2 . South Baltimore is surrounded by water, highways, and train tracks. It’s also often thought of as a place to avoid—folks are taught to be careful of or even avoid South Baltimore. “People think South Baltimore is a place filled with danger. It’s not. It’s just we’re surrounded by dangerous things,” says Taysia, 17.

Taysia is part of a group of student activists fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change. Lots of trucks with their noise pass through the neighborhood. South Baltimore is also home to a junkyard where they crush (压碎)cars, an old landfill, chemical plants, and mountains of coal. These are not the communities anyone wants.

The residents of South Baltimore are breathing polluted air today. Coal releases a black dust that’s small enough to get into people’s lungs. It can cause disease and death if you’re breathing it day after day. The mountains of coal are the focus of a growing opposition movement called Free Your Voice, led by South Baltimore teenagers.

The teens of Free Your Voice are taking on a big opponent (对手): the massive transportation company CSX, which transports more than 8 million tons of coal through South Baltimore annually. CSX makes billions of dollars a year.

The teens went door to door, warning their neighbors about the dangers of the coal transportation. Not everyone was on board at first. “We were talking to people and that’s just like, ‘You’re a kid! Like this is not gonna change, it’s been happening forever.’” Taysia says.

Meanwhile, the students spent the summer using sticky paper to gather samples of dust from all over the neighborhood to prove that the dust was from coal and to pinpoint which parts of the neighborhood were most affected.

The goal is to eventually get the state regulators to deny the permit that CSX needs to operate, or at least require the company to enclose all the coal, or at the very least put water onto all of it so there’s less dust blowing around. And the state is considering all of those requests.

3 . Most of us have heard of the 3Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. It is the core principle of a sustainable (可持续的) life, but few of us can apply it in our own lives. Now, there’s a “lab” you can explore and discover a way toward living sustainably.

3R Lab is located in Xuhui district, Shanghai. It offers exhibitions, activities and goods that showcase the 3R principle. The key to a sustainable life, according to Vincent T. M. Fong, the 32-year-old from Hong Kong who created the lab, is to make it a long-term promise. “A sustainable life should be sustainable itself in the first place. You can’t lead a sustainable life on a whim. Small and comfortable changes are exactly what you need,” Fong said.

The lab regularly hosts ugly fruit markets, offering these strange fruits which are often thrown away by traditional markets and consumers at a quite attractive price. “They’re thrown away simply because of their appearance. Buying fruit regardless of how they look reduces food waste significantly in our daily life,” Fong commented.

A water tank with two types of straws is another equipment in the lab. “One type is made from normal plastics widely used in our daily life while the other is from PHA, a new replacement for plastics, and the water is sourced from the Suzhou River,” explained Ni Li, an employee of the lab. Visitors can see how the PHA straws degrade (降解) into a thin layer in just one month, while the others remain unchanged.

“Leading a sustainable life does not necessarily mean sacrifice,” said Fong. Consuming ugly fruit and using degradable plastics are small changes that are good for the environment and easy to stick to. Only in this way can the 3R principle become part of our lives, he added.

After working there for six months, Ni, who wasn’t mindful of the 3R principle before arriving at the lab, now uses her cup every time she buys a coffee. “The job has reshaped my life,” Ni said.

5 . Time is running out for coral reefs as the climate gets hotter. So scientists are searching the globe for corals that are better at enduring heat, Now, new research shows how those “super corals” can survive: less roommate drama.

Reefs depend on a crucial partnership between the corals and the algae (海藻) that live in the corals’ tissue, The algae make food for the corals using sunlight and in exchange, get a nice spot to live. But when oceans heat up, that relationship goes bad, and the corals kick the algae out, Without their roommates, corals can die, turning a ghostly white, bleached (白化) color.

Still, some corals seem to resist bleaching better than others, A new study shows that those corals depend on algae that are better at tolerating heat. Researchers hope that pinpointing these abilities will help develop new conservation tools to preserve the world’s reefs as temperatures rise. About 1/4 of all marine life rely on coral reefs in some way, along with half 1 billion people around the world also depend on reefs for their food and livelihoods.

“Heat stress can kill a lot of corals really fast,” says Kate Quigley, a research scientist at James Cook University and the Minderoo Foundation in Australia. “I hope that nature does have some mechanisms to get us through the next few years while we get our act together.”

