3 . When most kids go to the beach, they’re too focused on making sandcastles and splashing around to notice litter, but several years ago, for 7-year-old Cash Daniels, noticing a plastic straw sparked a lifelong passion for saving the planet.

Cash, who is now known as the “conservation kid”, has always loved nature. He grew up fishing along the Chattanooga River, after all! But once he learned that 80 percent of all trash from land and rivers ends up in the ocean, he couldn’t sit back.

He started with cleanups along the river, something that quickly went from a family affair to a community effort with volunteers and neighbors. In 2019, Cash, together with a Canadian conservationist, Ella Galaski-Rossen, started a nonprofit called the Cleanup Kids. Despite living in different countries, they managed to create educational videos on their YouTube channel. “We hope to be a really big nonprofit that eliminates plastic in the U. S. and Canada,” Cash said. “We want to inform kids and adults in the landlocked states on how their actions are connected to the water and the ocean,” Cash said.

Cash was selected as one of America’s top 10 youth volunteers of 2021 by the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards. He also earned the title of National Honoree, where he received a$5,000 grant to go to a nonprofit of his choice, and he became the first person to win the Youth Conservationist Award two years in a row from the Tennessee Wildlife Federation.

“I want to travel the world, teach others, and help them feel connected to the ocean. Because if you are connected to the ocean-if you love it and what lives in it—you’ll want to protect it,” he said. “This is my fun, and it becomes more fun with every new discovery.”

4 . A pond in Hawaii has turned so pink that it could be from the Barbie movie-but it’s no cause for a dance party. Drought may be reason for the strange color, scientists say, and they’re warning against entering the water or drinking it.

Workers at the Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge (遇难所) on the island of Maui have been watching the situation of the pink water since October 30, 2023, after getting a phone call from somebody who was walking on the beach.

“I just got a report from somebody who was walking on the beach, and they called me up like ‘There’s something weird going on over here’,” said Bret Wolfe, the refuge manager.

Wolfe was concerned the bright pink could be a sign of an event called an algae bloom (绿藻泛地), but lab tests found such algae was not causing the color. Instead, an organism (微生物) called halobacteria might be the cause.

Halobacteria are a type of organism that lives in bodies of water with high levels of salt. The salinity (盐度) inside the Kealia Pond outlet area is now greater than 70 parts per thousand, which is twice the salinity of seawater. Wolfe said they will need to study the DNA to confirm the organism.

Maui’s drought is likely leading to the situation. Normally Waikapu Stream feeds into Kealia Pond and raises water levels there, but Wolfe said that hasn’t happened in a long time.

When it rains, the stream will flow into Kealia’s main pond and then into the outlet area that’s now pink. This will reduce the salinity and potentially change the water’s color.

The refuge has seen an increase in visitors after photos of the pink pond were posted on social media. Wolfe said he would love to have visitors come to learn about local aims to protect nature.

But officials have announced a special warning for people not to enter the water or eat any fish caught there.

5 . When Alex Lin was 11 years old, he read an alarming article in the newspaper about e-waste. The article said that people were throwing away their e-waste in places it should never go. This was dangerous, the article said, because e-waste contains poisonous chemicals and metals like lead. These harmful substances (物质) can leak into the environment, getting into crops, animals, water supplies — and people.

Alex showed the article to a few of his classmates. They were worried too. But what could they do about this problem with e-waste? How would they even start? “The first thing we did,” Alex says, “was to learn more about the problem.” Alex and his friends spent several weeks gathering information about the chemicals in e-waste and their effects on humans. They learned how to dispose (处理) of e-waste properly and how it could be recycled. “Then,” he says, “we had to find out what the situation was in our town. So we sent out a survey.”

What they found shocked them: Of the people who answered the survey, only one in eight even knew what e-waste was, let alone how to properly dispose of it. Alex and his friends went into action. They advertised in the local newspaper and distributed notices to students, asking residents to bring their unwanted electronics to the school parking lot. The drive lasted two days, and they collected over 21,000 pounds of e-waste.

The next step was to set up an e-waste drop-off center for the town and to find a responsible company to recycle the waste. That was when Alex and his friends learned another scary fact about e-waste — some irresponsible recycling companies don’t break down the e-waste and dispose of it safely themselves. Instead, they ship it overseas to countries such as China and Nigeria, where local environmental laws are not applied. “We checked carefully online to make sure the company we chose didn’t do this,” Alex says.

Because of the work of people like Alex and his team, more and more people are getting the message about safe disposal of e-waste. As Alex says, “Today’s technology should not become tomorrow’s poisonous trash.”

9 . Todmorden is an ordinary town in England. In less than two years, it has changed the way it produces its food and the way its residents think about the environment. Compared with 18 months ago, a third more townspeople now grow their own vegetables, almost 7 in 10 now buy local produce regularly, and 15 times as many people are keeping chickens. “Our aim is to make our town completely self-sufficient in food production,” said Pam Warburst, who planned the project, Incredible Edible.

The change started 18 months ago. Nick Green, who runs a company that provides workspace for local artists took on the job of doing the planting. He chose the first land in the middle of the town and it attracted plenty of attention. “We wanted everyone to see what we were doing, so they could ask questions and finally join in.” he said.

Incredible Edible was originally funded out of the participants’ (参与者) own pockets. “We were very clear that we didn’t want to look at what grants (拨款) were available and change our projects to suit them,” said Mr. Green. “We felt that what would work was to start with the town and what it needed. We’d look for money later on.” What the project leaders found was that a lot could be achieved with small amounts of cash. And awards and grants have followed.

“The important thing about Incredible Edible is that it involves (影响) everyone in the town and it’s a grass-roots project. I honestly believe it’s a good plan for every neighborhood. What we’re doing here could easily be rolled out anywhere. It’s all about involving people, giving them ownership, letting them realize it can be fun and interesting and that the food is delicious, and giving them space to set up their own ideas and run with them.”

10 . This winter, the state of California in the US received unusually large amounts of rain and snow. Now, people worry that some areas will flood as the snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains melts (融化).

Ron Caetano lives about half-way between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. He is preparing to leave in case his community, called the Island District, floods.

More than 100 years ago, the Island District area was under Tulare Lake, a large lake. At one time, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. But reservoirs (水库) and watering systems for agriculture caused it to disappear. However, in very rainy years, farmland can still get covered with water.

Experts say reservoirs near the area will likely receive three times more water than they can hold this year. That means officials must increase the amount of water they release (释放) from the reservoirs. But if too much water is released, the area might flood.

The Island District has organized a community network to help prepare for floods. People are placing sandbags close to elderly neighbors’ houses to stop possible flooding. And they are looking at reports from water officials, county officials, and from each other.

California has had very dry weather in recent years. Therefore, both cities and farm communities acclaimed this year’s winter rains. If the weather gets warmer slowly, the snow will not melt quickly and there may be little or no flooding. But if the weather gets hot quickly, that will bring trouble from too much melting snow.

Officials announced plans to close parts of Yosemite National Park because of possible danger of flooding. The park is about 270 kilometers east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Nicholas Pinter is with the University of California, Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He said the lake’s size has always changed because of California’s weather. He described the surrounding area this way. “It has been an engineering problem all along,” he said. “This is a bathtub (浴缸) with no way out.”