March 2026 Good Newsletter

🏈 Super Bowl Sunday at Levi’s Stadium proved reuse can scale at sports and entertainment venues and everybody wins!

🇨🇦 In Canada, plastic is now permanently classified as “toxic,” which means laws intended to reduce single-use plastics remain in place and other regions may soon follow suit.

🗑️ I’m a huge fan of Who Gives A Crap, the cheeky company that makes our 100% recycled toilet paper and uses profits to provide clean water and sanitation in underserved communities — now I’m adding 100% recycled plastic bags to the list, while reducing single-use plastic and increasing composting as much as possible, of course (and no, not sponsored).

🎭 This makes my heart sing: In New Orleans, my happiest place on earth, Mardi Gras krewes are beginning to nix plastic in favor of glass and biodegradable “plant-me” beads. (Photo: NBC)

🌬️ Winter Storm Fern was no match for offshore wind farms, which performed as well as gas and better than coal during January’s East Coast cold snap.

🏠 New Jersey and Texas just cut red tape for rooftop solar. Who’s next?

🌎 Proof is in the pilot: Geothermal installation at Colorado Mesa University set new energy-efficiency standards and saved $15 million over eight years, lowering tuition and bolstering scholarship funds.

🦬 Indigenized Energy scales up solar arrays on off-the-grid native land, without power poles or lines to interrupt re-introduction of restorative buffalo herds. (Photo: Daily Yonder)

🛍️ eBay just snapped up Depop for $1.2 billion and preloved has officially joined the big leagues.

📦 De minimus (in which low-value packaged imports, i.e. shipped direct to consumer, are not taxed) is out in the EU (as well as the US as of last August) and fast fashion giants will pay.

👶 EU-based online apparel retailer Zalando just launched preloved children’s shops for parents to purchase and trade in secondhand kids clothes.

🧵 Is this the future of fashion? Unspun’s new 3D weaving technology significantly reduces waste and emissions and just named former North Face insider as CEO. (Photo: Fast Company)

⚖️ Yes, the US just repealed the endangerment finding. No, the fight is most emphatically not over: Over a dozen environmental justice and health nonprofits are suing.

🔌 “Balcony solar” took off in the EU because it empowers renters (not just homeowners) to install panels in hours with little investment. Now, with Utah’s enablement law enacted and 24 states considering similar legislation, is the US next?

⚡ Renewables “remain the biggest source of new [electricity] generation resources, according to federal data.” And spiking energy bills are providing new opportunity.

📚 Regardless of federal rhetoric, blue and red states add climate to curriculum. (Photo: The Guardian)

💸 Clean energy and transportation investment topped $75 billion in Q3 2025, the biggest quarterly total ever.

🗳️ A recent survey shows 76% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats expect climate action from government and companies — representing the highest bipartisan numbers in support of climate action polls have ever seen.

📈 2025 was a “fantastic year for renewable energy stocks” and the main S&P index tracking them is recording its best performance in seven years.

⛷️ Milan Cortina aside, should fossil fuel companies be prohibited from sponsoring winter sports — given their outsized contribution to climate change, which threatens the snow they depend on? 21,000 athletes and stakeholders say yes. (Photo: AP)

🎈I thought solar-powered blimps only existed in Ministry for the Future. Turns out, they’re in Canada and coming to an airspace near you.

🕳️ Decades of collective global action has reduced the ozone hole to the smallest size since 1980.

📉 The world has officially reached peak coal, according to the International Energy Agency — and yes, that takes into account projections of increased global power demand.

🎶 What does Bad Bunny have to do with community solar microgrids? Energy independence, pana.

🌲 American forests have turbo-charged their CO2 storing capacity — turns out that letting forests age increases their ability to store carbon, new study shows. (Photo: Earth.com)

🇬🇧 In the UK, greenhouse gas emissions fell 3% in 2024 and were 53% below the baseline year of 1990, even as the economy grew by 80% during that time.

🇦🇺 Australian power demand increased by 2% in 2025, but the country still managed to generate a record 50% of power from renewables.

⚡Clean-energy tech was responsible for a third of China’s economic growth last year. If the country’s clean-energy sectors were a country, it would now be the 8th largest economy in the world.

🌋 Technological advances have unlocked a constant and clean power source in geothermal energy, and a new report shows it could replace 42% of the EU’s electricity needs at equivalent costs to coal and natural gas. (Photo: Grist)

🔌 In the US, more than 600k EVs with V2H capability perform double duty in power outages by providing electricity to homes. Every GM can now “power a home in a pinch” as will high-end models from Hyundai, Kia, and Volvo — with BMW, Tesla and Rivian models coming soon. Buying a new car? You might want to look for one with bidirectional charging.

🇨🇦 Canada is all set to import Chinese EVs and although the jury’s still out on which brands will make the cut, cars are predicted to retail at under $25k.

📈 Cancelled tax credits and revoked clean-air mandates? No problem. In the US, public charging networks still expanded by 30% in 2025.

🚚 Don’t mind the rhetoric: Ford is gearing up for 2027’s launch of an EV platform, including a truck that will retail for $30k. (Photo: Inside EV)

🦏 Thanks to anti-trafficking efforts, rhino poaching is down 16% in South Africa.

🐺 For the first time in nearly a century, a gray wolf has returned to California —traveling over 500 miles in search of a mate.

🐄 Sure, she did a thing. But Veronika in her hills-are-alive field is simply too cute not to share, even without the tool-use breakthrough.

🫖 Can primates play pretend? Bonobo tea party study authors say yes. (Photo: NBC)

🎙️ My author-interview series continues next week with the multi-hyphenate — from adult fiction to nonfiction to children’s to YA to public speaking to a freakin’ operatic LIBRETTO — and truly amazing author Kao Kalia Yang, live on Instagram.

📚 And if you’re a reader in Los Angeles (or just like to travel), there are still a few (free) seats left for next week’s Santa Monica Silent Book Club at Juneshine.

WHO’S THIS? Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff is a journalist, climate communications expert, two-time TEDx speaker, and podcast host who was interviewed on the “Today” show and published in the Washington Post, among others. Her career as an environmentalist informs her creative writing, climate content consulting, author interview series, and the Good Newsletter (since 2008). She also hosts a monthly Silent Book Club in Santa Monica and is querying her first novel. If you’re an agent, Rachel would love to send it your way!