Today’s Good News story comes from Yahoo News. Thanks to Noelle Granger for sending it to me.

Companies announce game-changing plan to harvest drinking water from the ocean floor — here’s how it works

Three companies are leveraging modern technology to reshape the future of commercial desalination, making the process cleaner, smarter, and more cost-effective, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Safe drinking water helps prevent the transmission of preventable diseases like “cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio,” per the World Health Organization.  Yet, more than four billion people in 135 low- and middle-income countries worldwide lack that, according to a 2024 study published in the journal Science.

Access to fresh drinking water is shrinking as global water usage increases, driven by industries like agriculture and new technology like artificial intelligence.

Desalination appears to be the most logical solution since 97% of the Earth’s water is found in the ocean.

However, traditional commercial desalination methods like thermal desalination and reverse osmosis are highly energy-intensive and expensive.

Seawater reverse osmosis requires significant energy to pressurize water that passes through a semi-permeable membrane. This membrane filters out salt and impurities, allowing only water molecules to pass through. This process creates a concentrated brine byproduct that can harm aquatic life when deposited back into the ocean.

Thermal desalination leverages heat energy to remove salt from the water. The process involves heating the water to produce steam, which naturally separates from the salt and minerals, and turns back into fresh water when the steam has cooled. Thermal desalination also requires a lot of energy to heat water at scale.

Dirty fossil fuels power these methods, and they remain expensive compared to alternative methods of harvesting freshwater.

Flocean, Waterise, and OceanWell are three water desalination companies that are thinking outside the box.

Instead of wasting energy to pressurize the water to pass through filter membranes, could the desalination process harness the ocean’s natural water pressure to do the same thing?

By using deep-sea technology, including deep-sea robots and undersea power cables, and submerging the filter membrane to a depth of at least 400 meters, or 1312 feet, the water pressure at that depth will naturally flow through the desalination membrane. According to The Wall Street Journal, this deep-water desalination process can save up to 40% on energy usage.

In addition to the benefits of working at that depth, the harmful brine byproduct the process creates can be dispersed quickly back into the ocean, minimizing harm to aquatic life.

These companies are seeking government contracts that will help further develop and make more accessible this cleaner, desalination process.

Currently, Flocean is supplying ultra-pure water to a local Norwegian company to make premium-craft cocktail ice. The company also has a contract with Mongstad, an oil refinery facility, to produce approximately 264,000 gallons of desalinated water per day, expected to be launched by the second half of 2026.

Waterise has entered a contract with Jordan Phosphates Mines, a mining company based in Jordan, agreeing to supply 6.6 million gallons of desalinated water per day from the Gulf of Aqaba, south of Jordan.

Most commenters seemed intrigued and hopeful about this new desalination process. However, others questioned the logistics behind the process.

“But they still need to pump that fresh water from the depths to wherever it’s going on land so it’s hard to see where significant energy savings comes from,” one commenter pointed out.

The good news in this story is that companies are exploring various alternatives to traditional desalination techniques. Today’s JohnKu discusses various approaches to problem-solving. I hope you have a peaceful weekend.

Outside the Box by John W. Howell © 2025

Conformity can,

Hamper the quest for knowledge. . .

Knowledge solves problems.

Today’s heartwarming animal rescue story comes from The Good News Network.

Wisconsin residents called in by the dozen: “There’s a bear in my yard,” they said.

However, wildlife authorities were taken aback by the next detail: “It has a jar on its head!”

The Winnie the Pooh wannabe was a 2-year-old female black bear who had obviously followed her nose about 18 inches too far. Feasting on cheese balls, pretzels, or something else that’s sold in those massive plastic snack jugs, the animal couldn’t extract its head after it had finished.

“My immediate neighbor was like, ‘hey, just heads up, here is what’s heading towards your house,’” said Jayme Morey, coordinator for the Chequamegon Humane Association in Ashland, Wisconsin.

Used to spreading the word about missing dogs and cats, this emergency was rather different. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources had been tracking the bear for a week, as Morey’s call wasn’t the only one they had received.

They were finally able to find it, tranquilize it, and remove the jug from its head. Clearly skinny, the bear had been trapped for at least 11 days based on the record of sightings by locals. It could still get water by dunking its head and slurping up what entered through the sides of the jug.

“We’ve seen this come up from time to time, often with a bear, occasionally a deer,” Randy Johnson, a large carnivore specialist with the Wisconsin DNR, told CBS News. “The good news is this is the time of year when food is the most abundant in the woods, and she’s got two months to kind of get back into healthy shape going into winter.”

Indeed, the bear was just 70 pounds when rescued—about the same as some of the largest dog breeds. A bear of that age at that time of year should weigh over 150, Johnson said.

He said she had a good shot of surviving, and after her release, she jogged to a berry patch and started chowing down.

The good news in this story is that concerned citizens spoke up about the bear’s plight. Today’s JohnKu talks about staying vigilant. I hope you have a super weekend.

Report It by John W. Howell © 2025

If something looks odd,

Don’t think it will go away . . .

Call an official.