Green School in Uruguay

Francesco Fassina(Ecologist and Volunteer)

Michael Reynolds (Architect)

Alicia Alvarez (School Director)

Danila Mendez (Mother of a student)

Narrator : A sunny winter’s day is great news for these Uruguayan children. As pupils of South America’s first sustainable school, they study in a building heated only using solar panels. On top of the normal school programme, they learn about recycling, energy saving,and growing their own food

Francesco Fassina: The school is an autonomous building in the sense that it isn’t connected to any energy infrastructure for water or anything. It’s sustainable in the way it functions; totally autonomous and it works thanks to its connection with nature—the sun and the rain.

Narrator : The building was funded by a local NGO and a detergent company, and designed by US architect Michael Reynolds, a self-professed “garbage warrior” who's devoted his career to building self-sufficient structures out of recyclable material.

Michael Reynolds: People called me an idiot, uh, building with garbage, what a fool, you’re a disgrace to the architectural community, uh, you know. I was trying to contain sewage and treat it and do all of these things that architects didn’ t do

Narrator : The 39 students, so me just starting pre-school and others in their final year before university learn it’s possible to live in a building that produces no waste. NGO volunteers organise regular workshops on sustainability for pupils and teachers too.

Alicia Alvarez: Little by little, we`re becoming qualified. In fact were being trained by them. We`re being trained to learn how the school works. How to maintain it so that the systems don’t deteriorate.

Narrator : Some of the children have even started educating their parents

Danila Mendez: Every day, we walk here, and he finds glass in the sand or plastic or something and he picks it up. He says. “T`m keeping this to throw it away.” He doesn’t leave it there. He picks it up and he throws it away in the right place.

Narrator : For these little garbage warriors, saving the planet has become an integral part of their homework.

【推荐3】Environmental issues can often seem overwhelming. We’ve all seen the news headlines about plastic pollution poisoning our oceans and scary climate change statistics. But instead of feeling overwhelmed, I am choosing to be mindful. The easiest place was to start with my home.     1    .

Replace your disposables(一次性物品)with reusable things

The first thing you can do is replace all your plastic drinking bottles with a reusable drink bottle.     2    . Plastic is a major pollutant of our oceans, that’s because plastic takes hundreds of years to break down and our ocean life mistake it for food!

    3    

Food waste is a major issue! Food sits in our landfills and gives off poisonous greenhouse emissions. It’s time to deal with food waste instead of sending them to landfill. This might be as simple as sharing a compost(混合肥料)bin with your neighbors or even using your local community compost. Do a search to see what is around you. Local neighborhoods also have workshops on setting up a compost in your own home.

Shop the outer aisles (通道) of the supermarket

Shopping the outer aisles of the supermarket means that you are buying package-free food. Not only-is this better for the planet, it’s also a healthier option for you and your family.     4    . Mother Nature has already created her own packaging! No plastic required!Consume less

    5    . See if you can go one week or one month without buying any clothing, beauty items or accessories. Realizing that we have enough and not craving more has been the biggest lesson I’ve learned. This is something you can teach your family as well.

【推荐2】Aerospace engineers are working on air vehicles-that will be used to drop packages on your doorsteps, transport people and goods over shorter distances and could even give people the ability to call air taxis-to fundamentally change how we see the sky.

What helps the engineers get ready for the change? Batteries keep getting smaller. Materials to build the air vehicles are lighter than ever, Software is more sophisticated. A modern cockpit(驾驶舱)from 20 years ago can’t do half as much as the phone in your pocket. These modernizations have enabled a greater focus on electric technology in flying over the past 15 years. It’s changed the way they fly.

Maybe soon you will be walking down the street to a vertiport, where you’ll catch an air taxi. We’re likely to see one with a pilot, carrying boxes from one place to another. Then it will start flying with passengers and become pilotless. As the new plane becomes more common, the result could be something as simple as cutting down travel time within urban and suburban areas, making it slightly easier to get to the airport or from the suburbs to downtown. But the planes could also help get rid of “transportation deserts,” making it easier for a doctor to reach a patient in a rural area who has limited access to a hospital.

However, there are still a lot of outstanding questions. There are safety measures and requirements that need to be developed. There is pilot training and workforce development. There’s the cost. There’s figuring out who would use this type of transportation. There are still more advances in technology that need to happen if you want them to go farther than 150 miles and to be unmanned. But, according to Hackenberg of NASA, “About the future, it’s not an if; it’s a when.”

【推荐3】In a new study with 22 pairs of identical twins, Stanford Medicine researchers have found that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular (心血管) health.

Although it’s well-known that eating less meat improves cardiovascular health, diet studies are often hampered by factors like genetic differences, upbringing and lifestyle choices. By studying identical twins, however, the researchers were able to control genetics and limit the other factors, as the twins grew up in the same households and reported similar lifestyles.

The trial consisted of 22 pairs of identical twins. The study authors selected healthy participants without cardiovascular disease and matched one twin from each pair with either a vegan or omnivore (杂食) diet. The vegan diet was entirely plant-based, including no meat or animal products while the omnivore diet included chicken, fish, eggs and other animal-sourced foods.

During the first four weeks, a meal service delivered 21 meals per week. For the remaining four weeks, the participants prepared their own meals. The participants were interviewed about their dietary intake and kept a record of the food they ate. 43 participants completed the study.

“Our study used a generalizable diet accessible to anyone, because 21 out of the 22 vegans followed through with the diet,” said Christopher Gardner, a professor in the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “This suggests anyone who chooses a vegan diet can improve their long-term health in two months, with the most change seen in the first month.”

The researchers found the most improvement over the first four weeks of the diet change. The participants with a vegan diet had significantly lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (脂蛋白胆固醇)   levels, which are associated with improved cardiovascular health than the omnivore participants. The vegan participants also showed approximately a 20% drop in fasting insulin (胰岛素) —a higher insulin level is a risk factor for developing diabetes. The vegans also lost an average of 4. 2 more pounds than the omnivores.

“Based on these results, most of us would benefit from going to a more plant-based diet,” Gardner said. But that doesn’t mean going completely vegan. Adding more plant-based food into your diet is the key to better heart health.