【推荐1】In the Watertown offices of planning and design firm Sasaki Associates, there’s a wall that asks employees to respond to the question, “What makes you happy?” Standing out among a sea of sticky notes listing things like “yoga” and “my cat,” one post says “CHICKENS.”

At most companies it would sound like a joke, but not here. Sasaki, which has an on-site, employee-run garden featuring 30 different kinds of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, is soon adding a chicken coop (笼子) to the mix, and workers seem delighted.

In 2015, Sasaki partnered with Green City Growers, a Somerville —based company that installs (安装) and helps maintain urban farms and vegetable gardens, to give its employees a chance to grow their own produce and experience urban agriculture firsthand.

“It builds a culture of inclusion and community,” said James Miner, a managing principal at Sasaki, who brought the farming idea to the company’s parking lot. “It’s something people can get behind and enjoy. You can just take 10 to 12 minutes away from your screen, get your fingers dirty, talk to your neighbors, and hopefully harvest something.”

While Miner hoped a handful of employees would be excited to take part in the gardens, he was happily surprised when nearly 40 percent of the Watertown office’s employees jumped onboard.

Completely, funded by Sasaki, the company’s urban gardens are owned and tended by employees, who can sign up to manage crops by themselves or in groups. Workers bring home whatever produce they grow —cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and scallions are just a few of the foods they’ve had success with.

After the addition of the bright pink chicken coop — which will be designed and 3D —printed in Sasaki’s offices —the employees hope to add a garden and explore beekeeping on the building’s roof. Quite a few closet beekeepers, gardeners, and birdwatchers have emerged from the company’s woodwork to lead the charge on these plans.

“People are looking for a higher sense of meaning at work,” Miner said. “The gardens show what it means to be a part of Sasaki.”

【推荐2】I’d been telling Sandy about my children, Emma and Tucker, aged seven and four. Sandy, in turn, was telling me about her four children: Jane, Joe, Christopher and eighteen-month-old Kim. She seemed so pleased to have kids move into the neighborhood. That was, until the door opened and out ran Emma and Sam.

Sam was our shiny black dog we had adopted three years earlier. Sam loved to hang with the kids, serving as both playmate and protector. But Sandy began to back up as Sam approached, I had never met anyone who feared dogs. As I saw her reaction, I quickly grabbed Sam by the collar and made him sit.

“I have to get the kids ready to go to their grandmother’s,” Sandy said as she backed away from me, graciously trying to remove herself from the situation.

Suddenly her door opened, and out ran her kids. “Don’t go near it!” she screamed. The kids were circled around their mom, closely watching Sam. Emma showed Joe the proper way to slowly approach a dog. Sam accepted Joe’s affection. The kids were won over, but I knew it would take some time before Sandy would change.

From that time forward, we were careful not to let Sam cross the street to our neighbors without my company. One day, the kids were across the street playing together. Then I noticed the eighteen-month-old heading toward a little hill. Seeing a car approaching, I screamed, “Watch the baby!”

Sam stormed out the door and ran across the street toward the baby. He ran up the hill, stopping just short of knocking into her. He gently pushed her away from the approaching car. The kids, too involved in play to realize the seriousness of the situation a few minutes ago, ran toward her and Sam. The kids all cheered that Sam had come to play.

Within a year, Sam made friends with all the neighbors, and almost every family on our street had a dog. Even Sandy would occasionally come and give Sam a hug.

【推荐1】If you’ve never had hot pot, you’re absolutely missing out. Not only is it delicious, but it’s also a fantastic meal to share with friends or family. But it also generates a lot of waste oil. In fact, hot pot is reportedly responsible for 12,000 tons of waste oil per month just in the Chinese city of Chengdu alone. Instead of just throwing away that oil, one company decided to turn it into jet fuel (航空燃料).

Bloomberg recently published a great article about Sichuan Jinshang Environmental Technology, a company that began exporting hot pot waste oil to be turned into biofuel that can power planes. It’s not exactly a perfect solution to the greenhouse gas emissions that the aviation (航空) industry is responsible for, but it’s a step in the right direction. “Our mission is to make waste oil fly to the sky,” Zhong Guojun, the company’s vice president, told Bloomberg.

Based in Chengdu, Sichuan Jinshang Environmental Technology takes waste oil from around the city and refines it into something called industrial mixed oil. The refined oil is then exported to be turned into jet fuel or biodiesel (生物柴) by companies such as BP or Neste Oyj, the biggest producer of sustainable jet fuel in the world. And with new requirements for airlines to use more biofuel in their planes, there’s a lot of demand despite the fact that it’s still more expensive than regular jet fuel.

