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.
Five strategies for removing massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that warding off catastrophic global warming requires actively removing 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by midcentury. Planting billions of trees is one way of doing this, but there are Read More...
Norway to pay Indonesia for cutting emissions and reducing deforestation
In 2010 Norway signed a $1 billion deal with Indonesia which aimed to reward the developing country for efforts that reduce deforestation, improve forest preservation, and cut carbon emissions. Home to the world’s third largest tropical forest, Indonesia is also the biggest producer of palm oil, Read More...
Here’s what you can do to help save bugs from extinction
To put things bluntly, without bugs, we wouldn’t be around. That’s why a recent report outlining the drastic decline in insect life around the world is so worrying. According to the best data available, the total mass of insects is falling at a rate that suggests they could vanish within a Read More...
This island is introducing the strictest plastic ban the world has ever seen
The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu currently boasts some of the strictest laws when it comes to plastic waste. In July, the island voted to ban single-use plastic bags, drinking straws and styrofoam containers in a dramatic attempt to stem the flow of trash from the country’s coasts into the Read More...
Farmers could soon replace polluting fertilizer with special microbes
Of the hundred-million-plus tons of fertilizer sprayed onto farm fields each year, much of it eventually ends up polluting the air or flowing into water, where it can cause toxic algae blooms like the green slime seen in Florida. One startup is helping farmers begin to replace standard chemical Read More...
Recycling small fragments of glass is now possible thanks to new process
Unlike plastics, glass can be recycled many times over—making it a much more sustainable material. The only issues are the recycling process is generally limited to large pieces that can be easily sorted by color. When glass is shattered into small fragments, they tend to simply be discarded by Read More...
Tortoise believed extinct for 100 years rediscovered on remote Galapagos island
A species of giant tortoises believed to have been extinct for more than a century has been rediscovered on the Galapagos Island of Fernandina. The discovered reptile is an adult female, suspected to be more than 100 years old. The species is unique to the Fernandina Island, one of the many dozen Read More...
Military leaders from around the world are uniting to fight climate change
In 2016, the highest ranking military official in the Dutch armed forces, Tom Middendorp, was laughed at when he declared climate change a threat to the world’s security. Now less than three years later, military leaders from all around the world are following in his footsteps. In fact, support Read More...
Hundreds of bird species will benefit from new land-protection bill
Last week, the US Senate passed the most significant land-protection legislation in a decade touching every state in the country and protecting more than 1.3 million acres of wilderness from any damaging human intervention. Among other provisions, the legislation extends an important program that Read More...
Innovators are turning “valueless” plastic bags into beautiful products
“Flexible plastics” such as bags of all shapes, sizes, and colors are often deemed as non-commercially valuable as they barely have any weight and are hard to process—meaning they hardly get recycled. Slowly but surely, however, innovators are coming up with brilliant ways to make the most Read More...