Life

Coronavirus-killing UV lights

What if we could use light to kill the coronavirus and get back to life as we once knew it? Huge UV spotlights could be a promising way to ensure virus-free outdoor city life.

0The Tea Team

Your friend the robot

These five social robots could improve your daily life. They can watch your kids or mix you up a special cocktail behind the bar, with a little extra lemon, just how you like it.

0N. Berghausen

Candlelight vigils are not enough

The artists’ group “Center for Political Beauty” weaponizes art for radical change. Sometimes, the collective ends up exposing even more problems than they expected.

0R. Meissner

“They killed the journalist. Not the message”

Journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia and Miroslava Breach were killed to prevent their controversial investigations from seeing the light of day. Now, the "Forbidden Stories" project is continuing their research and publishing their stories.

0Y. Martín Fradejas

Fear my rubber duck!

How humorous protests are successfully backfooting the authorities and leading to actual change.

0S. McClennen, S. Popovic

The success of the Ice Bucket Challenge

For all those who doubted that pouring a bucket of ice water over your head could make the world a better place, doubt no longer. Six years after the hype, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has financed the development of a drug for the deadly disease it targeted.

0R. Meissner

Investing in change

Shareholder activism forces companies to listen to criticism of their social and environmental policies and sometimes even to change their course.

0The Tea Team

Right against the right

How German neo-Nazis involuntarily took part in a walkathon to support an anti-racism initiative.

0The Tea Team

In your face: hacking facial recognition systems

So big brother is watching, so what? This picture editing program that is fooling facial recognition software.

0The Tea Team

If you can’t take it to the streets, take it to the supermarket

Moroccans have proven that big business is not untouchable: Three companies in the Arabic country experienced just how closely their fate really depends on the goodwill of their consumers.

0R. El Afia

Home office with a view… and what a view!

Since you’re not allowed to commute to the office anyway, why not work at the pool, or even better, from a Ferris wheel cabin? Japan’s Yomiuriland has been offering infection-proof office booths for remote workers in the amusement park – portable WIFI and charging ports included.

0The Tea Team

Turning shipping containers into COVID-19 hospital wards

An international team of designers, engineers and medical professionals has invented mobile intensive care units for COVID-19 patients built inside shipping containers. Easy and fast to deploy, they offer a safe alternative to hospital tents.

0The Tea Team

Favela communities’ corona dashboards

While the Brazilian government continues to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, Rio de Janeiro’s favela inhabitants are taking action. They have created a number of local data dashboards to share information on infection rates and death tolls, and one even provides medical advice.

0R. Brabbins

Homegrown PPE

Yes, you read right: You can grow your own effective, particle-filtering mask at home in future. All you need is water, sugar, tea – and a certain bacteria.

0The Tea Team

Design meets pandemic

Coronavirus masks are an integral part of our lives these days whether we like it or not. The designer world has responded quickly, turning a necessity into a fashionable accessory – hip, elegant and stylish.

0The Tea Team

Ink Made of Smog

Tailpipe soot could be seen as just another resource – all you need is a good way to use it. In ink, for example, the pollutant is suddenly quite useful.

0The Tea Team

Computers against Covid

A bunch of dedicated geeks gave thousands of Singapore school kids access to home-based learning during the Covid pandemic.

0The Tea Team/ Saad Chinoy

Stay the fuck home bar

St Petersburg firm creates online bar for self-isolating extroverts.

0M. Edwards

The fabrics dreams are made of

These new textiles are revolutionizing the fashion industry: waste-based, compostable, and some actually breathe.

0R. Adam

Edible, compostable, ecological: Natural packaging alternatives for your drink to go

Plastic cups and PET bottles will soon be things of the past, as biodegradable and plastic-free packaging is being developed for beverages as well. We introduce some companies that package milk in a sugar crust, coffee in coffee-bean husks, water in sea algae and beer in cardboard.

0N. Berghausen

AWA Bike: Kickstarting Nigeria’s cycling revolution

In traffic-ridden Nigeria, people are still reluctant to use bicycles, due to the lack of infrastructure and the shame of using a poor man’s mode of transport. AWA Bikes is planning to change these attitudes – and start a cycling revolution.

0L. Unah

Good Hairday Pasta

Are haircare products now being misshelved with the noodles? While they may look like they belong in a high-class salon, Moscow designer Nikita Konkin’s elegant packaging displays pasta.

0N. Berghausen

Re-cycling polluted air

Cycling prevents enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, as bicycles generate about 10 times fewer greenhouse gases than individual motorized transport. But what if we could do even better, and ride smog-cleaning bicycles that sucks up polluted air?

0R. Adam

Resurrecting Salvador Dali

Exceptional artist and eccentric Salvador Dali would have been 115 years old this year. In the virtual world at least, he can now blow out the candles on his birthday cake: The Dali Museum has brought him back to life with Deepfake in the Dali Lives experience.

0The Tea Team

Apple leather handbags

It looks like leather, and feels like leather - but it's actually made out of apples! A Swiss company is breaking new ground in the fashion industry with a unique, vegan handbag collection. Made of fruit waste.

0N. Berghausen

Joana Varon

United women in a man’s world: Joana’s indignation about gender imbalances in technology inspired her to found Coding Rights, an international woman-led network for human rights in the digital sphere. She believes technology development has to be feminist, non-discriminatory, and globally fair.

0Laura Vidal

Regina Mbodj Brown

Regina has high hopes of tech start-ups and their ability to drive the economy, improve health care, and combat poverty. For years she worked as a programmer all over Africa, and today heads the CTIC IT incubator and accelerator in Senegal.

0The Tea Team

Shinta Witoyo Dhanuwardoyo

Shinta Witoyo Dhanuwardoyo is a compulsive serial entrepreneur. Bubbling with new ideas and the enthusiasm to match, she has created at least ten tech companies – including one of Indonesia’s first, Bubu.com – and mentored several others over the span of 20 years.

0Anuradha Sharma

Japleen Pasricha

In a country where rape and discrimination against women are daily evils, activist Japleen Pasricha has made it her mission to ensure women’s voices are heard. She employs digital tools like her Feminism in India online magazine and online campaigns, and raises awareness of cyber harassment.

0Anuradha Sharma

Amel Saidane

One of engineer Amel Saidane’s first clients once asked her, “Why do you bother to sell CRM licenses; why don’t you just sell makeup?” The tech entrepreneur and co-founder of TunisiaStartups knows the challenges women face in the start-up world – and is advocating for change.

0Thalia Rahme

Regina Honu

Regina Honu is determined that women and girls will not be left behind by the digital revolution. The software developer and social entrepreneur founded the Soronko Academy, one of the first coding schools for children and young adults in West Africa. To date, her Tech Needs Girls mentorship programme has trained over 4,500 girls to code.

0Larisa Akrofie

Grazia Vittadini

When you work in aeronautics, the sky is not the limit. As a young girl kicking footballs and skidding across muddy fields with her friends, Grazia Vittadini had no idea she would one day be a leading figure at a company that grosses 67 billion euros annually and dominates the aerospace industry.

0Sarah Berning

Sexual violence stinks

A bracelet that emits a repellent smell in an emergency, protecting the wearer from attack.

0Empowering people.Network

Coffee to go with a green conscience

Freiburg is the first German city to introduce a deposit on reusable coffee cups. The Freiburg Cup not only reduces waste; it also saves coffee lovers the trouble of rinsing out returnable cups.