1 . Maya Lin, designer and sculptor, has created some of the most iconic works and spaces with the belief that art can address important issues. Her latest projects are no different, from museums to sculptures for Presidential centers.

Lin, 62, grew up in Ohio, the daughter of college professors who were Chinese immigrants. As a 21-year-old student at Yale University, she gained national prominence when her entry won a design competition for the new Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Her winning design — two black granite (花岗岩) walls engraved with the names of US service members who died in the Vietnam War (1954-1975) or remain missing — is considered one of the most influential in modern architecture.

Lin went on to design the 1989 Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and dozens of other projects globally, all with social and environmental justice in mind. She told The Wall Street Journal she uses facts in her art. She said, “I am going to present you with what the story is, but I am not going to draw the conclusion for you.” Currently underway is Lin’s plan for the new Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Lin said she wants it to be a celebration of Chinese American stories and contributions to the country.

Lin is also designing a sculpture to honor former President Barack Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, at the Obama Presidential Center in Illinois. When Obama awarded Lin the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, he called her work “physical acts of poetry, each reminding us that the most important element in art or architecture is human emotion.”

2 . In 2022, campaign group Fashion Revolution Chelsea dye a garden for its Chelsea Flower Show presentation. An ancient craft, natural dyeing is a practice whose time has come again, with hand tie-dyed fashion also making a comeback in recent years.

The revival has been encouraged by Covid lockdowns, “which allowed people to explore the craft at home, says natural-dyeing enthusiast and teacher Susan Dye. It’s unlikely, though, that the practice would have caught on in quite the same way if not for a continually growing discomfort about fashion’s heavy footprint. From carbon emissions to animal cruelty, fashion is under considerable inspection. “Put it this way, 97% of dyes used in the industry are petrochemically (石油化学产品) based,” says sustainable fashion consultant Jackie Andrews, who helped advise the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative. We’ve got net zero targets which mean we’re going to have to remove all those petrochemicals from the manufacturing cycle.

Fashion is a huge polluter. According to the UN Environment Program, the industry is responsible for up to one-fifth of all industrial water pollution—due to the fact that most clothes today are produced in poorer countries where regulation is weak and enforcement weaker. Waste water is dumped directly into rivers and streams, poisoning the land as well as the water sources of people and animals who rely on them.

It’s easy to see why someone who cares about people, planet and animals, as well as clothes, might turn to natural plant dyeing. From the beauty of the raw materials—often wild plants-to the property of only bonding with natural fiber like cotton and linen (亚麻布) from the minor footprint of recycling old clothing that has grayed or faded over time to the vibrant and long-lasting dyeing results, plant dyeing feels like a quiet act of rebellion. This is why, while beginners start with simply changing their clothes’ color, new worlds open. Many of today’s natural dyers grow their own dye plants, run local community workshops, and advocate for change in industrialized fashion systems and beyond.

3 . After observing a few big falls from a tree, the Morgan family knew that there were two baby squirrels that needed a bit of extra_______. When the Morgans saw a dead squirrel nearby, they______that these two sweethearts were likely orphans. Father Keith and his daughter Riley took the ______to offer help. They moved the babies into a rabbit cage to bring them back to health. They became______family members, receiving the names Chip and Dale.

Keith did a bit of research, and the family______the babies Pedialyte (电解质水) to help them. While Chip ______passed away despite the extra care, Dale held on tightly. He responded well to the food and care the Morgans _______and soon got strong enough to leave the cage.

But then something______happened. Dale the squirrel kept coming back!

“Little by little he would go up in a tree, climb up to play, and then come back down to stay with us,” Riley______“OK. If he wants to stick around, we’ll build him a ______in the trees. Riley’s a big Whataburger (a fast food restaurant) fan and we decided to ______that design into Dale’s home,” said father Keith.

On July 10, Keith uploaded a picture of the squirrel home to a Whataburger group online, and the content ______. Over a thousand people shared the______, and the comment section was full of delight and awe. While Dale hasn’t stopped home to ______in a while, the Morgan family knows he’s out there making the most of his life. Dale serves as a(n)______that a little extra care can make a big difference!

4 . Research has found that using wood for construction instead of concrete and steel can reduce emissions. But Tim Searchinger at Princeton University says many of these studies are based on the false foundation that harvesting wood is carbon neutral (碳中和). “Only a small percentage of the wood gets into a timber (木料) product, and a part of that gets into a timber product that can replace concrete and steel in a building,” he says. Efficiencies vary in different countries, but large amounts of a harvested tree are left to be divided into parts, used in short-lived products like paper or burned for energy, all of which generate emissions.

In a report for the World Resources Institute, Searchinger and his colleagues have modelled how using more wood for construction would affect emissions between 2010 and 2050, accounting for the emissions from harvesting the wood. They considered various types of forests and parts of wood going towards construction. They also factored in the emissions savings from replacing concrete and steel.

Under some circumstances, the researchers found significant emissions reductions. But each case required what they considered an unrealistically high portion of the wood going towards construction, as well as rapid growth only seen in warmer places, like Brazil. In general, they found a large increase in global demand for wood would probably lead to rising emissions for decades. Accounting for emissions in this way, the researchers reported in a related paper that increasing forest harvests between 2010 and 2050 would add emissions equal to roughly 10 percent of total annual emissions.

Ali Amiri at Aalto University in Finland says the report’s conclusions about emissions from rising demand are probably correct, but the story is different for wood we already harvest. “Boosting the efficiency of current harvests and using more wood for longer-lived purposes than paper would cut emissions,” he says. “We cannot just say we should stop using wood.”

5 . Millions of young people grow up with a deep love of Disney. ______ by the studio’s fairytales, they dream of becoming a prince or princess.

Cori Borgstadt, however, has a slightly different ______. Instead of ______ to be a princess like Snow White, she wants to become Disney’s CEO and has been ______ the company’s shareholder(股东)meetings since she was three years old.

Borgstadt, now 18, has ______ Disney for as long as she can remember. As well as collecting dolls and toys ______ her favourite films, she owns ______ in the company.

She is studying economics and film and media studies at Texas Tech University, and has ______ Bob Iger, the Disney CEO about how to eventually ______ him, at most of the meetings she has attended, Iger, now 72, replied: “Well, one thing you can do is keep coming to our shareholders’ meeting.”

The love of Disney has always been in Borgstadt’s ______. Her grandmother bought her and her younger sister a single share when they were children. It was her mother, Jan, who suggested she attend the shareholder meeting ______.

Borgstadt ______ that her dream of one day becoming the boss will not be easy to achieve, and would require a ______ similar to the ones Disney has been creating for a century. But she is ______ to work her way up, from making her ______ felt in the meetings.

6 . Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South's landfill sites (垃圾填埋场).

Electronic waste(e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, Accra. It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process. They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.

But Agbogbloshie should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty, aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The e-waste industry, however, circumvents regulations by exporting e-waste labelled as "secondhand goods' to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.

A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals. This is not surprising: smartphones contain chemicals like mercury (水银), lead and even arsenic (砷). Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that's about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA). Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana's top exports are cocoa and nuts.

Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers' waste. For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers. However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is an almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments' green policies are focused on issues like climate change.

Only the manufacturers can fix this. A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.