenous communities in Kenya said the 2016 Seeds and Plant Varieties Act infringed on their rights to practice indigenous activities, while advocates for seed-saving and seed-sharing say that the practice produces drought-resistant, pest-resistant crops better suited to local areas that don't require as many imported agrochemicals to grow. In November, Kenyan High Court Justice Rhoda Rutto ruled that by limiting "access to traditional and indigenous seeds, contrary to the Constitution," the law violated "the petitioners' and small-scale farmers' cultural rights" and eroded "the cultural distinctiveness of Kenya's indigenous peoples." "This judgment rightly recognizes that seed sharing is not a crime, but a fundamental element of peasants' identity, resilience and contribution to national food systems," said the Working Group on Peasants. Like many traditional farming cultures, Kenyan farmers share and exchange seeds after the growing season, and over time this has led to millions of genetically distinct crops.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and healing the Earth.
My life, at least at the beginning, followed a very traditional path. I believed science was moving us beyond religion and superstitions about life after death. But as my interest in the unexplainable grew, I started to see trends. Experts who weren't working together were finding the same results: that things science couldn't possibly explain like near-death experiences or psychic phenomena, were happening. I looked at documents from a CIA program where people were asked to send their thoughts – using just their minds – to others. The program concluded that there was a "statistically significant" success in doing this. I read multiple accounts of near-death experiences where a blind person was able to see, or a deaf person was able to hear. I reviewed stories of children who recalled past lives, and could even speak languages that they'd never been taught, at least in this lifetime. As I went to the primary sources and interviewed scientists, I felt like I had opened Pandora's box. I had always felt, and been taught, that science led us away from the paranormal. Now, that belief was turned on its head: I became convinced that science was showing us there is something bigger that can't be explained by our current scientific understanding of the universe. I've come to believe in non-local consciousness, or consciousness that originates outside our physical bodies and outside our brains. To me, this is the most scientifically sound explanation.
Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us.Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.
Despair is nothing more than ... reducing the immense vista of reality to a particular interpretation of a particular moment. While orbiting a war-torn world aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Chris Hadfield took questions from earthlings in a Reddit AMA. Asked for his advice to anyone on the brink of giving up and his own approach to those moments of darkest despair, he offers: "I remind myself that each sunrise is a harbinger of another chance, and to take quiet, unrecognised pride in the accomplishments I get done each day. Each evening my intended list is unfinished, but I celebrate what I've done, and resolve to do better tomorrow. Also, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first seems. Keep at it with optimism – it is your life to tinker with, learn from, live and love." This ongoingness of creation – the fact that this world is unfinished and our story unwritten – is nowhere more visible, life's ceaseless insistence on itself nowhere more palpable, than when seen on the scale of the entire planet. Hadfield captures this elemental calibration of perspective: "It's endlessly surprising how continually beautiful our changing, ancient, gorgeous Earth is. Every one of my 1,650 orbits, I saw something new. And I was up long enough to watch the seasons swap ends on the planet, like Mother Earth taking one breath out of 4.5 billion breaths." It is not unimportant that the word "holy" shares its Latin root with "whole" and has its Indo-European origins in the notion of the interleaving of all things.
Note: Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan watched Earth from space for 178 days and came to the realization that we humans are living a lie with our extractive economic systems and how we treat each other and the Earth. Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.
I moved to Fawkner, Melbourne with my partner and kids about five years ago, in search of affordable housing. The suburb was nice enough but I felt unmoored. Then I signed up to help with our school garden. On volunteer day, my partner pushed our kids to school in a wheelbarrow, and I was armed with a shovel and pitchfork. Around 50 people turned up to the school on a Sunday to help with the garden, and while the kids played, the adults chose jobs according to our levels of ability and enthusiasm. My partner opted to repair the garden beds and I went for the lower-stakes job of weeding. It was slow and careful work, pulling out dandelions and chickweed. Between gardening and tending to the kids, there were moments of socialising: a nod of thanks from a teacher, a chat with another parent about the out-of-control compost heap that lives behind the mud kitchen. These conversations were tentative, at least on my part; the pandemic and early motherhood had left me out of practice when it came to socialising. However, the school garden was the perfect place to learn how to be with other people again and I could see that I was surrounded by the sorts of people who I wanted to befriend. Working together in this way brings us close to what Aristotle called "the friendship of the good". This, according to Aristotle, is the best kind of friendship: it happens when you see the good in another person, and they in you. It is very different to what he calls a "utilitarian friendship", where we spend time with another person because of what they can do for us. A friendship of the good, conversely – like the school garden itself – is about creating something bigger than ourselves.
