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.
Moss may prove cheap city pollution monitor, study finds
Delicate mosses found on rocks and trees in cities around the world can be used to measure the impact of atmospheric change and could prove a low-cost way to monitor urban pollution, according to Japanese scientists. Moss, a “bioindicator”, Read More...
The Netherlands opens the world’s biggest parking garage… for bikes
Parking garages are everywhere around the globe and they host… cars. But in The Netherlands, there are many more bikes than cars. So, it may not be a surprise that the country is opening the world’s largest parking garage… for bikes. The three-storey parking garage under the train station of Read More...
How carbon farming could halt climate change
Soil holds more carbon than the atmosphere and all vegetation combined. But who’s going to convince more farmers to farm with carbon levels in mind? We can’t say we weren’t Read More...
New refrigerator camera takes aim at food waste
We know food waste is an issue, but often it’s all too easy to forget about that bag of lettuce in the back of your refrigerator until it rots. It turns out 40 percent of the salad British families buy each year ends up in the trash – but a new Read More...
Millennials turn reusable water bottles into the next status symbol
In case you haven't noticed yet: The reusable water bottle is the next status symbol. Showing up with your own water bottle is an instant way to signpost that you’re environmentally conscious and that you are making your contribution to the insane plastic pollution that threatens the Read More...
Cleaning up space debris
It’s time to start actively removing space debris from orbit or risk disaster, says the European Space Read More...
Litterati wants to make picking up litter fun
The idea is simple and it may just work. Whenever you see a piece of litter, take a picture with your phone, identify and geotag it before you dispose of it. While building a huge trash data bank, picking up litter becomes fun. So far, Litterati has cataloged over 750,000 pieces of litter from 114 Read More...
While saving the ozone layer we have been curtailing climate change as well
In 1989, many nations signed a treaty aimed at halting the expansion of a massive hole in Earth’s ozone layer. Nearly thirty years later, the Montreal Protocol has done just that. But, according to a new study, it has also done something its architects never intended. It has become one of Read More...
Trees are aware of their neighbors and give them room
I could write about trees until I was green in the gills; and I do. And it's probable that every time I write about them, I slip into anthropomorphising them. Maybe they don't walk around and fly to the moon, but they are truly remarkable organisms with gifts and talents all their own. They are Read More...
Downtown parking solution: free bus passes
Columbus, Ohio is trying to solve a parking problem in its downtown area with an innovative solution. Instead of building 4,000 new parking spaces, property owners in the city plan to offer free bus passes to more than 40,000 people who work in the Read More...