It wasn’t all bad

Tea will no longer be sold in disposable plastic cups at India’s 7,000 railway stations, as part of the government’s campaign to banish the scourge of plastic waste. Instead, the drink will be served in traditional handle-less clay cups, known as kulhads. Unpainted and unglazed, these are entirely biodegradable; and since millions will be required every day, the plan could create work for hundreds of thousands of potters, according to India’s railways minister, Piyush Goyal.

Conservationists are celebrating the discovery of a little pygmy possum on Australia’s Kangaroo Island – a species they feared had been wiped out there by last year’s devastating wildfires. The tiny creature was found during a survey by the Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife conservation group – which also uncovered southern brown bandicoots, native bush rats, brushtail possums, tammar wallabies and the more common western pygmy possums. The little pygmy, which weighs less than ten grams, is also found in Tasmania and, occasionally, on the southern Australian mainland.

A London teacher who created a free online learning resource that received more than a million page views a day during the first lockdown has been given a Covid Hero award worth $45,000. Jamie Frost, who runs his Dr Frost Maths website while working as many as 90 hours per week at Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames, was one of ten finalists for the $1m Global Teacher Prize awarded last week. The winner was Ranjitsinh Disale from India – who announced he was going to share half his prize money with the nine runners-up.