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.
Finally, recyclable toothpaste tubes are hitting the market
Want a simple way to stop producing waste? Stop brushing your teeth—that way, you don’t throw all those toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes into the trash. OK, maybe that’s not a very cleanly option, which is why it’s good that Colgate is creating the first-ever recyclable toothpaste Read More...
Even KFC is now offering a plant-based burger
Kentucky Fried Chicken: The name of this famous fast-food chain implies that its main thing is serving up chicken. But with the demands of consumers have changed, KFC is diverting from its foundations and jumping on the plant-based bandwagon. That’s right, soon enough KFC will be serving the Read More...
Scientists are turning cotton waste into plastic that actually biodegrades
When a cotton gin is used to separate cotton fibers from their seeds, a lot of lint is produced as a waste product. In fact, approximately 32 million tons of cotton lint is produced annually, with about a third of that simply being burnt or put in landfills. Thanks to recent research out of Read More...
Each Spring, 70,000 snakes come to this region in Canada to mate
Tokyo has its cherry blossoms, the Netherlands has its tulip fields, and Paris offers itself. But the Canadian province of Manitoba has a remarkably distinct springtime attraction too: tens of thousands of amorous snakes writhing around in pits. While Manitoba’s tourist agency doesn’t Read More...
Indian town makes it a condition for new buildings to plant at least two trees
In a step to make the environment greener, a municipality in the district of Kerala, India, has decided to pass legislation that will require newly constructed buildings to have at least two native fruit trees planted mandatorily. The rule will apply to any new buildings, commercial or Read More...
Pomegranates may hold key compound to slowing down aging
Since aging is a key driver of many diseases, targeting that process could be a handy catch-all for treating a range of diseases and improving the quality of life for pretty much everybody. That’s why, for a long time, researchers have been busy looking for various ways to slow down the process Read More...
How activists in this Californian city stopped a gas plant from being built
When NRG Energy, one of the largest electric power producers in the country, won a contract to build a new gas plant on the beach in Oxnard, California, in 2014, nearly everyone assumed it was a done deal. The region’s electric utility, Southern California Edison, needed a new source of power to Read More...
A new marketplace is paying farmers to capture carbon emissions
If farmers make changes to the way they manage soil on farms—and that happened on farmland globally—it could theoretically suck a trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, or as much as humans have emitted since the Industrial Revolution. The changes aren’t particularly complicated, and Read More...
In one year, Scotland has planted a mind-boggling 22 million new trees
Planting trees is one of the most effective, natural tools we have for capturing carbon that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. Since the United Kingdom has some of the lowest levels of tree cover in the world, the UK made a pledge years ago to plant more trees across the nation. And while Read More...
Over 600 divers in Florida just set the record for biggest underwater cleanup
It’s amazing what people will do to break a Guinness World Record. Just this past weekend, for example, hundreds of scuba divers entered the waters of Deerfield Beach in Florida for the largest underwater cleanup the world has ever seen. The previous record was reportedly set in 2015 by a group Read More...