Our New Good is the New Cool site, Ben and Jerry’s x Tony’s Chocolonely, Plant-based Nylon and more!

Dear Friends,

This week we’re proud to share our brand new Good is the New Cool website with you!

We’ve spent some time pulling together the most inspiring, innovative and impactful content from our many conferences, books and podcasts together in one place.

Have a look here and let us know what you think!

Last week we saw an important milestone in the fight against child labour in the cocoa supply-chain. Two of our favourite social impact brands, Tony's Chocolonely and Ben & Jerry's are working now together to make chocolate 100% modern slavery free! Did you know that right now, there are 30,000 cases of modern slavery and 1.56 million cases of child labor in the chocolate industry in Ghana and C?te d’Ivoire??

We had the opportunity and pleasure to talk to Tony’s Chocolonely CEO Henk Jan Beltman and Clement Pointillart from their investment partners Verlinvest, a 2 billion-euro fund investing in trailblazing, impactful companies to hear more how this incredible chocolate brand (No 1 in the Netherlands and quickly expanding globally) is challenging the entire chocolate industry to go slavery-free. Check out the GOODCon interview here.

And as always, here’s your fresh dose of inspiring, innovative and impactful stories.

Have a great week!

Be good, be kind, and look after each other,

Af and Bobby

TOP STORIES THIS WEEK

Delicious Impact: Ben & Jerry's joins forces with Tony’s Chocolonely to eradicate illegal (often child) labour from the value chain of cocoa and make chocolate 100% modern slavery free. Ben & Jerry's joins Tony’s Open Chain to use 5 Sourcing Principles beans, with some delicious product collaborations on top.

Campaign of the Week: Using a legal loophole, Budweiser enlists artists to save Brazilian basketball courts from developers. Developed by Africa DDB, the campaign asks people to explain why a court is of value to their community and to select an artist who's a good fit for the local culture. The artist paints the court, with a sponsorship by Budweiser covering all costs.

France’s Green Rooftops: The French Parliament approved a law requiring all new buildings in commercial zones to be partially covered in plants or solar panels. In a bid to boost energy security and make France more eco-friendly, all new buildings in commercial zones across the country must comply with new environmental legislation.

Plant-based Nylon: A new plant-based version of nylon could offer a commercial alternative to one of the fashion industry’s most problematic materials. Its developers — biotech firm Geno and leading manufacturer of nylon Aquafil — have announced the first demonstration production run at scale of plant-based nylon-6, the building block for making nylon.

Combating Urban Heat: To combat the so-called urban heat island effect, one Los Angeles neighborhood is turning to solar-reflective paint. The initiative covers roads, playgrounds, and parking lots, and cooled the surface by 10 to 12 degrees. The project will now investigate how much the cooler surfaces will bring the neighborhood temperature down as a whole.

Documentary of the Week: From the directors of the amazing Kanye West documentary ‘Jeen-Yuhs’, our friends Coodie and Chike, come an HBO project called ‘Katrina Babies’ that they’ve executive produced about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the youth of New Orleans, by first-time filmmaker Edward Buckles Jr.?

Ideas We Love: A couple is “flower-bombing” the streets of San Francisco by spreading native wildflower seeds in patches of dirt around the city — and the pollinators are loving it. Ten years ago, Shalaco and Phoenix McGee planted an aloe bush on their first date. Ever since, they’ve been on a mission to sow native wildflower seeds and are chronicling it all on TikTok, where their videos have over 40 million views.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

- Annie Dillard