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Young people have become powerless against the multibillion-dollar tech companies whose apps exploit adolescents' need for social acceptance. This is the backdrop against which my book, "The Anxious Generation," was published in 2024. The book helped fuel the movement to reclaim childhood from tech companies – a movement that has since spread, driven in part by the protective passions of parents. Already, a majority of states have enacted laws to limit phone use in school. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have gone all the way and enacted "bell-to-bell" phone restriction policies, which liberate students from the distraction of their phones for the entire school day. Outside of the United States, Brazil has made every school phone-free, and new school phone policies have passed in the Netherlands, Finland and South Korea, among other countries. We are just beginning to see some of the impacts: Children are more attentive in class and are reading more books; teachers have told me they hear more laughter in the halls and at lunch. Heavy social media use doubles the risk of depression for adolescents. Just as we have age limits in the real world for porn, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and many other products, countries have begun enacting policies to add age restrictions to social media. These things may seem small, but in terms of children's development ... they're enormous.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education.
Susan Abookire, an internist and professor at Harvard Medical School, had a cure for all that ailed me. "Find a being. The being might be a tree or rock," she told me. "Greet it as you would a friend. You might want to introduce yourself. You may want to share something with that being." I was participating, somewhat skeptically, in a forest bathing session Abookire was leading at Harvard's Arnold Arboretum for seven young doctors. It's part of resident training ... which is looking for ways to reduce stress and burnout within the profession. She explained that just by standing among the trees, we were inhaling essential tree oils called phytoncides and aromatic plant compounds called terpenes. "There's several studies now showing that inhaling phytoncides boosts our immune system, and specifically our natural killer-cell numbers and activities go up," she said. Breathing in tree scents fights infection, prevents cancer and protects against dementia. Qing Li, a professor at Japan's Nippon Medical School ... told me, "the larger the trees, the higher the tree density, and the larger the forest area, the greater the effects of forest bathing." More phytoncides and more terpenes, more benefit. He also believes we profit from inhaling negative ions (found in abundance near waterfalls) as well as a microorganism found in the soil, Mycobacterium vaccae. He recommends spending two to four hours in the forest walking at a slow pace ... and paying attention to your senses.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and healing the Earth.
"This is the farm," Sierra Alea said. "This is how to eliminate food waste from landfills," Alea said. That's the idea behind Afterlife Ag, the mushroom-growing startup of which she is a co-founder. Winson Wong, another co-founder of Afterlife Ag, said that 80 to 85 percent of what is thrown away in a restaurant is "prep waste, " material like egg shells, lemon wedges and tomato peels. Afterlife Ag's model [is] picking up restaurant waste – not the scraps that customers had left on their plates but discards from the chefs who had prepared their meals – and returning with mushrooms. Soon Afterlife Ag was involved in the intricacies of farming and creating substrate in which to grow mushrooms, sometimes with wood chips or shavings from sawmills, sometimes with sawdust from purveyors that smoke fish, sometimes with hemp from hemp farms. "Food waste varies from day to day," said Aaron Kang, the head grower at Afterlife Ag. Afterlife Ag harvests mushrooms every day and packs them in five-pound boxes for delivery to its restaurant clients. It also sells to schools and hospitals. At one of the restaurants – State Grill and Bar, at 21 West 33rd Street, in the Empire State Building – the chef, Morgan Jarrett, made four dishes with ingredients from Afterlife Ag, starting with a mousse made from pink oyster mushrooms and black king trumpet mushrooms, topped by jangajji, a type of pickled mushroom.
Note: This article is also available here. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and healing the Earth.
This week, the nonprofit Veterans Community Project (VCP) broke ground on its sixth tiny home village, this time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to offer more military veterans a fresh start with housing and individualized care. Each 240-square-foot home is part of a larger community designed to help residents regain stability and independence. Since its founding in 2018 when they welcomed their first residents in Kansas City, VCP has helped hundreds of vets transition out of homelessness. VCP has set a new standard for how cities can address veteran homelessness, with its 85% success rate for vets who complete the program successfully and transition to sustainable permanent housing–all in an average of 335 days. Army combat veteran Dave Myers ... had never heard of VCP when his life was spinning out of control three years ago, addicted to drugs after returning home from war. He now smiles recalling a judge's words ordering him to become a volunteer after he got clean in prison: "He told me, â€You're going to spend so much time with these guys that they're either going to love you or hate you ... I hope it's the former, and that they offer you a job after.'" Dave is now a full-time operations employee at VCP and is fulfilling his dream to help Veterans. "I was able to connect with our residents in some ways that not a lot of other people can. I've been in their shoes." "This place saved me," he said proudly.
