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.
7 Tips for making Thanksgiving more sustainable this year
The festive season is just around the corner, which makes for a lot of excuses to (safely) gather around the dinner table with friends and family to feast on favorite holiday dishes, starting with Thanksgiving at the end of November. Unfortunately, this also means that the issue of food waste Read More...
US to begin regulating methane emissions from oil and gas wells
Oil and gas wells, even abandoned ones, are a huge source of emissions. These sites are particularly known for their methane emissions, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. A recent NASA project identified particularly problematic emissions sites, and now, for the first time ever, Read More...
Easy-to-repair Fairphone raises the bar for sustainable smartphone design
Current smartphone manufacturing methods have a hefty carbon footprint. These poor environmental credentials are only worsened by yearly device releases and hard-to-repair phones, contributing to an already overwhelming amount of e-waste. Some of the carbon-intensive components inside the device, Read More...
This is the most detailed map ever of US cancer-linked industrial pollution
Air pollution has been linked to numerous diseases including asthma, cancer, and heart disease, but while air pollution can negatively affect all of us, its damage is disproportionately felt by certain populations. Breaking down where air pollution is most potent and why is the first step to Read More...
Say goodbye to cracked screens and hello to nanocrystals
We’ve all been there; Watching in slow motion as our phones come crashing down to the floor. Bending down filled with dread to see the possible damage to our screens and another potential hole in our wallets. Thanks to new breakthrough research out of the University of Queensland, this experience Read More...
4 Latin American countries join forces to form huge marine reserve
Four Latin American countries have agreed to merge their marine reserves to form one mega-reserve that will protect one of the world’s richest regions of ocean biodiversity. The pacific-facing countries of Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica announced the creation of the Eastern Tropical Read More...
A few extraordinary ways ordinary people are responding to COP26
The long-awaited COP26 climate summit is garnering media coverage from across the globe, however, it’s not just the big names in politics and business that are sounding the alarm on the climate crisis. The global climate summit has inspired the public to think of innovative ways that they can Read More...
Major US airline eliminates plastic water cups and bottles on board
You’ve probably noticed in your travels that flying involves a lot of plastic waste. While airport water fill up stations and compostable packaging have helped a bit, in flight services are still plastic-intensive. To address the largest source of in-flight plastic waste, water cups, Alaska Read More...
Meet the world's youngest philanthropic author and wildlife conservationist
Kate Gilman Williams was just seven years old when she went on her first safari in South Africa. The trip allowed young Kate to see incredible wildlife in their natural habitat and learn how these savannah-dwelling animals are constantly threatened by human activity. This sparked in her the passion Read More...
Conservationists bring the Saharan gazelle back from the brink of extinction
The mhorr, more commonly known as the Dama gazelles, were once a common sight in Naudhibou, Mauritania. But following years of local unrest and indiscriminate hunting, the species was pushed to the brink of extinction about half a century ago, leaving conservationists little hope about the Read More...