Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a solution     1     two of her country’s problems: rubbish and poverty (贫困). It’s called the Chip Bag Project. The 26-year-old student and environmentalist from Detroit is asking local chip lovers     2     (donate) their empty chip bags rather than throw them into the trash so she can turn them into sleeping bags for the homeless.

Chip eaters drop off their empty bags at two locations in Detroit: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and other     3     (volunteer) collect them. After they clean the chip bags in soapy hot water, they cut them open, lay them flat, iron (熨) them together and use liners from old coats to line the insides.

It     4     (usual) takes about four hours to sew (缝) a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300chip bags, depending on whether they’re single-serve     5     family size. The result     6     (be) a sleeping bag that is waterproof (防水的), lightweight, and easy to carry around.

Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project     7     (collect) more than 800,000 chip bags and created 110 sleeping bags.

Sure,     8     would be simpler to raise the money to buy new sleeping bags. But that’s only half the goal for Oleita—whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria ten years ago with the hope of     9     (have) a better life—and her volunteer helpers. “We are working to make a     10     (different) not only socially, but environmentally,” she says.

2 . I fell in love with rhinos when I worked in a zoo in the 80s, and spent much of the next 20 years as the keeper of the largest captive (圈养的) group of rare black rhinos.

There’s a popular misconception that rhinos are aggressive and stupid, but I found them sensitive and affectionate animals. Weighing over a ton, black rhinos are unexpectedly agile (敏捷的) and have an unpredictable nature — but, given reassurance, they tend to believe people. In the past few decades, their numbers have dropped dramatically. In recent years, I’ve helped look after rhinos being moved to the reserve so they can form new populations in countries that have few left. Last year, I helped on a project to fly five black rhinos from a private reserve in South Africa to the Serengeti National Park. Once there, the animals had to be kept captive for a few weeks to adapt to the new environment, in which time they lived in “bomas” — wooden enclosures with “bedrooms”, designed to create a calm space.

A couple of weeks before their planned release, the sky filled with smoke. Watching the flames rushing through the bush toward the bomas, I froze. Terrified that it would catch fire, my instinct was to release the rhinos, but they hadn’t yet been fitted with transmitters (发信器). If I let them out into a bushfire and they were injured, we’d have great difficulty tracking them down. So I dashed back to the bomas and called the rhinos to the bedrooms. Sensing the fear in my voices, they moved without hesitation and remained astonishingly calm. It was crucial the rhinos didn’t panic — they can easily hurt each other if they do.

That we and the rhinos had escaped safe and sound was a miracle. The teamwork of everybody there played a large part, and the rhinos were very much a part of that team. The relationships we’d built with them had proved crucial — had they or we panicked, all our work would have been in vain.

3 . The world’s forests may hold more secrets than previously thought: a new global estimate of tree biodiversity suggests that there are about 9,200 tree species remaining undocumented. Most are likely in the tropics, according to the new research.

The new research drew on the efforts of hundreds of contributors, who have categorized trees in two huge data sets: One, the Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative, records every species found in extensively documented forest plots worldwide. The other, TREECHANGE, puts together sightings of individual species. Together they suggest there are approximately 64,100 recorded tree species on the planet — up from previous estimates of around 60,000.

The researchers reached their estimate of an additional 9,200 yet undocumented species on the basis of the number of rare ones already in the databases. Most unknown species are likely to be defined as rare, found in limited numbers in small geographical areas, says the quantitative forest ecologist Jingjing Liang. The team’s result is “a rather conservative estimate,” Liang says, “because scientists know less about the preponderance of uncommon trees in places such as the Amazon, where out-of-the-way spots could host pockets of unusual species found nowhere else.” “If we can focus the resources on those rain forests in the Amazon,” Liang adds, “then we would be able to estimate it with higher confidence.”

Silman, a conservation biologist, who was not involved in the new study agrees that the study result is likely an underestimate. His and his colleagues’ local surveys suggest there are at least 3,000 and possibly more than 6,000 unknown tree species in the Amazon basin alone. Tree species often get grouped together based on appearance, he notes, so new genetic analysis techniques will likely lead to the discovery of even more biodiversity. Sliman wonders how many species will go extinct before scientists describe them. “How many are already known to native peoples in the Amazon — or were known to peoples or cultures who have themselves been made extinct through colonization, disease, or absorption? How many “species” already have dried samples sitting in a cabinet?” he says.

Searching for the new species will inform not only conservation but the basic evolutionary science of how and why species diversify and die out, Silman says. “Just the fact that there are thousands of species of something as common as trees out there that are still left to be discovered,” he adds, “I find pretty inspirational.”

4 . China and India are leaders in improving global (全球的) tree cover, a new study based on NASA research showed.

They took a 31.8 percent part together of the total global new leaf area between 2000 and 2017. China played a major role, adding 25 percent to this increase, and India added 6.8 percent, followed by Canada and Russia.

The study in the Nature Sustainability journal shows that more than 5.5 million square km of green leaf area was added globally. Since 2000, there has been a five-percent increase in global green cover, it said.

