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.
Why you should stop buying birthday balloons
As our name implies, we don’t like to be the bearer of bad news. But sometimes we feel it’s important to bring about some more unfortunate news in order to motivate better decisions regarding our planet. In this case, new research has found that balloons are the number one marine debris risk of Read More...
White paint: the surprisingly simple way to keep cities cool
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and invent highly-complex gadgets to keep our cities cool in the face of climate change. In fact, a bucket of white paint can already go a long way in helping cities shrug off rising temperatures. White paint limits the amount of light and therefore heat a Read More...
An Indonesian community built a natural defense to save its shoreline
When the Demak District of Indonesia’s most populous island started to notice that its precious shoreline was degrading and disappearing, the district came up with a five-year plan to restore it. The plan included the installation of permeable dam structures made of bamboo and brushwood that trap Read More...
The UN just declared 2021 to 2030 the ‘Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’
Massive political and financial backing will be needed if we want to turn the tide against climate change. That’s why it’s more than welcoming to know that the period between 2021 and 2030 has officially been declared as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Just this week, the General Read More...
Can you bring a forest back to life? Absolutely
The Iberian peninsula was once home to vast stretches of forests that spanned across the northern coast of Spain. Now the region is an arid one with depleted soil baking under the hot sun. Typically such a baron landscape would present a major obstacle for any old reforestation program, but for Read More...
The race is on to build batteries big enough for planes to fly on clean energy
The need for electrifying the aviation industry is clear. Not only is air travel responsible for 2 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, but it also has a particular warming effect as planes flying at high altitudes spew nitrogen oxides and other particulates that heat up the Read More...
How teens became the leading voice in the fight against climate change
Last week we wrote about the weekly Youth Strikes for Climate movement in which teens across the world are ditching class every Friday to march on the streets in order to urge climate action. Although we think it’s brilliant that younger generations are doing all they can to motivate politicians Read More...
Meet the world’s first carbon-neutral professional sports team
Professional sports teams are hardly known for their eco-friendliness. They sell hot dogs and other fast foods to fans in single-use packaging, travel long distances to get to matches and require massive amounts of resources in order to operate and maintain stadiums. But there’s one professional Read More...
Holding cities accountable to their emissions targets will soon be easier
The problem with holding countries, cities, and even individual companies accountable for their pledges to cut down on emissions is that monitoring emissions is a real challenge. We can estimate with relative accuracy how much a certain entity is emitting, but tracking down the exact amount remains Read More...
IBM has come up with a quick way to recycle all kinds of plastic
The problem with recycling is quite straightforward: only a small percentage of the plastic items we throw away are recyclable. Some items such as plastic bottles can easily be repurposed, but others that use different assortment of plastic or have special coatings cannot. New solutions are needed Read More...