1 . Rather than continue living a comfortable urban life, this British family has sold their London home in favor of launching the world’s smallest nature reserve to save a nation’s coral reef system. Karolina and Barry Seath—along with their two young daughters—are preparing to move to an island in the Seychelles (非洲塞舌尔群岛)measuring just 1,300 feet long by 980 feet wide (400 by 300 meters).

They’ve launched a charity and teamed up with(与……合作)local biologists in an effort to bring the coral reefs back to life in the smallest African country, which have been almost wiped out by rising sea temperatures. Their land-based coral farm will be only the second of its kind in the world, the other being on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, to specialize in regrowing coral to restore the reefs.

47-year-old Barry, who is a former policeman, said, “We are just a normal husband, wife and two kids, living the sort of life that most others do, but we felt the need to make a positive change for ourselves, our children, and the world we had largely taken for granted.”

Over the course of several vacations to the Seychelles, the Seaths witnessed the gradual deterioration(恶化)of the reefs. “Every time we visited, we noticed the coral was getting worse and worse,” said Barry. “All the tourists say the same thing. They love the beaches but are really disappointed with the coral.”

Barry felt it was time to make a change and show his daughters an alternative way of eco-friendly living. He then teamed up with experts at the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles in order to develop the facility. Once it is complete, it will be the first large-scale, land-based coral farm in the Indian Ocean. The eco-warriors hope to use the facility to grow around 10,000 corals per year. Barry said, “Our long-term goal is to show everyone that—with just a relatively small investment—you can have a big positive influence on the marine environment.”

3 . Balancing preservation of the land with our desire to travel is a challenge for us travelers. When seeing cities face constant resource and waste problems, I couldn’t help but think about how much travel can affect the environment.

Back in my youth, I was an environmental activist. But over the years, I leave the lights on. I fly a lot. I drink out of plastic bottles. I eat a lot of meat. And I love fish, especially tuna. However, recently, I’ve begun thinking harder about how travel affects the environment and how I affect the environment. In doing so, I’ve tried to be a lot more aware of my actions.

I don’t know if there is an easy solution for this problem. The most environmentally friendly activity is not to travel at all, but that’s unrealistic and too extreme. There’s so much money in travel that I don’t think the government and regulation can do much. Only when their profits are hurt will hotels, operators, and the industry as a whole begin to listen. Instead, it’s all about the consumers. The only good way is to get people to be more environmentally conscious and make better decisions.

Consumers have a lot of power. Why did Wal-Mart start selling only sustainable fish and whole milk? Consumers wanted it. I think if we as travelers begin to demand more environmentally friendly practices and avoid companies with poor environmental records, we can change things.

Now, I recycle more, I use fewer water bottles, I shut off the lights, Most importantly, I use operators and stay at places that are reducing their environmental impact.

Travel can destroy the environment but it doesn’t have to. We have the power to make things better. We can do small things and demand more of the places we stay and visit. We can and should demand more of places, and of ourselves.

4 . The area around Taal Lake on Luzon Island in the Philippines is known for its natural beauty. Tourism is popular there as travelers go there to see the scenery that surrounds Taal Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the country. It was quiet for years until January 12,2020 when the volcano erupted. Since then, the cities surrounding the volcano have been covered with ash and many people are forced to leave home.

But the ash didn’t stop the residents of Binan, a city that is 35 km south of Manilla, from finding a way to help their neighbors in the towns that suffered the most from Taal. Binan Mayor Walfredo Dimaguila ordered the city residents to collect the ash and to put it in sacks (麻袋) to be sent to the state-owned factory that can produce 5,000 bricks (砖) a day to turn it into bricks to use for rebuilding damaged communities.

“What we plan is to turn them into hollow blocks and bricks and sell them to interested companies,” Dimaguila said. But he noted, the money would be donated to the people directly affected by the volcano. “When Batangas (the region where Taal is located) is in recovery, the bricks can not only be used to build schools, community halls and livelihood centers but also help deal with ash pollution for the earth,” Dimaguila said. “The misfortune of our neighbors in Batangas is there. Let’s transform this into opportunity.”

The Philippines, located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire: zone of fire” and part of the typhoon belt, is a country that is known for natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and major storms. But the Filipino people show their strong will and community spirit.

6 . This may look like an ordinary plastic straw (吸管), but it is not made of plastic. Cameron Ross started the Celise Bio-products company, to produce single-use plastic alternatives from plant materials like these. They are made of poly lactic acid (聚乳酸) known as PLA from com starches (淀粉).

Cameron Ross said, "We work with food service providers, mainly larger brands, to help them get quality sustainable and cost-effective solutions, made from plants to start getting rid of single-use plastics." Single-use plastics such as bottles or straws are major cause of pollution. When we throw these away, they end up in a landfill or in the water like rivers. According to researchers, it could take up to more than 500 years for them to properly break down.

