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.
This little machine can clean your clothes with 2.5 gallons of water and no power
The Drumi is finally in production as of late September, but without an exact ship date. Yirego, the company behind the electricity-free device, told us in late October that engineers are working to resolve final Read More...
British apple boom brings back hundreds of forgotten varieties
Britain is enjoying a remarkable apple boom, as hundreds of new community orchards revive lost varieties and contribute to a thriving heritage market. According to Steve Oram, who is the apple diversity officer at the wildlife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species: “We are adding new Read More...
It doesn’t get much cuter: watch this video of 36 baby giant pandas
The panda is the symbol for the preciousness of nature. It’s one of the rarest and most endangered bears on the planet. Despite tremendous efforts to save them, the species has proven delicate when it comes to breeding and raising in captivity, a step required in order to release them back into Read More...
Climate change: Children to sue European countries
A group of Portuguese children whose district was ravaged by deadly forest fires this summer is to sue 47 European nations, accusing them of failing to take action on climate change. The seven youngsters, aged eight to 18, are taking on the member states of the Council of Europe, who together Read More...
This startup turns climate pollution into fish feed
At the rate at which we’re harvesting fish from the ocean, we may not have enough food to feed farmed fish, let alone humans. That’s why a startup is replacing fish food with something more sustainable: microbes grown with carbon dioxide. The startup feeds carbon dioxide to microbes that can Read More...
Regreening the planet could lower carbon levels and end use of fossil fuels
There’s a new study out spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy and published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences which presents a series of 20 steps that can be taken to naturally mitigate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Taken together, the effect on carbon Read More...
The key to solving one of cities’ biggest problems? Think small
Climate change is one of our generation’s biggest challenges–and most confusing policy problems. The country’s top politicians are busy rolling back protections. Cities are plowing ahead with resiliency plans. There’s still little consensus on how best to approach climate change’s Read More...
World’s first 'negative emission' power plant turns CO2 into stone
After opening the world’s first commercial plant designed to pull CO2 directly out of the air, a Swiss company is now joining forces with a geothermal power plant in Iceland to create the world’s first “negative emission” power plant. The power plant will take captured CO2, bound it with Read More...
From dead woods to triumph of nature, 30 years after the Great Storm
It is remembered as a generation-defining moment, the night when ships ran aground, London endured its first blackout since the Blitz, 18 people died and 15 million trees were toppled. But the devastation wrought by the Great Storm of 1987 also left in its wake a startling woodland recovery, Read More...
New study finds nature is vital to beating climate change
Better stewardship of the land could have a bigger role in fighting climate change than previously thought, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced and stored in forests, farmland, grasslands and wetlands using natural climate Read More...