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.
Made from polluting algae: These shoes clean lakes
If you buy these shoes, you are helping clean up a poisoned Chinese lake. The shoes are made from algae that started polluting the lake a decade ago depriving two million people of safe drinking water. Now the algae is harvested from the lake and turned into a flexible, rubbery material that is Read More...
Whisky company is bringing oysters back to the Scottish Highlands
The next time you have a whisky you may contribute to restoring oyster stocks in Scotland. Oysters were abundant in the northeast of Scotland 10,000 years ago. But overfishing almost wiped out the oysters in the late 19th century. This month a project led by the Glenmorangie Distillery, a Read More...
Put your coffee in your tank: Turning coffee grounds into biofuel
Coffee is one of the most wasteful consumer products. Few people realize that harvesting, processing, roasting and brewing coffee discards an estimated 99.7 percent of the biomass, only 0.2 percent is used to make you enjoy your cup of coffee. Millions of tons of agricultural waste are left to rot, Read More...
This machine sucks CO2 out of the air to save us from climate change
Sitting on top of a waste incineration facility near Zurich, a new carbon capture plant is now sucking CO2 out of the air to sell to its first customer. The plant, which opened on May 31, is the first commercial enterprise of its kind. By midcentury, the startup behind it–Climeworks–believes we Read More...
Amazon rainforest may be more resilient to deforestation than previously thought
The Amazon forest stores about half of the global tropical forest carbon and accounts for about a quarter of carbon absorption from the atmosphere by global forests each year. As a result, large losses of Amazonian forest cover could make global climate change worse. In the past, researchers have Read More...
A Himalayan answer to climate change, water shortage and glacial flooding
The impact of climate change on glaciers has been well documented. From Alaska to Europe, Antarctica to Siberia, glaciers are in recession the world over. Forty-six gigatons of ice from Alaskan glaciers was lost on average for each year from 2003 to 2010, according to Nasa, while those in Asia are Read More...
US military veterans are finding peace protecting rhinos in South Africa
In northern South Africa, US military veterans are fighting a new battle: The battle against illegal wildlife trade. The men have been deployed by a US-based nonprofit organization to keep rhinos and the rest of the wild game within a remote private reserve alive. Highly skilled and highly trained, Read More...
Could a tax on drinking straws stop people from using them?
In the U.S. alone, every day, 500 million drinking straws wind up in landfills. That’s why an initiative called Business Waste proposes to start treating straws the same ways as single-use plastic bags. Business Waste suggests that a similar tax that has helped people move away from using Read More...
Economists conclude a strong carbon price is vital to meeting climate goals
Leading economists have concluded that in an effort to meet the world’s agreed-upon climate goals in the most cost-effective way possible while still fostering growth, countries must set a strong carbon price, with an aim to reach $40 to $80 per tonne of CO2 by 2020 and $50 to $100 per tonne by Read More...
Why you're almost certainly wasting time rinsing your recycling
Once a fortnight we diligently wheel our recycling bin to the kerb, and then probably give ourselves a pat on the back while thinking of all the useful products we have helped to create, and the resources and energy we have saved. Yet it pays to think a bit more deeply about what is going into each Read More...