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.
Seville becomes first city to name and classify heatwaves
When a tropical storm or hurricane gets bestowed a name, people know to take weather warnings seriously and to prepare their households accordingly. Now, the southern Spanish city of Seville is taking the same approach to heatwaves, becoming the first in the world to name and classify these Read More...
Artificial photosynthesis helps plants grow with no sunlight required
Plants use a special natural process called photosynthesis to grow, mature, flower, and produce fruit. Photosynthesis is the way in which plants absorb energy from sunlight and use it to make their own food out of carbon dioxide and water. For years, scientists have been investigating this Read More...
How to throw an eco-friendly wedding
Many couples who had planned their weddings for 2020 and 2021 were forced by Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions to postpone their celebrations til this year. Now, it’s wedding season again and love is in the air. But you know what else is in the air? Planet-warming co2 emissions, smog, and Read More...
Don’t toss that dead mosquito! Mail it to this scientist instead
It may sound like a strange request, but Canadian scientist Dan Peach is asking people to send him dead mosquitos via post. Each squished bugger, argues Peach, can provide useful insights as he explores exactly how far mosquitos are traveling as a result of global warming. Climate change and Read More...
How to start doing laundry the natural way
There’s a laundromat called Celsious in New York City that is completely changing the way we think about laundromats. The place looks more like a beautiful new café rather than a sterile laundromat, and all the washing that takes place there is done in an eco-friendly manner. The high-tech Read More...
4 eco-conscious innovations that make biking more accessible
We at The Optimist Daily have written about the many positive aspects of biking as a form of recreation and transport. If more communities chose to develop infrastructure that favors bicycles over cars, our world would be a safer, greener, and healthier place. Biking has grown in popularity Read More...
Passive cooling techniques reduce AC strain by up to 80 percent
In the summer months, many of us are of two minds: we’re dying to keep it cool, but we’re also dying not to spend too much on electricity. Not only that, many of us don’t want to overload our town’s power grid during the summer, so we’re turned to AC alternatives. As it turns out, Read More...
Crab Trapper Whiskey: capturing invasive species and putting them in whiskey
An occasionally neglected fact of conservation is the encroachment of invasive species. Some non-native animals can wind up consuming all available resources for endangered species, and sometimes the endangered species themselves. This was the case with the lionfish, which Florida fishers addressed Read More...
How historic cemeteries help biodiversity thrive
Historic burial places often bring about thoughts of peace and death, however, they actually have a lot of potential for preserving ecological systems and conserving biodiversity that has otherwise been lost in the region. This is because cemeteries have spiritual and sentimental meaning, and so Read More...
Vegetable oil byproduct can filter heavy metals from water
It’s unfortunate, but creating many of our products these days can also create harmful waste. We love finding stories about businesses and scientists repurposing waste to improve life. Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and ETH Zurich, Switzerland have discovered a Read More...