People Fixing the World

When you get your hair cut, you probably don't think much about what happens to the bits that get chopped off. But it turns out that rather than being dumped in the rubbish, hair can be put to all kinds of uses that can help clean up the planet and feed the people who live on it. We meet a hairdresser who weaves the clippings into mats that get used to soak up oil spills. Plus the young entreprene...

From an industrial-scale fly factory in London to farming bugs in the Madagascan rainforest, insects are being put to work all around the world. These biological wonders are turning stuff we don’t want – like food waste and even faeces – into useful protein. This is creating a greener alternative to animal feed and creating food products for humans too. We meet the people using bugs to help the pl...

The Prison Voicemail app connects inmates and their families, helping them stay in touch throughout a sentence. We hear a mum and daughter using the messages to rebuild their relationship, and find out how it helps children who are separated from their dad. Producer/ reporter Ruth Evans Repeat - first published 4 Aug 2020

Police in Iceland treat domestic violence differently. Leaving an abusive relationship is hard, and many victims stay with physically or mentally hurtful partners, even after police get involved. In Iceland, they focus their efforts on the first 24 hours after a domestic attack is reported. This is the “window” in which survivors are most likely to give unfiltered evidence against their abusers an...

How do you get officers to step in to prevent other officers from harming the public? “Loyalty isn't saying: ‘Well, you've done something wrong, I'm going to protect you.’ Loyalty is me saying: ‘You're about to do something wrong, and I'm going to stop you.’” New Orleans Police Department says this is the basis of a radical training programme devised to reduce incidents of police brutality. We fir...

Malaria kills more than half a million people per year. We meet the innovators who are using buildings, lights, genes and vaccines to fight the mosquito-borne disease. In Ghana, a young woman has turned her school project into a business, selling lights that electrocute mosquitos and help kids study. In Tanzania, researchers have designed a house with porous walls that diffuse human breath and kee...

Virtual Reality is being used by researchers around the world to change people’s lives – helping them confront their own fears and change how they treat other people. In the UK, a company is using VR to help people with a fear of heights. The automated therapy system puts participants in a virtual multi-story building to help them combat their fear. A team in Israel is experimenting with using VR...

Could a video game where you pretend to spread Covid misinformation actually make you less susceptible to real-life fake news? Fake news, conspiracy theories and misinformation about health can stop people getting vaccinated, which in turn could cause diseases to spread and ultimately result in people dying. In Sierra Leone, an NGO is educating people about typhoid and malaria by creating audio dr...

A Ugandan chemist has found a way to use old cattle bones and food waste to make clean water. Timothy Kayondo turns the rubbish into activated carbon, which he uses to produce water purifiers. They’re being used in schools and hospitals. It is estimated that one in 10 people on the planet do not have a basic level of access to clean water. In this programme we find out about Timothy’s work and dis...

How are Covid sniffer dogs, a sturdy bicycle scheme and balloons beaming down the internet getting on? We catch up with a few of the projects featured on our programme to see if they are making progress. In the UK we catch up with the sniffer dogs being trained to detect Covid 19. After promising results from a large trial, they’re onto the next stage of training. Meanwhile Wyson in Zambia has ext...

Scientists are checking up on the health of forests by analysing the sounds in them. They test their vital signs by measuring the croaks, tweets and hums of resident creatures. If they can hear a full range of animals they can be confident an ecosystem is doing well. However, if gaps start to appear, it’s a sign something is up. Nick Holland hears more about how it works and how it’s being used to...

Training cows to use the toilet and a bouncy castle that fights climate change are some of the surprising solutions today. Humans have been training animals like dogs and horses for centuries. But how easy is it to train a cow? Well scientists in New Zealand and Germany have been successfully training cows to use a special latrine. The cows get a reward each time they pay a visit. The idea behind...

Meet the innovators who want to change gig work for the better. When we order a pizza on a Friday night or use a ride-sharing app to get home, it’s likely that the person providing the service is a ‘gig worker’ – a flexible employee who picks their own hours and gets paid per-job. The app-based gig economy provides convenience for consumers - and has become an increasingly important part of the gl...

Hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to electricity. But all over the world, people are joining forces to provide a home-grown solution — by setting up their own “microgrids” using renewable energy. We meet the Kenyan man who got so frustrated waiting for his village to be connected to the national power grid that he built his own hydro power station. Using scrap materials and a bicycl...

A simple system for saving food and empowering women on the show today. Hundreds of millions of tonnes of food go to waste every year, much of it before it is even sold. This waste is bad for the planet, but also for farmers and consumers. A company in India has found an solution. They collect imperfect produce that would otherwise have been left by farmers to rot and use specially designed solar...

Floating solar panels and a see-through pyramid are the solutions this week. The sun is the ultimate source of energy for life on earth. Harnessing that energy in new ways is a key part of the fight against climate change. This week, we meet two people who had solar power eureka moments and are doing just that. One designed a see-through pyramid that produces hot water for low-income countries. Th...

CubeSats are small but mighty. They started as an educational toy in 1999, but now help people tackle issues from deforestation in Brazil to modern slavery in Greece. Cheap to make and launch, these tiny satellites’ biggest role is in remotely scanning the Earth. Thousands are whizzing over our heads right now tracking a huge range of stuff - including herds of elephants, coral reefs and volcanic...

Everything you need on your doorstep: a radical plan to improve our cities. Imagine if everything you needed - your work, leisure and essential services - was just a 15-minute walk or cycle from where you live. With no need to drive, there’d be less time sitting in traffic jams, the air would be less polluted and maybe we would all be a bit less stressed. That’s the vision that many cities around...

Climate change is set to alter our planet and human beings need to change the way we live and work. But how do we know exactly what changes to make? New technology could help us make informed choices - from sensors counting pollinating insects in fields, to power sockets that tell us how green our energy is, to apps that enable communities to discuss change in their local area. These ideas are par...

Sixteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved by using biochar, a simple fertilising technique adopted by tribes in the Amazon thousands of years ago. If produced on an industrial scale, scientists say biochar could be as powerful as renewable energy in the fight against climate change. Picture Credit: Carbofex and Puro.earth

Fake medicines are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide each year. But inventors around the world are coming up with ways to spot the fakes. In Nigeria, pharmacists are using a pocket-sized nanoscanner and mobile app to analyse light shone through a pill, powder or liquid. A Ghanaian entrepreneur has developed a way to verify a barcode or a series of numbers on a box of medici...

Signs that connect to a mobile phone app, which then reads the information out loud, are appearing in some cities. The technology is designed to help blind and visually impaired people find their way around more easily. People Fixing the World puts the system to the test to see how well it works and finds out what else they’re being used for. There’s also a clever solution to single-use plastics f...

Apart of Me is a computer game that has been designed to help young people process grief. It’s part of a movement that’s bringing together psychology and gaming. Whilst many parents worry about the distraction of games consoles and smart phones, some psychologists believe they can be used as a force for good. We meet the therapist who sets their clients computer games as homework and see how one s...

Police forces in the US are turning to futuristic technology to tackle a rise in violent crime and murder across the country. In one area of California, they are even using robots to patrol the streets. There, the police are claiming it's led to a reduction in crime and an increase in arrests. In New York they even experimented with a robot police dog, but with mixed results. This and other cuttin...

Irrigation pipes have been designed to double as mid-air walkways to help slow lorises cross open farmland in Indonesia; and a footbridge has been built for a rare breed of monkey in Brazil - the golden lion tamarin. These are just two examples of new infrastructure designed to help wild animals cope with human obstacles. Picture credit: Little Fireface Project Produced and presented by Daniel Gor...