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.
Tobacco manufacturers to be held accountable for cigarette butt pollution
While it's all fine and dandy that plastic straws are being eliminated from popular use, the cigarette butt has largely evaded such regulation despite being the biggest ocean contaminant. Americans alone toss 360 billion cigarette butts each year – enough to fill almost four baseball Read More...
Round 2: The Ocean Cleanup project has been redeployed to capture plastic
The Ocean Cleanup project was heralded as the big solution we needed to the problem of ocean plastic. Then it broke. The 2,000 ft long floating boom that uses currents to collect waste fell apart under constant waves and wind, and it wasn’t successful in retaining all the plastic it caught. But Read More...
Why beekeeping is big business these days
How do beekeepers make most of their money? While honey may seem like the obvious answer, the real answer is that beekeepers make most of their money from pollination services where they provide hives to farmers. Just look to California where nearly 80 percent of the world’s almonds are grown. Read More...
How hemp crops can help save pollinators during the summer months
For honeybees, the months between July and September aren’t the finest months for collecting pollen in America—which is problematic considering these are the months that honeybees are supposed to thrive. The reason behind this is that there’s a lack of farm crops during that time that Read More...
Researchers have finally found a greener way to produce graphene
We’ve written about graphene before and for good reason: it is extremely strong, ultra-thin, and has an excellent electrical and thermal conductivity that opens up all kinds of possibilities. The only problem is that producing it is resource-intensive and expensive. But that’s all set to change Read More...
These companies are turning CO2 into useful products
Until recently, it was assumed that companies burning fossil-fuels would eventually need to capture the resulting carbon emissions and bury them underground. This option turned out to be inefficient and costly. That’s why innovators have been digging for new ideas that would eventually slash the Read More...
Ireland becomes the latest country to ban the practice of farming fur
Most of the fur sold globally come from animals on fur factory farms – dismal, often filthy places where thousands of animals are crammed into tiny wire-mesh cages their entire lives, just to be killed later on for fashion purposes. Fortunately, fur bans have been introduced in numerous countries Read More...
Island-nation Vanuatu to ban disposable diapers in fight against pollution
It is but a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean, but the island state of Vanuatu is leading the global fight against plastic waste. Being one of several Pacific nations severely affected by climate change, Vanuatu introduced one of the toughest single-use plastic bans in the world earlier this year. Read More...
Scientists in New Zealand are using ‘eavesdropping’ technology to protect birds
This week we’re giving extra attention to birds, bees and all the pollinators that keep our ecosystems in order. For today’s edition, let’s have a word about the Hihi bird—a rare species of bird that was recently reintroduced to a nature reserve in New Zealand after being regionally extinct Read More...
Scientists discover supposedly extinct species living in the forest of Honduras
Just because a species is labeled as extinct does not necessarily mean that they’re gone from this Earth forever. Deep in the Mosquitia rainforest of Honduras, researchers recently rediscovered a species thought to be extinct at the ruins of a recently discovered ancient settlement known as the Read More...