Good news stories from the past seven days
The British cyclists Adam and Simon Yates have become the first twins ever to achieve the top two positions in a stage of the Tour de France. Adam, who is the younger of the brothers by five minutes, beat Simon by four seconds in stage one of the tour in Bilbao, taking the first yellow jersey of the 2023 race. Their mother Susan, a civil servant, told reporters that she’d watched their victory unfold on her phone in the car, while being driven by her husband John, the twins’ father, along the stage route. “I was just screaming and shouting,” she said. “I didn’t care who won, I just wanted one of them to win.”
Company clears 13,700 tonnes of plastic pollution from sea
A US-based company that was founded six years ago to clean up the oceans has retrieved 13,700 tonnes of plastic and other man-made waste – more than any other organisation. 4ocean employs hundreds of captains and crew in the US, Guatemala and Indonesia to gather plastic from oceans and rivers. The waste is then taken to processing centres to be sorted. Depending on its type, it is then either recycled, extruded for use in plastic lumber, or responsibly disposed of.
Demand rises for ‘swift bricks’ that provide birds with homes
Demand is growing for “swift bricks”, which can be laid alongside normal bricks in new buildings to provide nesting spaces for the endangered birds. One manufacturer based in Derbyshire makes bricks that – in a design co-created with the RSPB – have a small hole in the front, a grippy entrance to help swifts land, a concave dish to make nest building easier, internal channels for drainage and tabs to aid bricklaying. Next week, a petition to make the bricks compulsory in all new housing in the UK will be debated in Parliament.
