3 . Catherine Krestyn furnished (布置家具)her home mainly with hard rubbish, such as the chairs, doors and lamps, which have been collected from the street where she lives. And it’s a way of life she’s sharing with her community in the hope of making a difference.

Catherine leads a 6,000-strong online group called Boroondara Hard Rubbish Rehome, where members upload pictures of their hard rubbish piles for eager locals to find. She started the group in 2022 with her childhood friend Jennie Irving, hoping to build a community of thrift (节俭)where they lived. The pair have stopped more than 7,000 kg of hard rubbish going to landfill since they founded the group.

Some items are ready as they are, like chairs and lamps, and others take a bit of effort to clean up, like the old, wooden doors.

Local teacher Ruth Polgar discovered the group while surfing the Internet and has since decorated her classroom with second-hand items, including artwork she has rehomed from a neighbour. “We regularly take unneeded items from the group and use them for our school projects,” she says.

Running the group can be really challenging for Catherine. But she doesn’t resent those who have to let go of their possessions because of stressful circumstances. “If you’re downsizing or if you’re clearing an old house, quite often you’re desperate for access to easy options,” she says. “Hard rubbish piles are often that option.”

All Catherine wants to do is give her community a way to reduce their waste, and to send a message to those in charge that things need to urgently change.

“The government has big targets around sustainable development leading into 2030. We want to start speeding that up even sooner,” she says. “We’re suffering from our own waste really, so anything that we can all do on a practical level helps. We should first make lifestyle choices and be prepared to go second-hand.”

4 . Should we hide in the “Triangle (三角) of Life” when the earthquake comes?

At 1:39 on June 15, a magnitude (里氏) 3.1 earthquake occurred in Qingpu District, Shanghai, with a focal depth of 8 kilometers. Earthquakes are one of the major natural disasters, so how to avoid danger and self rescue during earthquakes has become a topic of great concern.

There has always been a saying on the Internet that when an earthquake comes, collapsed objects and solid large objects will form a triangular space around them(the “Triangle of Life area”), and hiding in this area will have a greater probability of survival, which many people believe deeply.

In this regard, the China Earthquake Administration said that although observing the ruins after the earthquake, we can find that there are similar triangular spaces in some places.

However, when an earthquake occurs, people cannot know in advance the way of the earthquake, the direction of the collapse of buildings or objects, and it is difficult to know where there will be the so-called “Triangle of Life”.

The “Triangle of Life area” was proposed by an American disaster relief worker named Kupp, who believed that traditional self-help methods such as drilling tables were no longer suitable for people living in modern buildings. The collapsed floor structure would crush the tables or beds for refuge, and only hiding in the triangle area could survive.

Although the “Triangle of Life area” self-help method has been popular for more than ten years. However, the American Red Cross, the California State Emergency Service Office and earthquake experts have all pointed out the irrationality of the “Triangle of Life”. The Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management has also provided a refutation explanation.

In fact, after an earthquake, the internationally recognized most reliable method of self rescue is ‘lying on the ground, blocking, and holding onto your hands’. You should lie down, squat down, or sit down, try to lower the center of gravity of the body, and protect important parts such as the head, neck, eyes, and mouth and nose.

6 . Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has long worked to make her city less dependent on cars. She wanted to see more people using bicycles to get around. Over a number of years, the city government set limits on cars and increased the amount of bike paths from 200 kilometers to over 1,000 kilometers.

This year, Parisians are not complaining about too much automobile traffic. Instead, they say there are too many bikes. “Now, it’s really like a bike traffic jam(阻塞),” Thibault Quere, a spokesperson for France’s Federation of Bicycle Users, said. ”It’s kind of a good difficulty to have, especially when we think about what Paris used to be.”

Some famous roads along the River Seine are completely closed to cars. Now you see people riding bikes, running and walking with their families along the river. In another part of Paris, a bike path on Sebastopol Boulevard is one of the busiest in Europe, after opening in 2019. In one week in early September, it reached a record high of 124,000 riders.

The city will host the Summer Olympics in 2024 and plans to add more bike paths by then. Paris wants to reduce its pollution by half during the games, even as visitors from around the world will be in the city for the event. Organizers say all of the competition sites will be reachable by bike through a 60-kilometer network of bike paths.

The change to Paris, however, has not been easy. With more people using bikes, more people are making mistakes. Some of them are new to cycling and disobey traffic rules. But the environment may be improving. Cycling is good exercise and helps reduce pollution, which is still a problem for the large city. The French government blames atmospheric pollution for 48,000 early deaths in the country each year.

Hidalgo was re-elected in 2020 and plans to keep making what she calls a “Paris that breathes”. Her newest five-year bike plan includes over $250 million for more bike paths and bike parking. The new budget is an increase of over $100 million from her first five-year plan.

