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.
This coffee cart-on-a-bike franchise cleans the air as it brews
If an old-fashioned food cart makes cities a little dirtier—belching clouds of diesel exhaust as you wait for your tacos—a new mobile coffee cart does the opposite. The cart runs on solar and wind power and moves around the city on bike wheels. And it actually cleans the air directly Read More...
Thailand suspends seahorse trade amid conservation concerns
Seahorses, traded by the millions annually as an ingredient in traditional medicine in parts of Asia, are getting a reprieve from Thailand, the world’s biggest exporter of the animal. A marine biologist who works closely with Thailand on seahorse conservation welcomed the government’s Read More...
The African country that plans to run on 100% renewable energy by 2020
The island nation of Cape Verde has pledged to power the entire country with nothing but renewable energy by the year 2020, and vowed to help other African states work towards the same goal in future. With almost no mineral resources of its own and little arable farmland, the outcrop in the middle Read More...
The power plant that could end recycling
Most of us are now thoroughly recycling our waste. But here’s a company that wants to outsource all that sorting to organisms. Dong Energy will open the world’s largest waste-to-biogas conversion plant in England next spring. The company uses advanced enzyme technology to handle unsorted Read More...
New MIT app: check if your car meets climate targets
In a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, with an accompanying app for the public, scientists at MIT compare the carbon pollution from today’s cars tothe international 2°C climate target. In order to meet that target, overall emissions need to decline Read More...
Introducing: Off-grid villages that grow food and generate power
If you move into a new neighborhood being constructed outside of Amsterdam, your salad greens might come from the greenhouse attached to your home. Your eggs could be gathered from the village chicken coop, and your food waste would all get harvested for compost. ReGen Villages is a Read More...
Soil isn’t sexy but we need to dig in and help conserve it
Soil, earth, mud, dirt; whatever word you choose, it is difficult to think of a less glamorous topic to campaign on. But a campaign is now vital. Soil is critical to much of our food. It also safeguards biodiversity, as a habitat for below-ground life that includes many thousands of types of Read More...
How the return of wolves revived Yellowstone's ecosystem
In 1995, Yellowstone National Park reintroduced a pack of 66 wolves following a 70-year absence from the park. The return of the wolves was an extraordinary success, helping to rejuvenate wildlife in the park from top to bottom. Here’s a fantastic video that shows how the reintroduction of one Read More...
No fracking, drilling or digging: it’s the only way to save life on Earth
Do they understand what they have signed? Plainly they do not. Governments such as ours, now ratifying the Paris agreement on climate change, haven’t the faintest idea what it means – either that or they have no intention of honouring it. For the first time we can see the numbers on which the Read More...
Build healthy soil through regenerative grazing
The Resilient Farm and Homestead (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013) is a comprehensive how-to manual that will help the reader select, design, develop, and manage land for self-reliance and regenerative agriculture, and presents a thriving model for productive, durable homesteads and farms in cold Read More...