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.
Project to stop desertification in Sahara gets $14 billion cash injection
The area that is now the Sahara desert was once home to fertile land that supported the people who lived there, but creeping desertification has left the land all but inhabitable, plunging people into poverty and driving many to migrate. To address the problem, the African Union launched the Read More...
Sustainable urban design: Stockholm transforms street into a 1-minute city
Rethinking our orthodox ways of urban design is essential if we are to achieve meaningful action in our fight against climate change. This is the line of thinking behind an experimental project in Sweden, which has transformed a conventional made-for-cars city block in central Stockholm into a Read More...
AI-powered robot that rapidly sorts through recyclables is going global
Before plastic can become recycled products, that plastic needs to be manually sorted by workers at a recycling center. The problem is that recycling centers can’t afford to hire the number of people needed to sort through all the plastic they receive each day, and even if they could afford it, Read More...
This non-profit raises awareness about ocean plastic by making art out of it
From shifting consumer behaviors to holding corporations accountable, raising awareness about plastic pollution can go a long way in helping tackle the plastic crisis. In an effort to do exactly that — though in a rather unconventional way — environmental non-profit Washed Ashore uses the Read More...
Karbon could be Canada’s first carbon negative brewery
Traditional beer brewing uses lots of water and energy. We have shared stories of many green breweries like Swinkels Family Brewery in the Netherlands, which uses sustainable iron fuel energy to brew their beer. Today we bring you another innovative company that is striving to become the first Read More...
This sleek chair is made of recycled plastic from electronic waste
In 2019, the world generated 54 million metric tons of e-waste — a worrying number that’s expected to increase to 64 million metric tons by 2030. London-based designer Tom Robinson wants to help curb that amount by turning e-waste into sleek, minimalist furniture. The designer’s latest Read More...
This new delivery platform uses reusable containers to cut plastic waste
Food and packaging containers together account for almost 45 percent of landfill materials in the US. A large part of that waste comes from takeout orders, where single-use plastic packaging has been normalized. A new delivery service in New York City, called DeliverZero, wants to change that by Read More...
New chemical process turns biomass into fuel in a cheap, efficient way
While biofuels are a great renewable energy source with a promising potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, producing them is no easy feat. This is in large part due to the fact that converting biomass into liquid fuels is quite an energy-intensive process. Fortunately, scientists at Read More...
Listening to salmon could make farmed fishing less wasteful
Farmed salmon make up somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of all the salmon humans eat. Those salmon need to be fed, but it can be tricky for growers to understand when to feed them and how much food to provide. After all, salmon do not behave like dogs, who will simply saunter over to their supper Read More...
These dogs put their noses to the ground to help protect wildlife
Dogs are well-known for their ability to sniff out explosives, drugs, and even cancer, but a team of scientists is putting our four-legged friends to work on a new task in Montana and beyond: researching wildlife. Ecologist Megan Parker is one of the scientists trying to gain a more detailed Read More...