Tag: Ethics

Animals don’t have to die for exotic leather products. It is, however, perfectly legal to use tusks from extinct mammoths for making luxury wood carvings, chess figures or jewellery. Since this type of ivory is mostly extracted from permafrost regions or near Polar seas, many elephants fall victim to the illegal ivory trade. It is impossible to make out...

Used, starch-based juice bottles dissolve in water. If only recycling printed circuit boards (PCBs) from plastic and glass fibre were as easy. Enter a US-based research team which has manufactured a PCB prototype using cutting-edge sustainable polymers known as vitrimers. When exposed to mild heat, their molecular compounds loosen so that tears or holes can be repaired. The team...

In Italy, tomatoes have a life after dinner. Chocolate is another cherished Italian staple. Yet, instead of using cocoa, a regional startup began looking to carob for a more sustainable alternative. Sweet and high-in-fibre, the legume also works against free radicals in the body. The carob tree thrives in the dry, southern Italian climate. If used, 2,400 litres of...

Old furniture can find a new home. And, thanks to a London-based startup, children’s cuddly toys needn’t end up in the trash either. The concept is simple enough: kids inevitably move on, but old toys can still bring joy to someone new. Tired teddies and stuffed animals are donated to the female founder’s startup directly in the post. There...

Thanks to a small robot, visually-impaired children can be better integrated into conversations. However, young people, and young women in particular, often see more than they bargained for in chat rooms or on social media. Images of male sexual parts, for example. Or hate-filled comments and insulting statements about gender. Which is why a female founder and her Berlin-based...

Monitoring the fish population could prevent overfishing. Where industrial fishing is concerned, however, there is still room for improvement. Using satellite images and vessel GPS trackers, a US-based non-profit organisation collated 2 million gigabytes of data spanning the years 2017-2021. Data harnessed, in turn, to train an artificial intelligence that could map vessel activities and offshore infrastructure such as...

Creatives can transform their stories into games or compose music on smartphones and share it on their socials. The most well-known AI chatbots are trained using data that software firms find on the internet - even if creatives haven't consented to its use. Reason enough for a US-based organisation to try and make things more equitable. Their method? To...

Modern tests for mosquito sprays use an artificial hydrogel skin. The effectiveness of new medication, meanwhile, can be analysed without harming animals. But animal testing hasn’t gone away. Enter a US-based Non-Profit-Organisation which has acquired an entire testing facility in Oklahoma, sparing 200 cats and dogs from further experimentation. The labs on the 120,000 square metre property were formerly...