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.
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...
Roads are being built using tons of recycled plastic waste
The road to a world with less plastic waste could come in the form of, wait for it, new roads. Dow Chemical, one of the world’s largest plastic producers, has started building roads using a combination of asphalt and plastic waste. In the past month, the company has constructed two private roads Read More...
Engineers are reimagining the world without concrete
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet (say what?). Here's another crazy fact: concrete is responsible for up to 8 percent of global carbon emissions. That means that if it were a country, it would be the world’s worst culprit after the US and China. The good news Read More...
To prevent human-bear conflict, wildlife rangers are turning to dogs
When dozens of polar bears descend upon the northern Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, no one was sure what to do. The bears entered homes and public buildings, and people were afraid to go outside. But polar bears are an endangered species, and the federal government has refused to issue Read More...
You must see the winning photos from this underwater photography contest
Even if you have traveled to every piece of land on the planet, in reality, you’ve only seen 30 percent of the Earth’s surface. That’s because the remaining 70 percent is covered by the ocean—much of which has yet to be explored. Massive, majestic, and mysterious, seeing imagery of life in Read More...