There’s been no shortage of competition, to be sure, but the grim headlines of the past week may just have been the most despair-inducing of the year. Maybe it’s timely then that the Upside’s editor, Mark Rice-Oxley, has been discussing the purpose of our series and of solutions-based journalism in a new podcast.

This week we renew our efforts to find stories that might restore hope and inspire action amid the storm.

Earlier this year we reported on the New Zealand company trialling a four-day week without changing wages. Judging by how many of you around the world read it, shared it and wrote to us about it, it’s fair to say the results of the experiment were keenly anticipated. Well, those results are in: Eleanor Ainge Roy reports from Dunedin on how it went.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Penzance, where residents have had remarkable success battling plastic use. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

In picturesque Penzance on Britain’s south-western tip, residents had grown tired of the daily tide of plastic flotsam washing up on their spectacular beaches. So they rallied, and together achieved something remarkable, as Simon Usborne found out.



Britain has long had a problem finding organ donors, particularly from its black, Asian and ethnic minority communities. As a report reveals the extent of the problem, Nishtha Chugh writes about her research, which has uncovered several solutions to this matter of life or death.



Finally, in Canada, amid efforts to tackle the roots of homelessness, one group has come up with a practical solution to a problem that often dominates the lives of street sleepers: where to keep their belongings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Students from the University of British Columbia with the cart they designed for homeless people to keep their belongings in. Photograph: UBC Okanagan

What we liked

This New Yorker piece unpacks the question of whether the world is getting better or worse, and why our perception can become destiny. And this Huffington Post piece looks at Vienna’s successful social housing system.

What we heard

Our firm went to a four-and-a-half-day work week in 2001. Everyone is paid for five. We all leave on Fridays at noon. We have suffered no loss in productivity, earnings or profits. We’ve had workers come and go but most have stayed and all make more now than they did in 2001, including the company. Better technology accounts for much of the reason our productivity has increased … We should all be able to agree that it just takes more time to manage a life today. Commenter Bob787 writing below the line on the four-day work week story

At my workplace we’re all casuals working full-time hours, four days off a year, with no flexibility whatsoever … Meanwhile management spend their time trying to crack down on the monumental amounts of unplanned leave and sick leave … people take sickies every week, knowing it’s the only way they can get a single day off from the sweatshop. [Management] make the bed they lie in: if staff aren’t allowed to have home lives, we’ll just take it. Commenter StanTennis on the same story

Where was the upside?

On the internet, according to Mel Campbell’s essay on the essential power of sharing moments of “pure” joy online. Come for the internet anthropology, stay for the dog videos.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A perfect cinnamon roll, an adorable hedgehog and Chewbacca Mom: examples of ‘pureness’ shared online. Composite: Candace Payne/Onion/Alamy/YouTube

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If there is a story, innovation or trailblazer you think we should report on, write to us at theupside@theguardian.com