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Create A New Collection

Collections are versatile, powerful and simple to create. From a customized course reader to an action-guide for an upcoming service-learning trip, collections illuminate themes, guide inquiry, and provide context for how people around the worls are responding to social challenges.

  • Name and describe your collection

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  • Add external links at any time

  • Add to your collection over time and share!

1. Name your collection

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2. Add Stories

Add stories to your collection from your list of Favorites below, or add stories directly to a collection from Search or Discovery. Anytime you see the collection icon you can add a story. Just click the icon and follow the instructions on your screen.

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Solutions Story Tracker®

Welcome to a curated database of rigorous reporting on responses to social problems.

15,700 stories produced by 8,900 journalists and 2,000 news outlets from 89 countries. The stories cover responses in 192 countries, in 17 languages. This resource is made possible because of a growing movement of journalists who use solutions journalism to illuminate both problems and evidence-based responses to them.

Learn more about the Solutions Story Tracker.


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  • Grocery Stores and Local Recycling Centers Offer Solution to Plastic Bag Pollution

    Emily Lanoue
    2020-02-01 22:04:11 UTC
    0

    September 25, 2019 |

    Grady Newsource |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Athens, Georgia

    Grocery stores across the nation have explored creative solutions to recycle plastic bags, including melting them into new bags and even using the material to build compact lumber and playground equipment. In Athens, Georgia, residents can bring their recyclables to the local Publix to be delivered to one of these specialty recycling centers.

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    • 9093

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  • Gonzalo Muñoz - Triciclos, COP25, recycling, and climate change

    Aleksandr Nechaev
    2019-10-07 15:25:22 UTC
    1

    September 02, 2019 |

    Shake the World |

    Podcast |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: Chile, Santiago

    This podcast is an interview with Gonzalo Muñoz, the founder of a successful recycling organization called Triciclos that started in Chile and has since reached 8 other countries. Triciclos was the first certified B corp in Latin America, and Muñoz is now also High-Level Climate Champion for COP25 by the government of Chile. Muñoz shares his insights on the Triciclos approach, waste as a design error, climate change, and more.

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    • 8200

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  • 'Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish?

    Oliver Franklin-Wallis
    2019-08-19 20:18:04 UTC
    3

    August 17, 2019 |

    The Guardian |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: England

    After decades of recycling plastic, the world is now coming to terms with the waste industry it has created, and seeking more sustainable models. One promising model is material recovery facilities, like England’s Green Recycling, that has invested in an AI sorting machine to help humans more efficiently and accurately find materials that can be recycled. While a costly model of sustainability, new strategy proposals are emerging that can help the world make this change possible.

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    • 7765

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  • What do you do with a derelict Center Parcs? Map out a waste-free world

    Holly Dicker
    2019-08-17 21:04:24 UTC
    0

    August 14, 2019 |

    The Guardian |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Netherlands, Rotterdam

    Abandoned buildings can become spaces for economic innovation and experimentation. An abandoned resort spa in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, now houses BlueCity, an ecosystem of sustainable enterprises. The initiative aligns with The Netherland’s 2050 circular strategy, which aims to reduce waste and implement circular design into the economic. At BlueCity, the businesses are leaders in sustainable innovations, from brewers that share byproducts with bakers to companies that recycle plastic.

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    • 7709

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  • Citizens of the Week Gaye Harley and Jamie Powell

    Jessica Press
    2019-11-05 19:15:53 UTC
    0

    August 12, 2019 |

    The Philadelphia Citizen |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Wilmington, Delaware

    In Wilmington, Delaware, Gaye Harley repurposes her hospital's operating room wraps, the oversize sheets of synthetic material used to package instruments, into portable maps for the homeless. Instead of disposing of the materials, she has urged the hospital to recycle them into nearly 100 mats and counting. They have also used the mats to make tote bags, which they distribute with donated socks, also to the homeless.

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  • Oregon Rethinks Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Life After the Chinese Import Ban

    Maggie Mertens
    2020-01-14 15:24:16 UTC
    0

    August 09, 2019 |

    Bitterroot |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Portland, Oregon

    After China stopped buying recycling near the end of 2017, Oregon faced mounting piles of mixed recycling that seemed bound for the landfill--a move that might have been illegal under Oregon law. Instead, the state's recycling industry made adjustments, including limiting the types of items to be recycled and using local processing plants instead of Chinese ones.

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  • Less Trash, More Schools — One Plastic Brick at a Time

    Anemona Hartocollis
    2019-08-04 19:56:45 UTC
    0

    July 27, 2019 |

    The New York Times |

    Multi-Media |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Côte d'Ivoire, Abidjan

    The recycling economy is helping Ivory Coast overcome a building shortage and create jobs. The Fighting Women, a community organization in Abidjan, collect plastic waste to resell to manufacturers. In partnership with UNICEF, the Columbian company, Conceptos Plásticos purchases plastic waste from the Women and recycles it into bricks, which are used to construct classrooms.

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    • 7574

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  • Bring Containers, Leave Your Guilt at Home

    Karine Vann
    2019-12-11 22:24:22 UTC
    0

    July 26, 2019 |

    DigBoston |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts

    Package-free shopping encourages more sustainable consumption. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cleenland offers package-free household products, including shampoo and cleaners. Customers use their own containers and pay by weight. Asking consumers to pay more attention helps reduce waste generated by packaging and contributes to municipal zero waste strategies.

