1 . Working at an investment bank in New York City in the mid-2010s. Anna Sacks was living the life—just not the life she wanted. Sure, she was happy. But she wanted to do something that felt important and was fulfilling on a deeper level.

Sacks packed up her life and moved to Connecticut for three months to participate in Adamah, a Jewish farming program that focuses on sustainable living and growing sustainable food. The Adamah program opened Sacks’s eyes to the damage consumer culture is doing on a local, national, and global level, and the need to find solutions. From then on, she began what she calls “trash (垃圾) walking.”

While walking around her neighborhood, Sacks, 31, picked through rubbish to look for reusable items. Soon, her trash walks expanded to include company rubbish along with residential trash. Surprisingly, she discovered a wide range of really great stuff—like clothing, dinnerware, and food—all of which she documents on Instagram and TikTok.

Under the name The Trash Walker, Sacks quickly gained popularity for her educational, funny, and surprising videos that highlight the problems with consumerism and share information about how to live a more sustainable life. “The root issue is overproduction, which leads to overconsumption, which leads to a large amount of waste,” she says. Sacks’s videos have gone viral many times, causing shockwaves through the industries she calls out.

Trash walking has given Sacks a nearly endless supply and she shares much of her “treasure” with others. She tries giving them informally to family, friends, or individuals she knows may need a specific item. Then she takes the remaining items to free stores so other New Yorkers can benefit from her treasure-hunting.

Sacks’s main focus is simply getting people to pay attention to how many unnecessary things they buy and then throw away. “Once you become aware of the way you consume, you can see ways you improve,” she says.

2 . After nearly 70 years of space exploration, Earth is now surrounded by space junk. Recently, an accident made the cleanup more difficult to start.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA) , scientists plan on testing their “junk truck”, ClearSpace-1, in 2025. It’s a spacecraft with four arms that can catch debris (碎片) and bring it back to Earth. They have chosen to bring back VESPA, a 113-kilogram, two-meter-wide rocket part. However, in August, it was hit by another piece of space junk, creating new pieces. The ESA is now revising its cleanup plan.

Most satellites today are sent into Earth’s low orbit, which reaches up to around 2, 000 kilometers above the Earth. There, spacecraft are most likely to crash with each other. There may be as many as 170 million pieces of space junk in orbit. Big or small, any of the pieces can cause harm to a spacecraft.

In terms of the cleanup, scientists have some other ideas. One popular plan is to equip a spacecraft with harpoons (叉) and magnets (磁铁) . The craft would shoot the harpoon to stick into the debris before “throwing” it back to Earth. Magnets could move the debris, changing its direction. The debris would burn after entering Earth’s atmosphere so there wouldn’t be much left when it reaches Earth. Scientists are also considering shooting lasers (激光) from spacecraft to heat up the debris’ surface, creating a small push that would change the debris’ orbit. This change would allow the debris to be caught by Earth’s gravity.

Space junk can be very dangerous, and space agencies around the world are testing and planning the cleanup. But why haven’t they done anything yet? One reason is the expense.

It would take between $4, 000 and $60, 000 per kilogram to catch one piece of debris larger than 10 cm. And around $300 million is needed to develop the laser technology.

3 . At the 2022-23 China High School Basketball League (CHBL) national Finals on May 14, sportswear giant Nike announced that it would build an environmentally friendly basketball court that uses recycled sneakers as raw materials. The court is scheduled to be completed in Guangzhou by the end of July.

Cooperating with the China School Sports Federation, Nike launched the environmental protection charity project for the CHBL 2022-23 Season. The project encourages the involvement of CHBL players’ coaches, basketball enthusiasts and consumers in the collection and recycling of old sport shoes. Through advanced technology, thrown-away sport shoes will be processed and used in the construction of the first ever CHBL-themed eco-friendly basketball court.

Over the past two months, the old sport shoes collection bins have traveled alongside the CHBL tour making stops at the four major regional tournaments held in the east, west, south and north of China. The bins have gone into schools, including Tsinghua High School in Beijing and Huipu Middle School in Taizhou Zhejiang province, spreading the spirits of CHBL and inspiring its players to become role models not only on the basketball court, but also in their everyday lives.

Famous female basketball player Han Xu has actively contributed to the collection of used shoes and expressed her support for the project through her personal social media channels. Zhang Lei, secretary general of the CSSF, says that CHBL not only assists young players and teenagers in improving their basketball skills but also promotes the development of basketball culture within campuses.

“In addition to expanding the league’s size and influence, we have also added environmental education into the program. Environmental education plays an important role in shaping society’s core values. It guides young individuals toward understanding the importance of environmental issues, forming a proper attitude on the relationship between humans and nature, and raising their environmental awareness and practices. It serves as an endless source of developing environmental consciousness throughout society.”

The construction of the eco-friendly basketball court marks a significant step in Nike’s commitment to supporting young basketball fans while putting environmental sustainability (持续性) at the first place.

6 . Like many people, Stimpson, who is nearly 80, has noticed an alarming loss of wildlife in his lifetime. The clouds of swifts (雨燕) of his childhood have disappeared.

