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China and the West Are Taking Opposite Paths on EV Battery Recycling
China has 85% of the world’s recycling capacity and a mandate to shred old packs. The U.S. has another plan: use them to save the power grid first.
- Categories
- Technology, WASH
- Region
- Global
- Tags
- e-mobility, recycling, renewable energy, solar, waste
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After the Grant Ends: Why Rural Water Utilities Fail — And What We Learned from Building One
For decades, rural water projects in low- and middle-income countries have followed a familiar pattern: Infrastructure is built, communities are trained, a ribbon is cut — and within a few years, the system stops working. After leading the early operations of Max TapWater, a social enterprise providing piped water in rural Bangladesh, Saif Islam identified a fundamental reason for these failures: Investment continues to prioritize capital infrastructure over the operational and maintenance budget needed to sustain it. He explores this challenge, and shares other lessons he has learned about how rural water facilities can sustain operations beyond the grant period.
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Analysis: India Is Drowning in Its Own Wastewater. These Two Engineers Decided to Turn It Back Into a Resource.
India generates 72,000 million litres of wastewater every day. It treats 28 percent of it. The other 72 percent flows, untreated, into rivers, lakes, and land. Amrit Nayak and Krunal Patel think the problem is not the water — it is the architecture of how treatment gets built.
- Categories
- WASH
- Region
- Global
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Analysis: A Nigerian Teen Is Turning Agricultural Waste Into Biodegradable Sanitary Pads
Auwal-Panti’s project was selected in a shortlist of 35 global teams for the 2026 Earth Prize, organized by the Earth Foundation, a Switzerland-based nonprofit that empowers, educates and inspires young people to tackle environmental challenges.
- Categories
- Agriculture, WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Keys to Successful Blue Bonds: How Peru’s Strong Local Lending Systems Are Expanding Water and Sanitation Access
For millions of Peruvian families, one barrier stands between them and safe water and sanitation at home: access to affordable financing. Yet as Rocio Cavazos at Water.org explains, the financial institutions serving these communities face their own barrier: limited access to lower-cost capital. She discusses Water.org's efforts to support Peru’s two successful blue bond issuances, exploring how these bonds can allow lenders to offer more affordable loans for water and sanitation solutions — and sharing lessons from Peru's experience that can be applied by blue bonds in other markets.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing, WASH
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Europe’s Textile Future at a Turning Point: New 2030 Circularity Blueprint Aims to Scale Recycling and Unlock Investment Opportunities
This ambitious initiative is designed to support the transformation of the EU textile ecosystem to advance textile-to-textile recycling and drive the transition to a circular economy.
- Categories
- WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Poor Battery Recycling Drives Lead Poisoning Risks in Africa’s Solar Energy Boom
Lead-acid batteries are widely used in many low-income markets because they are cheaper than alternatives like lithium-ion batteries, but safely recycling them requires costly infrastructure that is often lacking.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africa’s Firms are Not Growing—New Data Reveal a Jobs Challenge
Across 48 Sub-Saharan African economies, a firm that has operated for nearly three decades employs barely twice the workers it had at birth. The gap relative to high-income economies is large, structural, and costly.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Finance, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology, Telecommunications, Transportation, WASH
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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