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.
Mushrooms could hold the key for saving bee populations
Researchers are buzzing over the possibility of using mushrooms to help save declining populations of honey bees. They have found that mushroom spores and extracts have the ability to fight against varroa mites—nasty parasites that spread diseases within bee populations. By treating hives with Read More...
Ode to Ruth Buendía Mestoquiari, Pakitzapango Canyon, Peru
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 Saving the forest For the Asháninka people of the Amazon rainforest, the Ené River Valley is their ancestral birthplace. This sacred home of the Asháninka was nearly taken away by the 2010 Peru–Brazil Energy Agreement, which aimed to build 60 large-scale Read More...
The circle economy: Veggies grown with toilet water
Nature produces no waste. Whatever any species leaves behind is used as fuel for another species. Humans are the great exception. We produce massive amounts of waste. That has to change and here’s an example. This water treatment plant turns sewage in water that can be used for veggies Read More...
If your carbon footprint makes you feel guilty, there’s an easy way out
“We think a lot about our carbon footprint,” says Deborah Markowitz. She diligently recycles, avoids eating meat most days, burns wood pellets for heat, and drives an electric car if public transport isn’t available. That’s all pretty standard fare for the environmentally conscious. But Read More...
Ode to Guilin and Lijiang River National Park, Guangxi, China
Protecting China’s natural heritage From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2915 “The river winds like a green silk ribbon, while the hills are like jade hairpins.” So wrote the Chinese poet Han Yu (768–824), in praise of the area surrounding the Chinese city of Guilin, at the banks of the Read More...
Ode to Abeer Seikaly, Amman, Jordan
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 A new kind of mobile home People move. It’s what they have always done and what they will keep doing. Architect, artist and cultural producer Abeer Seikaly, from Amman, Jordan, designed an elegant and practical home for people who are forced to move on to a Read More...
Possibility: Let nature run wild
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Commentary by Fred Pearce, a London-based environmental writer, is author of numerous books, most recently The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, from which this is excerpted. Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating Read More...
Salesforce offsets all its emissions 33 years ahead of schedule
In February 2015, a group of business leaders, including the CEO’s of Unilever and Salesforce and led by Richard Branson committed themselves to completely offset the harmful emissions of companies processed by 2050. A great goal that also seemed far away. Now Salesforce has shown that Read More...
These cities are changing parking lots into parks and urban farms
The self-driving cars are coming and that means that, soon, cities can do with a lot less parking spaces. Some cities are already anticipating the trend and turning parking lots into parks or even urban farms. This is one more change the self-driving car will bring: Downtown is going to be a much Read More...
A new recycling company with links to Tesla raises funding
The SEC has processed a new filing that suggests Tesla may be at work on yet another new initiative. Specifically, the filing shows a $2 million investment in a months-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company called Redwood Materials that describes itself at its site as focused on “advanced Read More...