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🥵Very hot and muggy, with highs around 97 and possible showers. Sunset is at 8:10 p.m.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a bit of good news about local people helping their communities. Today we’re heading to Gardner and Winchendon — two towns in Worcester County, near the New Hampshire border, with a combined population of about 31,000. When Winchendon’s only grocery store closed in 2017, a group of local residents came together to try and do something about it. 

“Winchendon has one of the highest rates of chronic illness that’s related to nutrition because of our lack of access to healthy, fresh food,” said Miranda Jennings, program manager of the HEAL Collaborative. “We quickly realized that the grocery store was just the tip of the iceberg.”

In the years since, the collaborative has worked to bring fresh food to the community, engaged local teenagers through a youth council and opened a teen café. You can hear more about the work they do here. 

Want to nominate someone doing good in your community for GBH’s All Things Considered Joy Beat segment? Call us and leave a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT (2328).

Four Things to Know

1. GBH reported on the first confirmed layoffs of home care providers — organizations that help older adults and people with disabilities continue living at home by assisting with everyday tasks. The layoffs followed a June directive from the Department of Homeland Security, which instructed several providers to verify the immigration status of their employees as the Trump administration moves to revoke some people’s legal authorization to live and work in the U.S.

“Given our workforce shortages at this time, any number of aides, whether it’s five or 10, has a significant impact to access to care,” said Jake Krilovich, executive director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts. Other parts of the health care industry could feel strain too. About half of nursing assistants in Greater Boston are immigrants.

2. Massachusetts state senators have unanimously passed a bill to make a Massachusetts State Police program offering a special envelope for drivers with autism official state law.

The idea is to lower tensions between police officers and drivers with autism during traffic stops by giving out free blue envelopes. One side of the envelope offers tips for autistic drivers; the other provides guidance for officers who may pull them over, explaining that drivers with autism might need extra time to respond to questions, or may display repetitive movements as a way to self-regulate during a stressful encounter. So will this bill become law? That’s yet to be seen: last year, a similar bill passed in the Senate, and died without a vote in the Massachusetts House.

3. Boston city councilors yesterday were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of driverless car companies operating on the city’s streets. Among the concerns councilors and other city officials listed about Waymo, the Google-affiliated company seeking to come to Boston: autonomous cars taking away business from cab and ride share drivers, safety concerns, worries about the software’s ability to navigate Boston’s busy and confusing streets.

Also: a company official said Waymo is still working on testing how its cars operate in the snow. 

4. Sand art lovers, rejoice: Revere Beach’s International Sand Sculpting Festival starts today. There are 10 sculptors from the U.S., Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands.

They’ll be working on their own sandy masterpieces and collaborating on a centerpiece depicting Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Check out their work in progress here. If you want to go in person this weekend, organizers recommend you take the MBTA’s Blue Line to Wonderland or Revere Beach.

Researchers at WPI unveil a more efficient process for recycling batteries

The rechargeable lithium ion batteries in your life — in your phone and laptop, on the road in electric cars and more — have a finite lifespan. At some point they’ll stop holding a charge as well, or the devices they power will become unusable.

But the metals inside those batteries, including nickel, cobalt and manganese, can be recycled into new batteries — not through your regular paper-plastic-cans-and-glass recycling bin (they can leak and start fires) but through an electronics store or a municipal collection center.

And researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have figured out a new, more efficient way to do that, according to reporting from GBH’s Sam Turken.

To get recycled, batteries usually get dissolved in an acidic solution to extract metals inside of them. The nickel, cobalt and manganese are separated from one another, then sold individually to companies that recombine them into new batteries.

The WPI researchers have found a way to keep metals together during the recycling process. In the end, battery manufacturers have to add more nickel or cobalt to get the concentrations they want, instead of starting the process from scratch. WPI’s process uses 8.6% less energy, releases 13.9% fewer carbon emissions and recovers about 92% of the desired metals from the used batteries.

“It’s a simpler [process],” said Jiahui Hou, a postdoctoral researcher at WPI who collaborated on the study. “It just skips one step.”

Most of the metals we use in the U.S. come from other countries, said WPI engineering professor Yan Wang, who led the research.

“We use loads of batteries, and eventually after recycling them, we can still keep all the materials in the U.S.,” Wang said. “The potential is huge.”

Read Sam Turken’s full story here.