What went right in 2025?
The best good news stories from each month this year, chosen out of thousands of stories of progress...
Hey fam - This is our last newsletter of 2025. Looking back on the thousands of stories we reported over the year, it’s shocking how easy it is to forget all the good that’s happened. The negativity bias is strong, but we’re stronger. Enjoy this reminder of all the people, organizations, and communities working relentlessly to make the world better. So much more coming in 2026. I can’t wait to talk to you again then.
Remember that all of this progress starts from regular people like you and I making the decision to step up and solve a problem.
Love you. Thank you. Happy New Year.
A fraction of all the good that happened this year
January
🐻❄️♳🦌 An Arctic drilling lease sale failed when no company placed any bids, Thailand banned plastic waste imports, and 16 new wildlife crossings were announced across 16 US states.
February
🦬🍄🟫🏔️ 540 buffalo returned to their ancestral homeland, scientists invented a 3D-printed fungi battery that decomposes when out of power, and the Taranaki Maunga mountain in New Zealand was unanimously recognized as a legal person.
March
📚🪧📉 The 200,000th Little Free Library was created, protests broke out across every National Park site to protect our public lands, and the UK’s emissions fell to the lowest level since 1872.
April
🧸💰🌊 The EU banned harmful PFAs in toys, Chevron was forced to pay $750 million for illegal damages, and over 800 marine species were discovered in a global search for unknown life.
May
💸🧑🔬🌺 The US ended hidden “junk fees” or misleading prices from hotels and events, community scientists recorded 3.3 million wildlife observations, and Hawaii added a tourism fee to protect their natural resources.
June
🤝👗🐋 The biggest Indigenous land back deal ever in California was completed, France adopted a bill that bans ultra fast fashion ads, and a real princess from Tonga called for the recognition of whales as legal persons who can defend their rights in court.
July
💦🧑⚖️⚡️ Flint, Michigan finally finished replacing 11,000 lead pipes to clean up the city’s drinking water, the highest court in the world ruled that countries must to prevent activities that harm the environment, and Poland generated more power from clean energy than coal for the first time despite being Europe’s most coal-dependent nation.
August
💥🌞🐢 8 coal plant towers were beautifully destroyed in the biggest-ever simultaneous demolition, researchers made a new solar cell that works with indoor light to replace small batteries, and former sea turtle poachers transitioned to working for conservation organizations in Cabo Verde.
September
🐘✈️🛍️ The last captive elephant in Argentina was released into a sanctuary as the nation closes down their zoos, a solar-powered plane broke a record by reaching 9,521 meters on a 5 hour flight over the Swiss Alps, and a secondhand shopping mall in Sweden with donated items turned 10 years old.
October
🇮🇹💡🌊 Italy became the first European country to make harmful deepfakes illegal and punishable by prison, new data showed the world’s biggest electricity source became renewables, the UN High Seas Treaty to protect international waters reached enough countries to become legally binding next year.
November
🎟️🧸🏞️ The UK made it illegal to resell live event tickets for more than the original cost, all children in New Mexico started getting free childcare, 2.2 million acres of land was returned in one of Australia’s biggest Indigenous land back deals.
December
🌊🎥🌸 Norway paused deep sea mining through at least 2029, Ecuador’s Indigenous Otavalo community made an anime to preserve their fading language and customs, and nature’s inherent right to exist is remaining after Ecuadorian citizens voted against a proposal that would rewrite their constitution.
Our community’s actions
I have thousands and thousands of screenshots of your comments from this year, but here’s a highlight of just a tiny percentage of the community wins you’ve shared!
Together, we’ve:
🏡 Turned a property into an open-source homeless shelter, 📞 overcame phone anxiety to call elected officials, 🥕 built a veggie greenhouse out of salvage yard windows, 📚 made a tiny community library, 🦋 planted milkweed for monarch butterflies, 🐶 made homemade puppy food, 👕 did a no-buy year for clothes, 🌱 threw clay seed balls onto unused land, 🧂 started a free ingredients library, ☎️ regularly contacted elected representatives, 🧵 sewed a quilt from old memorable clothes, 🌱 set up a free seed library in a lawn, 🧶 opened a store selling unused fabrics, 💒 donated leftover wedding food to a fire station, built a free gardening library, 🙌 started a weekly Good Deeds Club, 📙 created a neighborhood Book Trailer, 🪴 saved 2,000 pounds of clay for ceramics students, 🏋️♀️ convinced a gym to switch to plastic-free detergent, 🥦 started a veggie garden with apartment neighbors, 🔌 installed the trifecta of a heat pump/EV/solar, 💐 dropped leftover wedding flowers on stranger’s porches, 🗑️ brought a garbage can to their local beach to save 30 bags of litter, ✏️ started a program for students to donate unwanted items on move out day, 🧑🌾 replaced invasive plants with native pollinator gardens, 🥗 accidentally started a food bank, 💰 raised money in a school club to build water wells in Africa, 🍴 held a successful grassroots fundraising dinner… and so. much. more.
That’s all, folks.
🗣️ Before you go, say it with me: we build a better future together, and 2026 will be our year!
This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. Over 1 million people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by hitting reply. Brand illustration by Andrea Miralles. Thanks for helping spread some positivity, and see you next week for more!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Things still do go right and the more we hear about them the less despondent we get about all the things that went wrong. It's beyond hope, it's encouragement. 🎉💝🎄
tx u 4 this. 🙂 Happy holidays to all.