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.
Nature's air filter
From The Intelligent Optimist Magazine Fall/Winter 2016 Air pollution is responsible for roughly 7 million deaths worldwide every year. Air-borne pollutants also cause heart disease, stroke, skin diseases, reduced fertility and miscarriage, and cancer. There’s a solution: Plants that clean the Read More...
This eco-guide will help make your laundry cleaner and greener
The issue with modern fashion is that garments often use synthetic microfibers that end up polluting sewage systems when washed. Ultimately, these fibers end up in fish that we consume. One study found that a day’s worth of laundry in a city the size of Berlin releases the equivalent of 540,000 Read More...
Could eating insects help save the planet?
Eating insects may not be very appetizing, but scientists are hoping that will change in the future after new research revealed that replacing half the meat eaten worldwide with insects could cut greenhouse gas emissions by one-third. Take a look here at the radical new solution that could Read More...
Mushrooms could hold the key for saving bee populations
Researchers are buzzing over the possibility of using mushrooms to help save declining populations of honey bees. They have found that mushroom spores and extracts have the ability to fight against varroa mites—nasty parasites that spread diseases within bee populations. By treating hives with Read More...
Ode to Ruth Buendía Mestoquiari, Pakitzapango Canyon, Peru
From The Optimist Magazine Summer 2014 Saving the forest For the Asháninka people of the Amazon rainforest, the Ené River Valley is their ancestral birthplace. This sacred home of the Asháninka was nearly taken away by the 2010 Peru–Brazil Energy Agreement, which aimed to build 60 large-scale Read More...
The circle economy: Veggies grown with toilet water
Nature produces no waste. Whatever any species leaves behind is used as fuel for another species. Humans are the great exception. We produce massive amounts of waste. That has to change and here’s an example. This water treatment plant turns sewage in water that can be used for veggies Read More...
If your carbon footprint makes you feel guilty, there’s an easy way out
“We think a lot about our carbon footprint,” says Deborah Markowitz. She diligently recycles, avoids eating meat most days, burns wood pellets for heat, and drives an electric car if public transport isn’t available. That’s all pretty standard fare for the environmentally conscious. But Read More...
Ode to Guilin and Lijiang River National Park, Guangxi, China
Protecting China’s natural heritage From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2915 “The river winds like a green silk ribbon, while the hills are like jade hairpins.” So wrote the Chinese poet Han Yu (768–824), in praise of the area surrounding the Chinese city of Guilin, at the banks of the Read More...
Ode to Abeer Seikaly, Amman, Jordan
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 A new kind of mobile home People move. It’s what they have always done and what they will keep doing. Architect, artist and cultural producer Abeer Seikaly, from Amman, Jordan, designed an elegant and practical home for people who are forced to move on to a Read More...
Possibility: Let nature run wild
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Commentary by Fred Pearce, a London-based environmental writer, is author of numerous books, most recently The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, from which this is excerpted. Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating Read More...