While the hope is that those algae could also aid in reef conservation in the future, researcher Patrick Buerger says it’s likely that it wouldn’t help all coral species. And even the toughest corals can only endure so much. Currently, the world is on track for just under 3degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, a level that would wipe out nearly all coral reefs.

“The action has to be on climate change,” he says. “This is a short-term solution that might buy some time for corals to adapt. But the main focus has to be on climate. There’s not a silver bullet to the problem.”

6 . Music festivals are highly popular events during the summer months, attracting thousands of festival-goers who camp on-site. However, the question arises as to whether the tents left behind can be recycled.

While some festival organizers claim that they recycle the tents, the answer is not so straightforward. Every year, thousands of tents are abandoned (拋弃) at festivals, and it’s not just post-festival laziness or poor weather that is to blame. According to a recent survey, many festival-goers leave their tents behind because they believe they will be donated to charities. But unfortunately, this is only wishful thinking.

Matt Wedge, the director of Festival Waste Reclamation & Distribution, says that the number of tents left behind is increasing, estimating that around 20% of the tents at this year’s Leeds Festival were abandoned, which amounted to about 7,000 tents. He adds that Reading and Leicester festivals are usually just as bad but twice as big, meaning that 14,000 tents could have been abandoned there.

In terms of addressing this problem, one popular idea is to employ a tent deposit scheme (保证金计划). Under this scheme, festival-goers would pay a deposit to bring their tent to the festival, which would be returned to them if they take their tent home. “A similar thing happens with litter. Some festivals make attendees pay a £10 ‘eco bond’, which will be returned to them if they fill up a bag of rubbish and hand it in at the end of the festival,” he adds.

The shocking images of abandoned tents are more than just a comment on the environmental impacts of the festival itself. They are in fact a dramatic symbol of our throwaway culture. Just as images of clean fields at Glastonbury represent a refreshing sign of hope for what could be, the ultimate (最后的) message is to make it a habit to take your tent home at least. It’s the best thing people can do.

When you look at the map of the Tengger Desert (腾格尔沙漠), you will see a “green wall” in the southwest. It products Wuwei City of Gansu Province from sandstorms.

With an area of over 8,000 mu, the “green wall” was planted by Wang Tianchang and his family. They have done this great job for over 20 years.

In his seventies now, Wang Tianchang is an ordinary farmer from Gansu Province. He and his family live in a small village close to the Tengger Desert. People there once suffered a lot from sandstorms for a long time. They destroyed their farms and houses. To hold back sand, Wang Tianchang decided to do something. In 1999, Wang planted his first plant in the desert and started his life of sand control.

It is never easy to bring life on the desert. In the beginning, Wang had no experience with desert plants. The sand covered the holes he dug very soon. The wind rooted out the seedlings he planted even on the second day he had done. It was challenging, but he never gave up.

His family helped him a lot, especially his son Wang Yinji. To plant more trees, the two of them even lived in the desert for about six years. They found grass to sleep on as their beds.

Thanks to Wang’s “green wall”, Wuwei City sees much fewer sandstorms. Wang has brought back not only green to the desert but also hopes to the people there. He is our hero!

10 . The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface and the deep sea could contain as many as 100 million species. But it’s becoming worse. Overfishing, plastic pollution, rising sea levels, and climate change are to partly blame (责怪) for the ocean’s present state.     1     But there are still some things we can do to improve the situation.

People are talking about plastics more than ever after recognizing the heavy effect the material has on our planet. Every year, thousands of seabirds, sea turtles, seals, whales, dolphins, and fish are killed after mistakenly eating plastics.

    2     You can buy reusable water bottles instead of plastic ones. When buying things, take a reusable shopping bag and choose the product that isn’t covered with plastic packaging.

Keeping our coastlines clean is a simple way to help the planet. After a day at the beach, make sure you’ve taken everything with you, including rubbish.

    3     Common sun cream chemicals can harm ocean life. Search for sun cream made with eco-friendly ingredients (成分).

    4     Consider making a donation (捐赠) to an organization working to help the ocean. The American Cetacean Society helps protect the habitats of whales, dolphins, and other marine (海洋的) animals through educational programs.

Being mindful of what cleaning products you use is another effective way to reduce your effect on the earth. Chemicals like household cleaners can move through waterways and eventually end up in the sea, affecting the health of oceans and the animals in them.     5     You can often use simple ingredients like baking soda, vinegar (醋), or lemon juice to complete many household chores.