2 . When most people think of Amish communities, they picture old-fashioned environments free of modern technology. For the most part, that’s true, but there are a few surprising exceptions. Many Amish families use solar panels to meet their modest electricity needs.

According to Electric Rate, some Amish communities adopted solar as far back as the 90’s. In addition to wind turbines on churches and barns, Amish homes may also have solar panels on the roofs. These are connected to batteries that power electric lights, water pumps, and even the occasional washing machine, refrigerator, cash register, or e-bike. Amish communities don’t reject all technology for its own sake. Instead, they consider the impact each type of technology will have on their lifestyle and traditions.

Television doesn’t have a place in the simple Amish lifestyle, and connecting to the power grid to run multiple appliances (家用电器) would threaten the community’s independence and self-reliance. However, electric lights are another matter, according to Electric Rate. Amish families previously used kerosene (煤油) lamps to light their homes. These created major safety issues, like heightened fire risk and harmful smoke.

Solar panels and LED lights were the perfect solutions, Electric Rate says. They’re self-contained, so Amish communities don’t have to pay a monthly bill. They don’t even have to add wiring to the whole house. Just one or two panels are enough for a whole home since they don’t have many electric appliances. The lights themselves are reliable, efficient, long-lasting, affordable, and safe.

Even better, solar technology is getting cheaper all the time. Ongoing breakthroughs in solar panel design have made them easier to manufacture and more efficient to use, opening up this possibility for even more families. Solar panels are also gentle on the planet. Unlike burning kerosene, solar doesn’t produce air pollution that traps heat in our atmosphere. The more households, businesses, and governments adopt solar, the more we cool down the planet.

When you look at the map of the Tengger Desert (腾格尔沙漠), you will see a “green wall” in the southwest. It products Wuwei City of Gansu Province from sandstorms.

With an area of over 8,000 mu, the “green wall” was planted by Wang Tianchang and his family. They have done this great job for over 20 years.

In his seventies now, Wang Tianchang is an ordinary farmer from Gansu Province. He and his family live in a small village close to the Tengger Desert. People there once suffered a lot from sandstorms for a long time. They destroyed their farms and houses. To hold back sand, Wang Tianchang decided to do something. In 1999, Wang planted his first plant in the desert and started his life of sand control.

It is never easy to bring life on the desert. In the beginning, Wang had no experience with desert plants. The sand covered the holes he dug very soon. The wind rooted out the seedlings he planted even on the second day he had done. It was challenging, but he never gave up.

His family helped him a lot, especially his son Wang Yinji. To plant more trees, the two of them even lived in the desert for about six years. They found grass to sleep on as their beds.

Thanks to Wang’s “green wall”, Wuwei City sees much fewer sandstorms. Wang has brought back not only green to the desert but also hopes to the people there. He is our hero!

6 . Every week, Angela looked at her recycling bin, filled with shampoo bottles and plastic containers, with mixed feelings. Sure, it was a lot of plastic, but it was going to be recycled. Or so she thought. Then, her husband sent her some articles revealing that less than 6% of the country’s plastic gets recycled. She was shocked.

Determined to cut back on her plastic consumption, Angela got a starter kit from a company selling refillable household cleaners (家用清洁器). In it were tablets, containing concentrated hand soap as well as glass and bathroom cleaners, and four empty containers. She filled each one with tap water, then dropped in a tablet and watched it dissolve. If she was happy with the cleaners, she would order more tablets but reuse the containers. No new plastic required.

Given plastic’s harmful effects on the environment, nearly three quarters of Americans say they are trying to reduce their reliance on single-use plastic, according to Pew Research Center. Since plastic is everywhere and avoiding it altogether is extraordinarily difficult, some, like Angela, have revived a once-customary practice: refilling containers. Household cleaners seem particularly prepared for a refill revolution, for many can be easily concentrated and reconstituted (with water. If just 10% to 20% of plastic packaging are reused, a report from the World Economic Forum estimates, the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean will be cut in half.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic, though. Jan Dell, a chemical engineer, noted that many cleaning products are packaged in PET or HDPE, two types of plastic with relatively high recycling rates. So she is less concerned about them but far more concerned about the packaging of other products. “What companies should be focusing on is everything else that isn’t recyclable, that is single use and that often becomes plastic pollution,” she said, pointing to plastic bags and cups. “This is just a classic example of big corporations doing something to attract people’s attention over here on something that’s not the main issue to distract from all the single-use plastic they’re pushing out.”