Climate protection strategy is fascinating the globe during the 19th Asian Games, not just athletic talent .    1     (boost) climate cooperation, China, with the centuries old history and unique culture, is using green measures. Hangzhou city has adopted a     2     (practice) eco approach. The emphasis of the Asian Games     3     (be) on “green, intellectual, frugal, and civilized” contests, reflecting a trend toward more ecologically friendly and sustainable practices in major events.

Avoiding fireworks during the opening ceremony promotes environmental awareness. Traditional fireworks displays are fun     4     pollute the air. The Asian Games intend to exhibit a     5     (commit) to sustainability while providing an engaging and memorable experience     6     all guests by replacing this event with digitally powered visual effects and sound presentations. The Asian Games’ eco friendly licensed items include backpacks     7     (make) from recycled bottles and frisbees from rice husks (谷壳). As all Asian Games venues and facilities employ green energy, the event’s green elements demonstrate China’s recent green transformation and     8     (it) responsibility and promise to meet the dual carbon goals.

The Games Village gave residents a “Low Carbon Account” as part of the green measures. Carbon points     9     (use) in promoting low carbon habits including p late recycling, green commuting, and plastic-free purchasing. Points could be traded for low-carbon Olympic mascots and other prizes. China continues to carry out a climate change policy, develop     10     better carbon market, and participate in global climate governance. China aims to peak and neutralize carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and 2060.

8 . The specific cultural values of a country may determine whether concern about environmental issues actually leads individuals to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors, according to research published in Psychological Science.

Kimin Eom, a psychological scientist of the University of California, Santa Barbara, was inspired to investigate the links between culture, environmental concern, and environmental action after noticing that both public discussion and academic research on environmental behavior typically focus on people from Western countries. It is worth noticing because Western countries tend to have cultural values that prioritize individuals’ own attitudes and beliefs and encourage expression of them.

“The theory seemed to be that once individuals are led to believe in the urgency of environmental issues and have stronger concerns about sustainability (持续性), they will change and act to address the issues,” explains Eom. But this relationship might not hold for individuals living in more collectivistic (集体主义的) societies, which place more emphasis on social harmony and uniformity than on self-expression, Eom and his team assumed.

To examine what drives environmental action in individualistic and collectivistic cultures, the researchers conducted a study with participants from the United States (an individualistic culture) and Japan (a collectivistic culture). They found environmental concern was closely connected with environmental behavior — in this case, choosing environmentally friendly products — but only among American participants. On the other hand, believing that a large percentage of people engage in environmentally friendly behaviors was associated with making eco-friendly choices among Japanese participants, but not American participants.

The findings suggest that personal concerns are more likely to motivate people to take environmental action if they live in individualistic countries, while social norms (准则) are more likely to drive people to engage in environmentally friendly behavior if they live in collectivistic countries.

“Getting citizens actively engaged is critical to addressing urgent social challenges, such as climate change,” says Eom. “Our research suggests that scientists, policymakers, and activists need to understand how culture shapes the psychological factors of action to develop policies, campaigns, and interventions (干预) that address important social issues.”

9 . For Cruz, who grew up in Peru’s mountainous region of Cuzco, fog represents a massive opportunity. As a boy, he had to hike for more than an hour every day across hills to collect water from the nearest source. But over time, he realized that during the rainy season, droplets of water would gather in the large leaves of banana trees. So one day he and his father tried to build a canal system with the leaves to collect water and it turned out a success. But afterwards, he moved to Lima at the age of 25.

There, shocked by the water shortages and expensive water supply that some of the city’s poorest residents were faced with, Cruz set up El Movimiento Peruanos sin Agua in 2005. The idea was to deploy the method he learned in his hometown on a larger scale, which would provide free, independently sourced and easily accessible water to those who needed it most. He began installing (安装) a traditional fog catcher model developed in the 1980s.

At the highest point of Los Tres Miradores, there is a curious set of large structures that resemble a fleet of ships in the sky. They are so-called “fog catchers”. Netted devices, made of high density Raschel polyethylene and spanning several meters wide, are lined up at the top of a misty mound and linked by a network of tubes that lead to storage containers. The 40 fog catchers there provide enough water for 180 families, whether to bathe, clean, drink or to irrigate crops on small garden patches.

Supporters believe that fog catchers have the potential to improve water supply for communities around the world among the ever-challenging circumstances. German researcher Lummerich says, “They are cheap, easy to construct.” In a world searching for water supply systems, it is one important puzzle piece that can make an essential difference locally.

However, there are some issues. For one, fog catchers require space, which is not always easy to come by in cities, let alone urban slums. At the same time, fog catchers must be properly cleaned and maintained to stay effective. Most crucially, appropriate climate conditions are required. Fog isn’t everywhere.