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    • 8775

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  • How Women Are Leading the Charge to Recycle Whole Houses

    Teresa Carey
    2020-12-29 16:43:25 UTC
    0

    July 24, 2019 |

    Smithsonian |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Leonardtown, Maryland

    To avoid the waste that would incur from demolishing structures such as houses and apartment buildings, a reuse center in Maryland works with deconstruction crews to disassemble the buildings and then sells the salvaged materials at a reduced cost. Although "the trend is hardly noticed," this type of movement has spread across the United States and is mostly led by women.

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    • 12031

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  • Living without plastic: One family's journey

    Susan Spillman
    2019-08-07 22:21:42 UTC
    1

    July 19, 2019 |

    Los Angeles Times |

    Multi-Media |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Los Angeles, California

    For one family, living plastic-free was a lifestyle decision made after they learned more about the harm that plastic waste causes. The Watt family lives as plastic-free as possible – carrying their own utensils, buying in bulk and bringing their own glass containers, making their own household cleaner, and using reusable beeswax wraps instead of cling wrap. While these are all steps in the right direction toward reducing the nearly 335 million tons of plastic produced every year, experts say we need to rely less on individual actions and push for tougher laws and systemic changes.

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    • 7599

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Please sign in via My Profile before submitting a story. This will allow you to view the status of your submission and get notified if the story is added to the Solutions Story Tracker®.
Filter your search by the language of the story. As the Solutions Story Tracker grows, we are working to include more stories in more languages. Your story submissions can help! Submit stories here.
These factors identify the ways communities overcome the big challenges and help you see the insights. Learn more about the Success Factors here.

Solutions Journalism Around the World

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Solutions In Focus

Discover curated content about themes that matter to you, exclusively from the Solutions Story Tracker. Explore collections, resources and more.

  • Climate Solutions

  • Advancing Democracy

  • Youth Mental Health


Go to All Solutions in Focus

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    Video Tutorials

    Learn how to find what you need in the Solutions Story Tracker in español and in français.

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    Submission Guidelines

    This database is powered by user submissions. Submit a story.

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    Custom Story Alerts

    Get notified when new stories match your interests by setting up custom story alerts in My Profile.

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Solutions Story Tracker® FAQ

  • Solutions journalism…
    • Describes a response to a problem and how it works.
    • Seeks to draw out insights that explain success or failure.
    • Presents the available evidence about the effectiveness of a response.
    • Explains the shortcomings or limitations of the response.
    Learn more.
  • The Solutions Story Tracker® is a curated, searchable database of solutions journalism stories — rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. We vet and tag every story in the Story Tracker, which offers an inspiring and useful collection of the thousands of ways people are working to solve problems around the world.

  • You can learn more about how we source, vet, and tag stories here, as well as how we share them. We also have video tutorials in Spanish and French that show how to use the Solutions Story Tracker to find what you need.

  • Story collections are curated by our staff or other partners to explore a theme, pattern, or trend via selected solutions stories and external resources. Some story collections focus on an in-depth exploration of a topic with solutions journalism; others highlight journalists and how they report on topics. Certain story collections include discussion questions and notes, so that educators and community discussion leaders can lead learners to fully engage with the stories.

  • The Solutions Story Tracker® is powered by user submissions. We encourage submissions from journalists, as well as from anyone who has an eye for solutions journalism. Click here to submit. (Why submit? So many reasons!)

  • You can submit a story directly on the Solutions Story Tracker®. You will be prompted to register or log into the Solutions Journalism Network website, if you are already logged in. (It is free to register!) Logging in allows you to track the status of your submissions under My Profile, as well as save your favorite stories, create story collections and story alerts, and access other helpful features of our website.

  • After you submit a story to us and assign it a topic, it is sent to one of our Solutions Story Tracker team members. Our team member evaluates the story for the four qualities of solutions journalism, and on the basics: The story must come from a news outlet and have a date and a byline. If the story meets our criteria, our team tags it accordingly and adds it to the database. If the story falls short of the mark, our team will include the reason why. We include stories in the Story Tracker that meet our standards of solutions journalism. Inclusion does not mean we support the initiatives, policies, organizations or approaches featured in those stories.

    Discover common reasons why a story may miss the mark for inclusion in the Solutions Story Tracker®.

    Learn more about the history of the database.

  • Solutions Journalism Network features these stories in the searchable database making them publicly accessible to anyone who wants to search for rigorous reporting on solutions to social problems. Any story that is added has the potential to make more impact than its original purpose. Added stories are used in journalism trainings, school curricula, research projects, and independent analysis on issue area trends. This now includes artificial intelligence tools, which are applied for educational value to find stories and support story vetting, as well as to extract insights from the stories. SJN has digital products and newsletters that give new life and exposure to the stories meeting people where they are at. Story data also is used to develop innovative tools to reach the general public with solutions journalism as well as some specific research projects requested by researchers. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of story data or added stories, please contact Lita Tirak.

  • News outlets determine whether all users can access their stories — and some limit the number of stories that anyone can view, or require a subscription. The majority of stories in the database can be accessed for free.

  • We work with journalists, academic researchers and others who feel that our database will support their research. We are especially interested in research that seeks to develop new insights about solutions journalism and its spread and its impact on social problems. Please complete all sections of the Data Request Form, and we will contact you to discuss your request in greater detail.

  • We do not fact-check the stories in the Solutions Story Tracker®. We do ensure that each story comes from a credible news source that has its own editorial infrastructure.

  • We worked with Tara Pixley and Jovelle Tamayo of the Authority Collective, who developed a guide for using equitable visuals. We follow this guide when choosing images for our website.

  • We welcome your feedback and additional questions. Please use this form to get in touch.

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