2 . With greater climate catastrophe (气候突变) on Earth, it is natural for us to make every effort to stop the potential floods, snowstorms, and alarming reports from scientists. For many of us (myself included), part of that means running out to buy reusable straws, organic cleaners, and packaging-free products.

However, before you rejoice in “green” purchases, take a second to consider the results of a new study from Arizona University. By comparing the shopping habits, mental health and environmental impact of young people, the researchers reaffirmed a principle: Buying less beats buying “green” stuff without effort. And that is true whether you are looking at the impact that your purchases have on the Earth or on your own happiness.

It should not come as a shock that simply consuming less is better for the planet. After all, every new item a factory yields requires some resources to produce. Take plastic bag bans for instance. If your city is getting rid of single-use shopping bags, it can be tempting to pay for a fashionable organic cotton bag hanging in the check-out line of your local supermarket. However, experts insist that growing cotton is actually no better for the Earth than producing the conventional plastic bags. Your best bet for carrying your groceries if you care about sustainability? Any bag you already own. This is true of many kinds of “green” products.

It is not just the Earth that will be happier if you buy less. You will feel more contented too, according to the new study. “People believe that they might well be self-satisfied about becoming environmentally conscious through green buying patterns, but it doesn't seem to be that way”, said the lead researcher Sabrina Helm. “Reduced consumption has effects on increased well-being and decreased psychological distress, but we don't see that with green consumption.”

“Owning every new green product on the market might make you feel contented, but if you relieve yourself of that burden of ownership, most people report feeling a lot better,” said Helm.

Dongying city in China’s Shandong Province has witnessed(目睹) ecological improvements in the Yellow River Delta, thanks to various    1    (effect) measures to improve wetland restoration and protection.

Years ago, the wetlands there    2    (threaten) due to less water from the river and other factors.    3    (protect) the wetlands ecosystem, the Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve was established in 1992. Since then, the city    4    (carry) out several management projects and restored the biotic(生物) population in the zone.

Dongying has been adopting a comprehensive wetlands restoration model by giving high     5    (prior) to protecting the nature reserve and letting nature restore     6    (it). Over the past three years, it’s transferred(转运) 469 million cubic meters of water to the nature reserve,    7    has recovered the ecological functions of the wetlands there.

Last year, Dongying built a real-time monitoring network for bird species at the nature reserve, which helps ensure that birds are free    8    disturbance of human activity and puts the habitats of cranes and other species under key protection. As a result, the nature reserve has seen    9    obvious increase in the variety and number of bird species. Home to 371 bird species, it’s become an important stop, wintering ground and breeding place for migratory birds. Dongying is currently working to build the Yellow River Estuary National Park, which will cover 3,523 square kilometers,    10    (include) land area and sea area, to explore pathways for the protection of Delta ecology.

5 . An impressive invention made by a 17-year-old teenager, called Anna Du, is helping to clean up small pieces of plastic from the ocean.

While walking along her local beaches in Massachusetts, the young student began collecting waste plastic bags and bottles. But what she noticed was a large number of tiny pieces of plastic or microplastics that were impossible to pick up. At just 12 years old, Du set out to solve the problem. After testing a few prototypes(原型)in her backyard, she invented a remotely operated vehicle that uses the infrared camera(红外摄像机)to detect microplastics on the ocean floor. More recently, Du has also created a simulation(模拟)model that uses artificial intelligence to predict where microplastics are located.

Du’s robot invention has earned her awards at top science fairs in the US, and she’s now a nationally recognized advocate for microplastic awareness and pollution prevention. “When I first started doing science fairs, I had no idea that a young girl without lots of money and just a little advanced engineering knowledge could make a difference in the world. I’ve learned that I truly love working on a problem that’s so much larger than me,” Du said.

Du has also released a new book to help spread the word not only about the dangers of microplastics but also about the ways to relieve the problem. Titled Microplastics &Me, the book follows Du’s own story of how she went from worrying about the environment to designing award-winning solutions. Writing for kids her own age, the young girl alerts her readers to the threat of microplastic pollution and urges them to care about the environment. The book hopes to encourage young students to get into science, technology, engineering and math(STEM)subjects and to inspire a new generation of inventors and engineers. What’s more, Du has even raised more than $7,000 to distribute the book free to kids and libraries in high-need communities.

7 . A recent report revealed that, in the US alone, 27 million tons of plastic ended up in landfills in 2018, but only 3.1 millon tons were recycled. Wordwide the numbers are similarly bad, with just 9% of plastic being recycled. The statistics are even worse for certain types of plastic. For example, out of 80,000 tons of polystyrene (聚苯乙烯) containers generated in the United States, only a small amount (less than 5,000 tons) was recycled.

