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.
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...
This superbug has a big appetite...for sewage
Scientists at the Urban Utilities water management plant in Queensland, Australia have grown a superbug from scratch. Its superpower? A remarkably large appetite for sewage. The bacteria, called anammox bugs, were devised as a response to the rapidly growing population. Plant Manager Peter Read More...
This algae-based sequin dress is 100 percent biodegradable
Eco-conscious fashionistas rejoice! Thanks to designers Charlotte McCurdy and Philip Lim, you can rock sequins without worrying about their negative effects on the environment. Sequins are small, flat, light-catching beads that have long been adorned by the glitzy and the glamorous, but always Read More...
Nature takes center stage in this redevelopment project in Tokyo
Adding more greenery to our built environment can go a long way in making our cities more resilient in the face of climate change. That’s why, here at The Optimist Daily, we love seeing urban development projects that seamlessly interweave nature with the built environment. The Toranomon Urban Read More...