“When there is a demand, the supply will catch up, and the demand is already here,” said Chong Cheng Tung, Associate Professor at the China-UK Low Carbon College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University told Bloomberg. “So either you switch your fuel to green fuel, like bio-jet fuel, or you have to meet additional payments for travelling.”

Last year, Neste announced plans to spend more than $2 billion expanding its capacity to produce sustainable jet fuel. By 2026, it hopes to be able to produce 1.2 million tons of the stuff. Other companies such as Chevron, BP. and Total Energies are producing it on a smaller scale (规模) but also plan to increase their output soon.

【推荐2】Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people, particularly poor rural communities that depend on the land for their livelihoods and coastal populations throughout the tropics. We have already seen a chain of tough suffering that results from extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and more.

For remedies, advocates and politicians have tended to look toward cuts in fossil-fuel use or technologies to capture carbon before it enters the atmosphere—both of which are crucial. But this focus has overshadowed the most powerful and cost-efficient carbon capture technology in the world. Recent research confirms that forests are absolutely essential in reducing climate change, thanks to their ability to absorb and isolate carbon. In fact, natural climate solutions such as conservation and restoration of forests, along with improvements in land management, can help us achieve 37 percent of our climate target of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, even though they currently receive only 2.5 percent of public climate financing.

Forests’ power to store carbon dioxide is staggering: one tree can store an average of about 48 pounds in one year. Intact(完整的)forests could take in the CO₂ emissions of some entire countries.

For this reason, policymakers and business leaders must create and enforce policies to prevent deforestation, foster, reforestation of degraded land, and promote the sustainable management of standing forests in the fight against climate change. Protecting the world’s forests ensures they can keep performing essential functions such as producing oxygen, filtering water and supporting biodiversity. Not only does the world’s entire population depend on forests to provide clean air, clean water, oxygen and medicines, but 1.6 billion people also rely on them directly for their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, a huge amount of forest continues to be converted into agricultural land to produce a handful of resource-intensive commodities - despite zero-deforestation commitments from companies and governments. So now is the time to increase forest protection and restoration. This action will also address a number of other pressing global issues. For example, in less developed, rural areas - especially in the tropics - community-based forest-management programs can forge pathways out of poverty. In the Peten region of Guatemala, for instance, community-managed forests boasted a near-zero deforestation rate from 2000 through 2013, as compared with 12 percent in nearby protected areas and buffer(缓冲)zones. These communities have built low-impact, sustainable forest-based businesses that have stimulated the economy of the region enough to fund the creation of local schools and health services. Their success is especially noticeable in a location where, outside these community-managed zones, deforestation rates have increased 20-fold.

【推荐3】The UN this week launched a report urging companies to stop issuing false net-zero targets that amount to greenwashing.

Greenwashing is a term used to describe situations where companies mislead consumers by claiming to be eco-friendly or sustainable as a marketing plan rather than as a core principle of their business model. Often, these industries spend more money making themselves appear sustainable than they do taking actual sustainable measures into their company.

Cities, financial institutions, and scores of companies have announced plans to reduce their emissions to zero, which, in principle, should help the fight against climate change.

“The problem is that the criteria for these net-zero commitments have varying levels of precision and loopholes (漏洞),” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during the launch of the report.

Many net-zero plans contain far-away or unclear targets and often call for the use of unproved technologies like carbon capture and tree planting, which effectively allow companies to continue polluting the atmosphere. Studies show that most of these net-zero plans will do little to stop temperatures from rising. For example, many oil majors have announced plans to reduce emissions from their operations to zero by 2050 that do not take into account the carbon emitted by the fossil fuels they sell, which would allow them to increase production. Far from decreasing, fossil fuel production is going strong.

To close these net-zero loopholes, the UN this week released a report that includes 10 recommendations to ensure that companies, cities, regions, and other non-state actors issue credible and accountable net zero commitments. “Their plans cannot rely on cheap carbon credits instead of immediately cutting their own emissions,” Guterres said.

Financial institutions need to cut down emissions from all their investments and businesses need to bring down the carbon footprint of their supply chain, the report said. The report’s lead author, Catherine McKenna, urged companies to release new net-zero targets within a year. The updated targets must contain concrete actionable details.