Climate Action
What is Climate Action? Climate Action is humanity's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our planet's resilience against climate change. From adaptation to mitigation, at The Optimist Daily you will learn about the most recent positive news stories and solutions targeting climate change and other environmental issues.
This power-free sewer treatment plant was inspired by cow stomachs
80 percent of the world’s sewage is dumped untreated into the natural environment. This is a huge health and environmental crisis, but traditional sewage treatment plants are costly and energy intensive, making them difficult to implement in many regions. The sewage contamination issue is Read More...
10 Easy plant-based school lunches
After a long 18 months of lockdown limbo and remote learning, many parents and guardians are getting ready to send their school-aged children back to their classrooms this fall. This back-to-school season is like no other your children have experienced before—the pandemic, and all the revelations Read More...
The Ocean Cleanup deploys largest trash-collecting system thus far
Since it first undertook the daunting task of ridding our oceans of plastic debris in 2013, The Ocean Cleanup has made numerous tweaks to its trash-catching barrier system — and the latest one may be the most important yet. The most recent update involves an active propulsion system rather than Read More...
UK lockdown-sparked litter-picking movement is still going strong
Every cloud has a silver lining if we are willing to see them. One silver lining that brightens the dark cloud of Covid-19 lockdowns is a surge in litter pickers, especially in the UK. For instance, Keep Britain Tidy’s #LitterHeroes Facebook group doubled in size over the course of the Read More...
The world’s first all-electric tugboat to put to sea in 2023
According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), maritime transport emits around 940 million tonnes of CO2 annually and is responsible for about 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As engineers are working to green up cargo ships with the help of low-carbon fuels, Read More...
Study: How crop diversification boosts agricultural yields
Monoculture, the practice of planting a single crop over great expanses of agricultural land, has drained our soil of the biodiversity and nutrients needed to produce high quality, nutritious foods. A new study from Emory University demonstrates just how efficient our agricultural systems can be Read More...
This nonprofit helps nature reclaim coal mines in the Appalachians
The world is shifting toward renewable sources of energy, which means there are plenty of coal mines left unused. However, Green Forests Work, a nonprofit based in Kentucky is working on a solution to restore the once-surface-mined land to its natural glory while generating jobs for local tree Read More...
Clean Ocean Sailing strives to collect hard-to-reach plastic
Steve Green and his partner Monika Hertlová have started an ocean cleaning movement from their unique home base on the Helford River in Cornwall. The base is a 113-year-old, 55-ton former icebreaker; a boat specially designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. The pair launched Read More...
Life-sized elephant sculptures inspire us to live in harmony with nature
As human populations have grown around the world, so have their territories, leaving wild animals with less land and resources to survive. This especially affects Earth's largest land mammals: elephants. Elephant populations have declined considerably as a consequence of rapid habitat loss and Read More...
Humpback whales in Alaska still flourishing in the absence of cruise ships
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the world to slow down and stay put, which has certainly added stress to our lives, but for the natural world, has offered some respite from human activity. This is the case for humpback whales in Alaska, which, as we wrote about before, have been enjoying the Read More...