Environment
Need some good news about the environment? The Optimist Daily is your go-to herald of positive environmental news, highlighting eco-friendly solutions and scientific progress around climate action, circularity, conservation, and more. Learn about everything eco in our Environment section.
5 Easy ways you can conserve more water
Water conservation is an important endeavor that we all play a role in. Some experts say that the world could face a 40 percent global water deficit in under a decade if humans continue to increase water consumption. Here are five small changes you can make in your day-to-day life to start saving Read More...
Electric future: Why we need to make all stoves gas-free
A third of Americans cook with natural gas in their homes and many, especially kitchen-savvy chefs, seek out these appliances over electric versions, but the health and environmental effects of gas raise the question: Why are we still using these cooktops? What's wrong with gas stoves First and Read More...
This dragonfly-inspired robot could help monitor environmental disasters
Scientists from Duke University have engineered a completely electronics-free soft robot that can fly across bodies of water to perform long-range environmental monitoring such as detecting oil spills and assessing the level of acidity in water. Dubbed DraBot, the robot is modeled after a Read More...
Eat more and waste less with The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook
Recently we wrote about Ikea Canada’s Scrapbook, a cookbook with recipes that use food scraps to make delicious meals and snacks to promote zero-waste living. Now we present to you The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for Whole Plant Cooking by Linda Ly. In the preface, Ly Read More...
Protect your neighborhood insects this spring with amber-hued lights
Insects play a big role in our ecosystems. They provide decomposition and nutrient cycling services, pollinate crops, and are a food source for birds and other animals. In monetary terms, researchers have valued the services insects offer various ecosystems at $57 billion per year in the US Read More...
How recycled bottles could help restore Louisiana’s degraded coastline
The southern coast of Louisiana has lost areas of coastline equivalent to the size of Delaware as beaches and marshes erode away into the sea. Some environmentalists have a novel solution in the form of New Orleans’ party culture. Tulane students Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz saw the Read More...
Soap is a big water polluter. This probiotic version does the opposite
We use soap to clean our dishes, clothing, and even ourselves, but this same soap that we use to clean isn’t so great for rivers and oceans. Especially in countries where many people still use rivers for washing purposes, soap can directly contaminate ecosystems and pollute water that communities Read More...
Toads on the road: Street closure offers amphibians safe passage in Estonia
A busy road in the Estonian capital of Tallinn will be closed for the month of April not for construction, but for frogs and toads. Each spring, the area around the road becomes a popular breeding ground for toads and frogs, so the city has closed the road to protect these vulnerable species as Read More...
Denver to donate bison to Tribal land as form of reparations
After being slaughtered to near extinction by colonists in the 1800s, American bison are slowly making a comeback thanks to conservation efforts. The latest conservation project comes from Denver Parks and Recreation (DPR) and aims to not only restore bison populations but also offer reparations to Read More...
Want to save the coral reefs? There's an app for that.
Coral reefs are one of nature’s most amazing spectacles. Coral not only brings vibrance to underwater landscapes but also provides a home for more than a quarter of the world’s marine animals. Unfortunately, rising temperatures are putting corals under stress, expelling the algae that lend them Read More...