2 . Every Sunday at 2 p.m., Marisela Godinez, the owner of El Mesón Tequilería, a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, used to fill a 12-gallon bucket, plus another half-bucket, with leftover food from the restaurant’s all-you-can-eat brunch buffet. “We threw out a lot of food,” she said.

But a few months ago Ms. Godinez signed up to use an app called Too Good To Go. Now, 10 customers pick up “surprise bags” of her leftovers for $ 5. 99 each, and she sends far fewer leftovers to the landfill.

Around the country, apps that connect customers to businesses with leftover food have begun to spread. The concept is simple: Restaurants and grocery stores throw away huge amounts of food every day. Rather than trash it, apps like Too Good To Go and Flashfood help businesses sell it at a reduced price. They claim that the businesses and buyers are helping the environment because the food would otherwise become food waste, a big contributor to climate change.

Food production itself is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for between a quarter and a third of global emissions. Each step of the process-growing, harvesting, moving, processing, packaging, storing and preparing food-releases carbon dioxide,methane and other planet-warming gases. When the food is wasted, so are all those emissions. In addition, once unused food reaches landfills, it breaks down and releases more methane.

Too Good To Go has tried to gamify (游戏化) buying leftover food. In the United States, customers in 12 cities can browse restaurants and stores, then reserve “surprise bags” that typically cost about $4 to $ 6 and contain food that would have been originally priced at roughly three times that amount. The bags can be picked up at a certain time window.

According to interviews with several companies selling on Too Good To Go, at least a few items for sale there aren’t necessarily what buyers might think of as “food waste”. A beverage company owner said he used the app to sell discontinued products and he also wanted to try selling new flavors there in hopes of attracting new customers.

3 . Hands up, who’s rubbish at drawing? Ha! Bet you’re not as bad as me.

Like most during lockdown, I missed being in familiar green city spaces. A quick snap on my phone never quite captured the moment. So excitingly, I found “green sketching” sessions near my home.

This type of art, “green sketching”, was inspired by environmental scientist Dr Ali Foxon. Ali thought that spreading the joy of sketching could be the key to making people care about nature instead of just wordy reports. She launched her movement, Boggy Doodles, in 2016.

The day we were there the forest was glorious. We spent the last hour trying to capture a forest scene I made a real effort to catch the dark and brighter areas of the trunks, their textures. I used an eraser to create the white shape of a silver tree in the distance. Mine looked more like a winter scene. But when the five of us brought our work together at the end, I wasn’t too ashamed: mine was only just the worst.

At the prospect of a new lock down, I can’t be the only one to feel sad. Sketching calms a busy, anxious mind and trains the brain to notice “little things” that spark joy and help strengthen us against life’s challenges. While engaging with nature may well make us keener on protecting it — in Robert Macfarlane’s words, “We will not save what we do not love — and we rarely love what we cannot name or do not see”— the benefits of sketching work the other way round.

4 . When talking to people about climate change, you might always get asked the question: What can you do to help as a consumer? Here are some specific steps you can take:

Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. Some utility companies allow homes and businesses to pay extra for power from clean sources. When you participate in these programs, you’re telling your utility company that you’re willing to pay more to address climate.    1    Without that demand signal, the innovations that governments and businesses invest in will stay in the shelf.

    2    Depending on how much money and time you can spare, you can replace your incandescent light bulbs with LEDs, install a smart thermostat, insulate your windows, buy efficient appliances, or replace your heating and cooling system with a heat pump.

Buy an electric vehicle (EV). EVs have come a long way in terms of cost and performance. Although they might not be right for everyone, they’re becoming more affordable for many consumers.    3     People buy lots of them, companies will make lots of them.

    4    . Veggie burgers haven’t always tasted great. However, the new generation of plant-based protein alternatives is better and closer to the taste and texture of meat than their predecessors.     5    . In addition, eating a meat substitute just once or twice a week will cut down on the e-missions you’re responsible for. The same goes for dairy products.

5 . After being attacked by Hurricane Ida’s 150 mph winds and torrential rains, hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents were left without power and fresh water this week as a 100-degree heat wave settled over the region. Ida smashed into Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, ripping off roofs, knocking out transmission lines, flooding roads, and reducing some brick buildings in downtown New Orleans to rubble. At least eight people died in the storm and the toll is expected to rise as emergency workers search wrecked homes and businesses.

One of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. mainland, Ida brought a 5 to 12-foot storm surge that covered low-lying communities in southeastern Louisiana. Grand Isle is now “uninhabitable,” said Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng, with 3 feet of sand covering the entire barrier island and 40 percent of the buildings completely destroyed.

The storm caused a citywide blackout in New Orleans, but a Hurricane Katrina-level disaster was avoided there, thanks in part to the $ 14.5 billion spent on new levees, seawalls, and pumps after the 2005 storm. Experts are warning that Ida could worsen the Covid crisis in the Gulf Coast, as residents crowd together in homes and emergency shelters without immediate access to testing or medical care. ICUs in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama hospitals were already near capacity be- fore the storm hit. Nearly 1 million people are still without power across Louisiana, and authorities waned it could be weeks before electricity is restored. “If you have already evacuated,” said Gov. John Bel Edwands, “do not return here.”

6 . Each year, about 250 billion to-go cups serve coffee and tea from places like Starbucks and McDonald’s are produced to satisfy the world’s love for hot drinks on the run. These paper-based cups have the inside surface covered with plastic to prevent water from escaping, and keep water from being absorbed into the material. Despite this, that also removes any opportunity for the cups to be biodegradable (可生物降解的).

The materials that created these cups of goodness and convenience are recyclable but only if separated. In addition, the demand for such resources is low, so they are worth next to nothing.

In response to this great challenge, NextGen Consortium, multi-year partnership led by Starbucks and McDonald’s launched their first big initiative (倡议)—NextGen Cup. The first step in NextGen Cup was an open competition where participants presented ideas for sleeves, cups, lids and other parts of the hot-cold paper-based takeaway coffee cup that would make it reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable; to finally be widely used. 12 winners, announced in 2019, shared a prize of $1 million, as well as personalized growth, and support from members of NextGen Consortium.

Later, they launched two pilot programs at independent coffee shops in California. In one case, customers were given “smart” reusable cups made mostly from recyclable plastic. They then could drop their empties into collection containers at key locations, for washing and reuse. These cups were printed with RFID chips or QR codes, through which coffee shops can know where there is the greatest need for collection containers and how many are not using them.

To reduce coffee cup waste, Cup Club is already replacing millions of takeaway cups in the UK, while Recup in Germany, has performed a deposit system that simply adds a small extra fee to any coffee cup which is returned to the buyer after the cup is deposited in any registered collection point.