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.
The case for relocating small businesses back to residential areas
If you walk around some 1920s-era neighborhoods, it’s not unusual to see a tiny grocery store inhabiting the street corner. This used to be normal in residential areas, but as cars became more widespread, businesses relocated to more centrally-located commercial centers such as malls. The Read More...
Giant retailers like Walmart and Target unite to take on plastic bags
Single-use plastic shopping bags are a real problem. They take decades to break down but nearly 100 billion of them are used in the United States every year to cart away goods from retailers. Fewer than 10 percent of those are recycled — often winding up in landfills and waterways because many Read More...
Thought Leader Series: Renée Lertzman and the psychology of climate action
We are often talking about technical solutions to help us over come the climate crisis, but what we don’t talk about so much is how the climate crisis makes us feel. Renée Lertzman is a psychologist and environmentalist who understands that it’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed, Read More...
It turns out all that shed dog fur is great for cleaning up oil spills
If you have a dog or cat, all that fur you’re constantly sweeping up around the house could be more useful than you thought! Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney have found that fur and hair products are more effective than synthetics at cleaning up oil spills on land. The Read More...
Research shows turtles get lost for miles, but still find way home
When female sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, they return to the very spot where they once hatched and scuttled towards the sea. Traveling thousands of miles before coming back to their roots demonstrates their complex navigational abilities. New research shows these turtles are even more Read More...
Don’t throw away that greasy pizza box! Recycle it
If you’ve long tossed your pizza boxes into the trash, figuring—along with many other Americans—that the grease and cheese leftover on the cardboard meant it couldn’t be recycled, Domino’s wants you to think again. It turns out that nearly three-quarters of US residents have a recycling Read More...
This is how trees make urban areas cooler
You might consider urban areas to be the epitome of cool, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, buildings, cars, pollution, and lack of soil, all contribute to an urban heat island effect, making cities considerably warmer than surrounding rural areas. Luckily, there is a Read More...
Greta Thunberg wins €1m prize, then donates it all to climate action
Although Greta Thunberg has long been at the center of the youth climate movement, she has always tried to divert attention away from her and bring it towards climate action. But it’s not just media attention Thunberg has been receiving. Recently, the 17-year-old environmental activist was Read More...
Mayors want guaranteed income programs to help us recover from Covid-19
In early 2019, we published a story about Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs, who implemented a guaranteed income program in his city to help residents meet their basic needs. We have been closely following the program ever since, with the preliminary results from October showing that the 125 recipients Read More...
Pakistan meets UN goal on climate action, 10 years ahead of schedule
Pakistan is ranked as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations - a position that has pushed the country to implement an incredible number of green initiatives in recent years, all in a bid to make it more resilient in the face of climate change. Now, Pakistan has turned its green Read More...