Environment Protection — We Care, We can

2 . One of the problems damaging our planet is the number of things we throw away. Rubbish of all kinds is piling up in landfill and polluting our rivers and oceans. A more recent addition to the list of things we throw away is e-waste — electronic items that are broken and not recycled. Now solutions are being found to give this stuff a new life.

A UN report claims the 50 million tonnes of e-waste generated every year will more than double to 110 million tonnes by 2050 and that’s partly because it’s cheaper to replace them than fix them, but also because we lack the skills to repair them.

However, there’s a growing trend for repair events and clubs which could be part of a solution to the growing amount of electrical and electronic junk. The BBC visited a Restart Project in London. One of its volunteers, Francesco Calo, said that “this project allows you to reduce waste, extend the life of objects, and it helps people who cannot afford to get rid of items that have gone wrong.”

As many electrical items contain valuable metals, another idea is e-waste mining. An experiment at the University of New South Wales involves extracting (提取) these materials from electronic gadgets (部件). It’s thought that doing this could be more profitable than traditional mining. With phones typically containing as many as 60 elements, this could be part of the solution to our appetite for new technology.

These projects make total sense — collections of e-waste for recycling are “not growing or even decreasing” according to Ruediger Kuehr, a professor of the United Nations University. And in countries where there is no relevant laws, much of it just gets dumped. However, the European Union, for example, is trying to tackle the problem by insisting manufacturers have to make appliances longer-lasting and will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years.

Be a Part of Nature

8 . Most environmental pollution on Earth comes from humans and their inventions, such as cars or plastic. Today, car emissions (排放物) are a major source of air pollution leading to climate change, and plastics fill our ocean, creating a significant health issue to marine (海洋的) animals.

And what about the electric light, thought to be one of the greatest human inventions of all time? Electric light can be a beautiful thing, guiding us home when the sun goes down, keeping us safe and making our homes bright. However, like carbon dioxide emissions and plastic, too much of a good thing has started to impact the environment. Light pollution, the inappropriate use of outdoor light, is affecting human health, wildlife behavior and our ability to observe stars.

Light pollution is a global issue. This became obvious when the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, a computer-generated map based on thousands of satellite photos, was published in 2016. Available online for viewing, the map shows how and where our globe is lit up at night. Vast areas of North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia are glowing (发光) with light, while only the most remote regions on Earth (Greenland, Central African Republic and Niue) are in total darkness. Some of the most light-polluted countries in the world are Singapore, Qatar, and Kuwait.

Sky glow is the brightening of the night sky, mostly over cities, due to the electric lights of cars, streetlamps, offices, factories, outdoor advertising, and buildings, turning night into day for people who work and play long after sunset.

People living in cities with high levels of sky glow have a hard time seeing more than a handful of stars at night. Astronomers are particularly concerned with sky glow pollution as it reduces their ability to view stars.

More than 80 percent of the world’s population, and 99 percent of Americans and Europeans, live under sky glow.

9 . By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener due to a warming climate, according to a new study.

At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny marine microorganisms (海洋微生物) called phytoplankton, which create colourful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean colour varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean’s appearance.

Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean’s warming trend, which can easily affect phytoplankton growth.

Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model that projects changes to the oceans throughout the century. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions riper for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener.

And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive.” Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.

Whatever colour changes the ocean experiences in the coming decades will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. Dutkiewicz said, “The change in the colour of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet.”