Today’s Solutions: April 28, 2024

Climate Action

What is Climate Action? Climate Action is humanity's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our planet's resilience against climate change. From adaptation to mitigation, at The Optimist Daily you will learn about the most recent positive news stories and solutions targeting climate change and other environmental issues.

man's arms trimming hedges

Why we should all trade our fences for this environmentally supportive alternative

To tackle the climate crisis and reduce pollution, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the UK urges gardeners and homeowners to take down their fences and plant hedges instead. The charity partnered with scientists to explore what types of green infrastructure could be implemented, Read More...

Brazilian native people

Study finds forests on indigenous lands sequester twice the carbon

We have written at length, in great volume, and with great enthusiasm about the importance of green spaces in cities, carbon sinks, and environmentally helpful trees in general. Forests are absolutely essential to sequestering carbon and our continued adaptation to a changing climate, but some Read More...

the ocean cleanup vessel cleans plastic from a river

The Ocean Cleanup’s sunglasses fund even more cleanup missions

We at The Optimist Daily have been following The Ocean Cleanup project since its first plastic-capturing voyage back in 2019. From that point forward, we’ve enjoyed reporting its progress, from removing plastic debris from rivers to eventually becoming the largest trash-collecting system of our Read More...

Wooden structure

This cultural center in Sweden makes a case for wooden skyscrapers

Back in 2019, we introduced you to the world’s tallest wooden building in Finland. Today, we’d like to take you across the border to Skelleftea, in Sweden, where wood is regaining popularity as the go-to material for new buildings. A few months ago, the Swedish town actually became home to the Read More...

Amazon rainforest from above

Can NFTs help save the Amazon?

Non-Fungible Tokens, commonly known as NFTs, are crypto-acquired assets in the form of digital art. These “one-of-a-kind” digital pieces rose in popularity last year, with plenty of influential personalities and celebrities purchasing them, often at exorbitant prices. Well, whether you’re Read More...

Light bulb with wood house on the table, energy concept.

How much energy? Your home energy questions answered

Every day we have a choice in which appliance to use. The kettle or the stove? A bath or a shower? Most of the time it's convenience and habit that automatically choose between our options. However, it may be useful to pause for a second and consider which is more efficient in terms of costs and Read More...

honeycomb solar panel

Ultrathin "honeycomb" solar panels achieve record efficiency

One day, cities and hopefully everything else will be powered by renewable resources like wind and solar. To do that, though, we will need to continue to improve on our renewable tech, like creating solar panels that can absorb solar energy in many different levels of sunlight. A new development Read More...

Sponge City

Sponge Cities: the future of flood resilience

The world’s cities and population centers are overwhelmingly located near water. This makes good sense since water is essential for living, and throughout history, people have built their settlements where water is accessible and in abundant supply. However, in recent decades the vital good that Read More...

child happily holding home-grown vegetables

The climate victory garden movement is springing up all over America

A lot of people picked up vegetable gardening as a pandemic pastime, but what started as a casual time (and tummy) filler has become a mainstay for many Americans. According to Green America, an organization focused on encouraging people to grow their own food to fight climate change, offset Read More...

walruses in svalbard

Norway's walrus population bounces back thanks to hunting bans

Imagine the marvelous mass of a walrus, lying leisurely in its natural habitat. What does the landscape surrounding your imagined walrus look like? You’re probably picturing this tusked creature on a frigid chunk of ice, and that’s because walruses eventually settled mostly in two main places Read More...