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Equipped with her own tailored bee suit and a hood to cover her floppy ears, Maple – a former police dog – has an important retirement task: helping save thousands of honeybee hives. The canine has spent the past five months sniffing Michigan bee colonies for American foulbrood, a highly contagious bacteria that's fatal to the insects. Maple, an English springer spaniel, uses her extraordinary sense of smell as a "high-speed screening tool" to prevent beekeepers from having to manually inspect every hive. American foulbrood only becomes detectable to humans by smell when it reaches severe infection, at which point the colony risks death, said Meghan Milbrath, a researcher and assistant professor of entomology at Michigan State University. The ultimate goal is for Maple's work to serve as a blueprint for teaching canines to detect honeybee diseases. It's part of a larger bee conservation effort in a record-breaking year for colony death in the United States ... primarily driven by pesticides, pathogens, poor nutrition and pests. Although Maple's new "target odor" is distinct from her previous job ... the fundamentals remain the same. Handlers expose the canines to a scent, offer a reward and teach the dog to conduct an action that means they've found the odor they're looking for. In Maple's case, she sits when she detects the smell. [Handler, Sue] Stejskal said she has to train Maple to be familiar and comfortable with the new environment so the pup can focus on the target odor.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.
What started as a grassroots movement in the United States over a decade ago, park prescriptions have become an evidence-based treatment regimen that helps people confront both mental and physical ailments by spending more time outdoors. In fact, at least nine countries now have nature prescription programs in some form. Park prescriptions fall under an area of medicine called "social prescribing," which encourages doctors to consider non-clinical treatments in primary mental and physical healthcare. "Social prescribing is a model of care delivery that enables health professionals to formally prescribe non-clinical community activities – including the arts, movement, nature, and service (volunteering) – to improve patient health, and at minimal patient cost," Social Prescribing USA's website reads. "Social prescribing is designed to address social determinants of health, including social connection. Built on a foundation of health equity and collaboration across sectors, social prescribing is intended to broaden health professional toolkits, rather than to replace pharmacological measures." Studies show that stress hormone levels drop after just 15 minutes outside; spending time in forests reduces inflammation and risks of lung infections; increasing nature time reduces risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes; and seniors who live near walkable green spaces live longer.
Note: Read our Substack to learn about social and green prescribing along with other inspiring remedies to the chronic illness crisis ravaging the world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and mental health.
Until 2014, Abdullah Shrem was a beekeeper in Iraq. Then Islamic State forces arrived, announcing their terror in symbols daubed on the doorways of the homes they raided: "They wrote the letter Y on our homes and on our stores and built a barrier like the Berlin Wall – N for the Christians, and Y for the Yazidis. S for the Sunnis, and Sh for the Shi'ites," Shrem recalls. The Yazidis met the worst fate: men were marched into mass graves and shot, while women were separated – young from old, mothers from children, wives from virgins. The younger were taken to a "marketplace" to be sold as sex slaves or sabaya; the older were killed or sold as domestic slaves. Shrem's response was extraordinary: he left beekeeping to create a network of rescuers – modelled on the female-led fortress of the beehive – who would return the kidnapped women to their families. "I cultivated a hive of transporters and smugglers from both sexes to save our queens," he tells Dunya Mikhail, an American-Iraqi journalist, whose book is centred on the women Shrem rescues. The women form the book's heart. Their stories, however courageous, read like a litany of horrors, some painfully detailed. What is striking is the unaugmented record of experiences, transcribed in first-person testimonies and knitted together with Shrem's words. The multiplicity of voices creates a verbatim record – a chorus of experience – rather than following the ... narrative arc of heroic exceptionalism.
Note: A 2021 news article by the CBC about his heroic work reported that he has saved about 400 individuals from ISIS forces. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and ending human trafficking.