7 . Solar stills (蒸馏器) provide a clever and simple means of purifying dirty or salty water, but they work at a rather slow rate. A new material has been shown to boost their performance, and it’s made from fruit waste which would otherwise be thrown away.

In its most basic form, a conventional solar still consists of a basin of undrinkable water that is set beneath a cover. The water evaporates (蒸发) as it’s heated by the sun, condensing (凝结) on the inside surface of the cover. That condensation—which is pure, clean water-drops down the cover and is collected in a separate container for drinking. In order to warm the dirty/salty water at a faster rate, scientists have developed materials that float on its surface, transforming sunlight into heat. They commonly use carbon obtained from coal.

To seek a less costly and more environmentally-friendly alternative, Prof. Edison and colleagues at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University looked to something that is free for the taking—fruit waste. More specifically, the scientists tried out coconut peels, orange peels and banana peels.

In a simple carbonization process, the fruit waste was heated at 850℃for a few hours, and mixed with a kind of chemical substance. Doing so transformed the fruit waste into a new material which has a very highlight-to-heat transforming efficiency.

When tested in a small solar still, this new material proved to be very effective at transforming sunlight into heat, causing the dirty/salty water to evaporate much more rapidly. And because the material is full of holes, the waters team is able to rise right through it, subsequently condensing on the inside of the still’s cover.

Prof. Edison and his team found material obtained from the coconut peels worked best, as it transformed sunlight to heat with an efficiency rate of 94%. They are now developing the technology further, and are seeking industry partners to help with its commercialization.

8 . 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 ________ steam. 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!

9 . For Vishwanath Mallabadi from Bangalore, India, there is no such thing as a useless object or “waste”. Give him anything—abandoned metal or plastic items, old devices, dysfunctional printed circuit boards — and he’ll create art out of it.

Vishwanath’s passion is particularly relevant in the current age, where India generates more e-waste than it can recycle. From 2019 to 2020, the country generated a total of more than 1 million tonnes of e waste. Of this, only 22.7 percent was collected, taken apart and recycled. The eco-artist has upcycled and transformed nearly 200 kg of e-waste into usable products and proposes eco-art as a means to deal with waste management.

Vishwanath’s father, D M Shambhu, was a famous sculptor and painter, but he wanted his son to choose medicine and become a doctor. However, Vishwanath, who was interested in upcycling second-hand objects right from childhood, decided to pursue a BFA in Applied Art. He later went on to work in a company as a high-level administrator and retired two years ago. “In my free time and during the weekends. I used to conduct experiments in e-waste and try to develop something unique,” he recalled.

So far, the eco-artist has created more than 500 objects. These include a six-foot tall sculpture made from upcycled computer keyboard keys, and a painting inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, using upcycled resistors (电阻器) on wood. Among his other artworks are a 42×38 inch figure statue created from upcycled keyboard keys on a sun board finished with plastics, a deer made of colorful used wires, plants and flowers from computer parts, and eco jewellery from upcycled digital wrist watch parts.

“The work involves selecting the e-waste objects—the texture, shape, and colour etc, and visualising and conceptualising the final product. It might take weeks and months for sculptures. However, sustainable initiatives and upcycled art are nowadays in demand in multinational companies opting for a sustainable culture,” he said.

10 . The Best Caves in The World

Natural caves don’t come much larger than Hang Son Doong, close to the border between Laos and Vietnam. This cave possesses the largest cross-section of any known cave on the planet, a vast area that is difficult to describe. Supposedly, a Boeing 747 could fly through without damaging its wings, but that doesn’t really do justice to the vastness of Hang Son Doong. The stalactites (钟乳石) here are pretty massive too, with some reaching up to 80 metres.

Glowworms (萤火虫) are there, as far as the eye can see. Okay, not literally, but the Waitomo Cave system on New Zealand’s North Island is best-known for the fluorescent fauna that light up the walls, giving it the not-particularly-creative but completely acceptable “Glowworm Caves” nickname. They are more accessible than other caves on this list, with rafting and adventure tours available to those looking for something a little more thrilling.

If you have certain expectations from somewhere called “Mammoth Cave”, that is entirely understandable. Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the world’s longest known cave system, an incredible 420 miles of underground wonder. That’s twice as long as the next longest, by the way, although it isn’t unusual for the USA to go all out on such things.

Named after the reeds that grow outside, which are used to make flutes, obviously, the Reed Flute Cave’s walls are covered with inscriptions from centuries gone by—if evidence was needed that people have been paying attention to this place for a long old time. The inside part of the cave is also lit up by multicoloured lights, giving it a real otherworldly theme that adds weight to the nickname.