A loss of nesting (筑巢的) sites is driving the decline of swifts in the UK, whose numbers are believed to have dropped by about 57% in 22 years. These birds — which are now on the UK’s red list — are site-specific, meaning each spring they come back to the same spot after flying thousands of miles from Africa, The problem is that lots of old barns (谷仓) and houses have been upgraded and repaired and nesting sites have disappeared.

Thirteen years ago no one was making swift boxes, so Simpson started, “I’m not a carpenter (木匠), I’m a salesman, but I thought I’d certainly give it a go,” he says. When he started he could make three a day, now on a really good day he can make 30. “The government and big wildlife organisations don’t end up doing much to stop wildlife loss. We seem to have too many pen-pushers and not enough workers,” he says. “We could do an awful lot more than we’re doing.”

He believes local action groups are much more effective and has been working with a number of them. “The number of swift groups that have started up in the last five to eight years is quite staggering. And they seem to go from strength to strength,” he says,

“Swifts are the one thing where an individual can make a significant difference,” says Dick Newell, from Action for Swifts, who has 66 pairs of nesting swifts in his village of Landbeach in Cambridgeshire, 20 of them nesting on his house.

Newell says developers should put swift brick in every new building, and he has been working with housebuilding company Taylor Wimpey to make this happen. Exeter city council has started incorporating tfiem into new buildings, as well as the Duchy of Cornwall, and local councils are getting on board. Others are working on bee bricks and hedgehog (刺猬) holes in new developments.

7 . Cal Fire captain Shawn Raley barked evacuation (疏散) orders over the radio for the neighborhood of Sunset Terrace. The sky was red and the wind screamed. New fires lit in bushes and on roofs. Raley, a 24-year veteran of wildland fires, had seen nearly everything, including swirling eddies of air called fire whirls. But he hadn’t seen anything like this.

At around 7:15 p.m., he drove toward areas in the wooded hills. He figured that residents would need help escaping. His headlights barely pierced the smoke, but he could see three bulldozers (推土机) inch past him on two-lane Buenaventura Boulevard. Don Andrews drove one; Terry Cummings and Jimmie Jones drove the other two. They were under swaying electrical line, and Raley shouted at them to move away.

In the driveway of a house, Raley spotted a Tesla with someone in the driver’s seat. Dr. Thiruvoipati Nanda Kumar had raced eight kilometres home from Vibra Hospital. His wife, Yasoda, and daughter, Sushma, hadn’t received an evacuation alert, and when the power cut out, their garage door wouldn’t open. locking their car inside.

“Go back!” Raley shouted at Kumar, sounding his siren.

“My wife and daughter are there. Can they come in? Kumar said, pointing to Raley’s vehicle. He figured they’d be safest with the captain.

“Come in my truck?” Raley asked. “Yes.”

The women jumped into the back seat, coughing. Nearby, flames that climbed 30 meters burned their neighbors’ homes. Soon theirs would fall, as well.

“I’ll lead you out,” Raley yelled to Kumar. “Take your car.”

Debris (碎片) attacked the truck, cracking Raley’s windshield and breaking the other windows as the wind blew the vehicle off the road. The captain threw himself across the passenger seat, protecting his face as the fire passed over them. Yasoda and Sushma screamed.

“Are you okay?” Raley shouted, though he knew the answer. He was embarrassed. He’d told this trapped family that he would get them out safely. Now they were covered in glass and bleeding. Behind them, the trunk of Kumar’s Tesla was a flame.

8 . Within the beautiful scenery of Wisconsin’s Lake Chippewa lies a natural wonder that is a unique challenge for the local community. This hidden wonder is exactly a giant floating island. The island, made up of plants and trees, sometimes floats around the lake, causing a major inconvenience by blocking (阻塞) an important bridge. Later, the local people came up with a solution to this problem. Every year, local boat owners work together and push the island away from the bridge.

Lake Chippewa was born in 1923 when a vast bog (沼泽) was changed through flooding. Soon after that, many of the dark bogs started rising to the surface and became perfect growing places for plants, with seeds carried by wind and wild birds to this floating place. Over the years, these bogs have grown plants and trees and turned into full islands. As time goes by, plants take root, and the oldest islands even have trees that act as sails (船帆) when the wind blows, moving the entire floating island around the lake.

Although the years-old floating island does not relocate (重新迁移) so often, when it does, it causes trouble for the community by blocking the important bridge that serves as the only passage between the lake’s East and West sides. The only solution is to gather a group of boats, and not just one or two, but dozens of boats working together to push the island away. “It takes a community’s effort, and you must have the winds at your back to push them in,” said a resident. Moving the island also requires precision (精确), as just relocating it a short distance may result in its return within days.

Some people have suggested destroying the floating islands to get rid of the problem. However, the big bog in Lake Chippewa has been around for many years, and during that time a variety of animal and plant species have made it their home. Therefore, local government advises they be dealt with in a way that won’t do harm to wildlife, paying more attention to the fine-drawn balance between human convenience and environmental protection. The annual tradition of relocating Lake Chippewa’s floating island is evidence to the coexistence of man and nature, a heartwarming display of community unity, and a reminder of the importance of preserving the unique areas that enrich our world.