“The greening over the last twenty years shows an increase in leaf area on plants and trees which is as large as the area of the entire Amazon rainforest,” Chi Chen, a Boston University researcher and lead of the study told Nature Sustainability. Large plantation activities to protect forests in China contributed nearly 42 percent to the country’s green cover, and agriculture (农业) added another 32 percent. In India, 82 percent of the increase in leaf area was because of agriculture.

“China and India take up one-third of the greening, but hold only nine percent of the planet’s land area covered in green plants,” Chi Chen told NASA Earth Observatory. “That is a surprising finding, considering the land degradation (退化) in countries with large populations.”

Boston University’s research team first detected (检测)an increase in global green cover in the 1990s but were unsure about what contributed to (导致) the increase. Finally, with the help of NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites research, they managed to find out the increase in leaf cover from different areas and places.

5 . For every goal that Lesein Mutunkei scores, trees get planted. It’s a simple yet effective message that appeals, and leads to a satisfying way of motivating us to promote environmentalism in our own way.

Born in Nairobi, Lesein is in his late teens, and his Trees4Goals is the means with which he intends to make the world greener. It unites two of his passions in life: love of the outdoors and love of football. Lesein enjoyed walking in the forest. He recognised his country was experiencing a serious loss of tree cover. Between 2001 and 2020, Kenya lost an estimated 11% of trees, releasing 176 million tons of CO₂.

In a blog post for WWF Kenya, Lesein revealed that, once he started the Trees4Goals initiative, he originally planned to plant one tree per goal. In 2020, he wanted to take his efforts even further. What started as one tree planted per goal mushroomed into 11 trees planted per goal. Explaining the reason behind expanding the tree-planting, he said, “It represents team efforts in football and the contribution by my team. I have planted over 1,000 trees in the last two years.”

While it’s something of an own goal to destroy the forests and jungles providing enormous biodiversity, initiatives like Trees4Goals are an assured way to score an environmentalist hat-trick. Sports such as football are popular with the booming Kenyan population and have the ability to cut through cultural barriers regardless of the countries they are played in. Sports have the power to unify and excite large audiences. Lesein Mutunkei has taken this strategy and scored a winning goal of his own.

Like a seed, best ideas start small and change into something that can become far larger than anticipated. While Lesein continues planting 11 trees per goal, the Kenyan government is aiming to plant 1.8 billion trees to reach a point where 10 per cent of the country is covered by trees. The science behind is clear; a report in 2019 claimed that if 900 million hectares were devoted to additional tree planting of half a trillion trees, the world could offset (抵消) half of all carbon emissions produced since 1960.

6 . Fish cats are a kind of cats that love water and love to fish. They are like tigers and lions, only much smaller, around twice the size of our average pet cats. They live in wetlands of South Asia and mangrove forests(红树林)of South and Southeast Asia. Like many endangered species, fish cats were in danger of dying out more than twenty years ago, mainly because of the great international need for fish food and the people s cutting of the mangroves at an extremely fast speed.

Mangroves of Southeast Asia are home to a great many fantastic species, like fish cats, turtles, shorebirds and others. Mangroves can protect soil, and they can be the first line of protection between storms, tsunamis and the millions of people who live next to them. The fact is that mangroves can store almost five to ten times more CO₂ than other forests. So protecting mangroves may well be like protecting five to ten times more of other forests.

Ten years ago, in South India, many people came together to change the future of their home. In less than 10 years, with international support, the state forest departments and the local people worked together to restore over 20,000 acres of unproductive fish and shrimp farms back into mangroves. Now experts are working with them in helping study and protecting the mangroves as well as the species living in them. Fish and shrimp farmers are now willing to work with experts to test the harvest of nature protection like fishes, turtles and other species in mangroves. The local farmers are encouraged to protect and plant mangroves where they have been lost. A win win-win for fish cats, local people and the global ecosystem(生态系统)is being built.

7 . Hundreds of years ago, life was harder than it is today. People didn't have modern machines.

Life today has brought new problems. One of the biggest problems is pollution. Water pollution has made our rivers and lakes dirty. It kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us talk louder and become angry more easily. Air pollution is the most serious kind of pollution to all living things in the world.

Cars, planes and factories all pollute our air every day. Sometimes the polluted air is so thick that it is like a quilt over a city. This kind of quilt is called smog.

Many countries are making rules to fight against pollution. Factories must now clean their water before it is thrown away, and they mustn't let dirty smoke go into the air.

We need to do many other things. We can put waste things in the dustbin and do not throw them on the ground. We can go to work by bus or with our friends in the same car. If there are fewer people driving, there will be less pollution.

Rules are not enough. Every person must help to fight against pollution.

Last week, we conducted an survey on what measures high school students take them to live a green life. Here are the results.

65% of the students lead a green lifestyle by walking, cycling or take public transportation. 40% of them recycle waste with an active manner. The number of the students saving electricity and water account for 35%. However, only 16% of the students chose to buy eco-friendly products. One possible reason is the products are expensive. Also, 8% of the students take other measure, like using reusable drinking cups.

In my opinion, living a green life is easy said than done, and one small step at a time can make a big difference.