Tina imagined the sound of Ira's key in the door, and then she realized she would never hear that sound again. It had all been stolen from her. Someone would have to pay the price. "Whoever killed my son," she said, "they were gonna get it." In the days after Ira's death, there were other things besides retribution to keep Tina busy. Tina had wondered for a while about $50 that disappeared from her bank account. Then a woman approached Tina at a vigil for Ira and told her a story. Her boyfriend had been beating her, and Ira found out, and he gave her $50 for a bus ticket so she could get out of town. Turned out he had his own little ministry. And Tina continued that ministry: listening to Ira's friends, having them over for lunch or dinner, occasionally giving someone a place to crash. She thought less and less about revenge. That December, a grand jury indicted two men for the murder of Ira Hopkins. On October 27, 2017, following guilty pleas, [Jy'Aire Smith-Pennick] appeared in court for his sentencing. Almost seven years passed from Jy'Aire's sentencing until the day Tina saw him in person again. "I'm in prison for participating in a murder," he would later say. "And the mother of this man is here, present, on behalf of me, watching me receive my degree." When Jy'Aire gets out, he plans to study sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He and Tina will work together on the IRA Foundation, teaching at-risk kids that there are better options than drugs and violence.
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By the early 1990s, extremist Hutu propaganda had started to spread in newspapers and on the radio, radicalizing Rwandans. Over the course of just 100 days [in 1994], about 800,000 Rwandans, primarily Tutsi, were killed. On April 22, 1994, [Hussein] Longolongo recounted, he and an armed group of men entered a chapel where dozens of Tutsi were hiding. "We killed about 70 people," he said. "I was brainwashed." Eventually, more than 120,000 Hutu were arrested on charges of participating in the genocide. In prison, [Longolongo] was forced to take part in a government-sanctioned reeducation program. He initially dismissed much of what he heard. "But as time went on, I became convinced that what I did was not right," he told me. Longolongo also participated in more than 100 of what were known as gacaca trials. Gacaca–which roughly translates to "justice on the grass"–had historically been used in Rwandan villages and communities to settle interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts. Now the government transformed the role of the gacaca court to handle allegations of genocide. Many survivors were initially reluctant. "They would say, â€How can you forgive those people?'" [Albert] Rutikanga told them that these conversations weren't something they should do for the perpetrators. "Forgiveness is a choice of healing yourself," he would say. "You cannot keep the anger and bitterness inside, because it will destroy you."
Note: Read how a Rwandan woman forgave the man who killed her husband during the 1994 genocide and allowed his daughter to marry her son. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
In 2023, Courtney Dauwalter became the first person, male or female, to win the Triple Crown, the three most iconic 100-mile races in the world, in a single season. Dauwalter does not have a coach or a strict training plan. She's never been on Strava and doesn't plan races far ahead of time. She runs in long shorts and baggy clothes because, she says, they are more comfortable. She eats candy while training and drinks beer afterwards, because that's what makes her the most happy. "If I'm happy, the engine works way better." While her philosophy may sound casual, the results say otherwise. In the last decade, Dauwalter has won more than 50 ultras, often in dominant fashion, and is widely considered the greatest of all time. Without a coach or set training plan, Dauwalter trains entirely on feel. Her days are structured loosely, which allows for adaptability. She makes decisions intuitively, like how many hill repeats to run or how big her loop should be that day. Curiosity led her to ultrarunning, but success didn't come immediately. In 2012, Dauwalter dropped out of her first 100-mile race, which initially made her doubt herself. "I remember thinking I was a joke for trying it, but that moment was a key part of my path. It taught me about the mental side of ultrarunning and how important the things you tell yourself are, especially in the hardest moments." Years later, Dauwalter's mental fortitude is what truly sets her apart.
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories about healing our bodies.
When you imagine a 3D-printed home, you probably picture a boxy concrete structure. As 3D printing's popularity has grown in the construction industry – thanks to its efficiency when it comes to time, energy and cost – carbon-intensive concrete has become the go-to building material. But a project in Maine has set its sights on something different: a neighborhood of 600-square-foot, 3D-printed, bio-based houses crafted from materials like wood fibers and bioresins. The aim: a complex of 100-percent recyclable buildings that will provide homes to those experiencing houselessness. In late 2022, an initiative between the University of Maine and local nonprofit Penquis unveiled its prototype – BioHome3D, the first 100-percent recyclable house. Now, the pioneering project is working toward completing its first livable housing complex. It will be fully bio-based, meaning all materials will be derived from living organisms such as plants and other renewable agricultural, marine and forestry materials. As the materials are all 100-percent recyclable, so become the buildings. The materials are also all renewable. And thanks to its natural composition, the home acts as a carbon sink, sequestering 46 tons of carbon dioxide per 600-square-foot unit. The materials for this project will mainly come from wood left over by local mills. "The wood fiber material that's used in the mix is essentially waste wood here in Maine," says Jason Bird, director of housing development for Penquis.
Note: Don't miss pictures of beautiful homes built by this process at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

