Thriving Pulse
Recent news stories that caught my eye
Image: Kind Designs team
Angel Investment
😇 Golden Seeds invests exclusively in women-led companies. In 2025, 24% all new companies they invested in were in climate tech. Companies like Kind Designs, which which uses large-scale 3D printing to create "living seawalls" that mimic the structure of natural ecosystems such as mangrove root. Or PolyGone Systems Inc, an enterprise of women scientists that has developed a novel filter media that attracts microplastics. Or RCOAST, which is building the world’s first AI-powered library of coastal protection.
Green Politics
🇬🇧 A 34-year old former plumber, Hannah Spencer, beat Reform and Labour candidates to give the Green Party its first MP by-election win. Her campaign included speaking up against the threat of genocide in Palestine. Meanwhile, the UK Government announced £345 million for a farm innovation fund, including Environmental Land Management (ELM) Capital Grants to improve environmental services, such as planting hedgerows for biodiversity, installing slurry storage tanks, and introducing natural flood management measures.
Carbon Credits
🔥 While the EU agreed to limit the scope (i.e. weaken) its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) for managing human rights and environmental risks in the supply chain, the UN gave us better news, issuing the first carbon credits under the Paris Climate Agreement. This was for a clean‑cookstoves project in Myanmar in partnership with South Korea. Over 2 billion people are without access to clean cooking, putting pressure on forests and impacting the health of women and girls, besides the direct emissions from fires or kerosene stoves.
Ethical AI
🤖 Microsoft met its target of 100% renewable electricity in 2025, having contracted 40 gigawatts (GW) since 2020. That's a lot. They also doubled down on their commitment to be carbon negative by 2030 and to add more "carbon-free" energy (read: nuclear). Meanwhile, Anthropic has resisted pressure from the Pentagon to compromise it's ethics by working with the military. I'm a recent fan. Anthropic is a public-benefit corporation with a strong commitment to ethics and transparency. It's LLM, Claude, also hallucinates less than other AI chatbots.
🌻 Wishing you a thriving weekend 🌻
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