Ross says he wasn't always so environmentally conscious himself. But ever since the hiking trip in West Virginia, when he spent more time picking up trash than enjoying nature, his priorities changed. That meant making biodegradable products that can break down in only a few years.

While many cafes and restaurants are choosing paper products to be more eco-conscious, it isn’t cheap. Paper straws can cost about eight times more than plastic straws. But bio-plastic straws cost less a penny a straw, not even double the price of plastic ones.

Another problem with paper straws is that they get soft and wet. You don't want to be sipping (啜饮) something that alters your drink, or starts to melt while you're drinking and then you have to get which creates more wastes than needed. Ross hopes his Washington DC-based company will provide an eco-friendly solution for food service providers.

7 . Blue Planet II’s latest episode focuses on how plastic is having a disastrous effect on the ocean and slowly poisoning our sea creatures. Researchers recently also found that sea creatures living in the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench, have plastic in their stomachs. Indeed, the oceans are drowning in plastic.

Though it seems now that the world couldn’t possibly function without plastics, consumer plastics are a remarkably recent invention. The first plastic bags were introduced in the 1950s;   the same decade that plastic packaging began gaining in popularity in the United States. This growth has happened so fast that science is still catching up with the change. Plastics pollution research, for instance, is still a very early science.

We put all these plastics into the environment and we still don’t really know what the outcomes are going to be. What we do know, though, is disturbing. Ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating plastics on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

And it’s not just wildlife that is threatened by the plastics in our seas. Humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat. I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a disaster, worth mentioning to the same degree as climate change. But ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers (否认者), at least so far. To do something about it, we don’t have to remake our planet energy system.

This is not a problem where we don’t know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to dispose (处理) of it. We know how to recycle. We can all start by thinking twice before we use single-use plastic products. Things that may seem ordinary, like using a reusable bottle or a reusable bag----when taken collectively, these choices really do make a difference.

8 . How would you like it if you are able to go to your local park and pick some tomatoes, potatoes or even bananas for dinner. Sounds too good to be true, right? For residents of Andernach, a German city, it’s not just a Utopian dream — it’s the reality. In 2010, Andernach began its “edible city” project, planting 101 varieties of tomatoes in public green spaces around the city centre. Its 30,000 residents are free to help themselves to whatever grows, as are any other visitors. Every year a new type of plant is introduced. In 2021, 100 types of beans were planted, while 2022 saw the introduction of 20 onion varieties. The town’s motto (座右铭) is, “Picking is encouraged — help yourself!”

It’s a community effort, as local citizens are encouraged to help plant and maintain the gardens. This offers an opportunity to socialize as well as to learn about planting, cultivating and harvesting food. “I often drop by to pick some herbs that I’m missing at home. Everything is easily accessible. There aren’t any fences. You just take what you need. The only thing is you have to be quick once the fruits are ripe or they’ll all be gone!” said a local historian.

Andernach may be the first, but it isn’t the only edible city. It’s part of the Edible Cities Network, an EU-funded project connecting green urban food initiatives around the world. Other edible cities include Carthage in Tunisia, Havana in Cuba and Šempeter-Vrtojba in Slovenia. In February 2022, the first Edible Cities Network Conference took place. Dr. Ina Säumel, director of the Edible Cities Network, called it “a unique opportunity to invite researchers and people involved of Edible City Solutions to the same table and unite theory with practice”.

Ultimately, the Edible Cities Network aims to create “greener, more edible and, above all, more livable cities”. It is a response to the pressures of climate change, and a cause for hope.

9 . Every minute, every single day, about a truckload of plastic enters the ocean.     1     And to date, only 9% of that has been recycled.

We buy a bottle of water, drink it for a few minutes, and throw its permanent packaging (包装) “away”. We eat potato chips, finish them, then throw their permanent packaging “away”. We buy produce, take it out of the unnecessary plastic wrap, then throw its permanent packaging “away”.

The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day.     2     As far as we try to toss a piece of plastic out — whether it’s into a recycling bin or not — it does not disappear. Chances are, it ends up polluting our communities, the ocean or waterways in some form.

For years, we’ve been told the problem of plastic packaging can be solved through better individual action.     3     But the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess.

Recycling alone will never stop the flow of plastic into the ocean; we have to get to know the source of the problem and slow down the production of all the plastic waste. Think about it: if your home was flooding because you had left the tap on, your first step wouldn’t be to start mopping. You’d first cut the flooding off at its source — the tap.     4    

We need corporations — those like the Coca-Cola company, Unilever, Starbucks and Neatle that continue to produce throwaway (一次性的) plastic bottles — to step up and take responsibility for the mess they’ve created.     5     We will continue to do our part, but it’s time for the world’s largest corporations to do theirs.