Now, researchers at The University of Queensland and have found a species of wom with an appetite for polystyrene could be the key to plastic recycling on a mass scale. The superworm can eat through polystyrene, thanks to a bacterial enzyme (酶) in their gut. To study how superworms react to purely plastic food, researchers broke up l35 of the creatures into three teams: one was fed only wheat bran(麸皮), another was fed only plastics, and the third was given nothing.

“We found the bran-fed worms have been significantly healthier than the plastic-fed or starved worms, more than doubling their weight over the three weeks they have been monitored. Though the plastic-fed worms made less impressive gains, they still put on more weight than the starved worms,” Dr. Rinke said. “This suggests the worms can get energy from plastics, most likely with the help of their gut microbes.”

Researchers used a technique called me a genomics to find several encoded enzymes with the ability to degrade polystyrene. The long-term goal is to engineer enzymes to degrade plastic waste in recycling plants.

“Super worms are like mini recycling plants, eating the polystyrene and then feeding it to the bacteria in their gut” Dr. Rinke said. It’s hoped this bio-up cycling will promote plastic waste recycling and reduce landfills. Researchers said they aim to grow the gut bacteria in the lab and further test its ability to degrade polystyrene. Then they can look into how to upscale this process to a level required for an entire recycling plant

8 . Carol-Anne O’Callaghan, a former teacher from Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, has fought hard to protect ancient oaks near her home, which she says are home to rare bats.

In February 2021, O’Callaghan was walking her dogs when she spotted yellow dots stuck on some of the 99 oak trees in a narrow country lane close to her home. The dots indicated trees marked for destruction. After she learned the trees would be felled as part of the HS2 high-speed railway works, she called the HS2 helpline and was told there was nothing that could be done as an over-road would be built. She gets choked up remembering the moment she realized many of them were to be cut down.

O’Callaghan loves that ancient line of oaks. They were planted in the 19th century. “My family and I would picnic under them,” she says, “climb them, have rope swings on them. The trees are amazing and beautiful and meant so much.” One of the last photos of her mother, taken shortly before she died, was of her sitting in a swing in their branches.

She noticed that on the other side of the lane, to the north, there were no ancient oaks. So she began campaigning to save the trees. With the help of her daughter, Blaize, she started a petition(请愿书), which went on to get nearly 43,000 signatures. “I saw someone passionate about giving a voice to those who don’t have one, someone not afraid of asking questions and calling out large, daunting businesses for doing the wrong thing,” says her neighbour Victoria.

Buckinghamshire Council has got involved, and the felling is paused. A final decision has yet to be made about the proposed over-road. “We’re optimistic that they’ll hear our argument and take the ecology of the lane into account,” says O’Callaghan. “We want them to put in a green crossing in the gaps between trees, for the bats, and we’d like the place to become a conservation area. For the trees and the bats—this is what we are fighting for!”

10 . Portugal’s white storks (鹳) were once a migratory bird (候鸟), known to leave the area each winter to travel to Africa’s warmer climate, but recently they have been staying put.

Surprisingly, though, the storks’ number has actually been on the rise. There are now thought to be more than 14,000 birds in Portugal in winter — a ten-time increase over the last 20 years. Any unusual change of an animal’s natural behavior often has negative influences.

It has been thought that their increase has a close relationship with a growing number of landfill sites (垃圾填埋场) in the area, providing the birds with a supply of fatty and dirty rubbish to eat, including junk food. Was it the junk food that stopped them migrating, or is Europe’s warming climate to criticize? Researchers sought to figure out exactly why their natural behavior had changed in this way. To understand, a team kept an eye on 48 white storks by equipping them with small GPS computers, which recorded their movements five times a day, checking how often they traveled to landfill sites as well as how fast they flew.

The conclusions were shocking. The birds also established more homes next to landfill sites — the team said that 80% of white storks were spending most of their time by the rubbish all year round, according to the results. The storks eat almost anything. “Every time after a truck with rubbish came, they collected what they could,” says Aldina Franco of the University of East Anglia in the UK. The storks have even been known to eat plastic, including old computer parts. “Really what they are trying to get at is rubbish that we throw away... like hamburgers, burnt meat and fish,” said Franco.

This rich and colorful supply of food will soon become hard to find, though, as new laws from European Union (EU) order that waste food be recycled. Open-air landfills will also be replaced by covered equipment, which birds will not be able to eat.

The white storks therefore face an uncertain future. Will they migrate to Africa as they had done for hundreds of years before, or will they stay put? No one knows. “I wonder what the Portuguese storks will do once the landfill sites are all closed, and we are going to continue to watch these storks and see how they will respond to the changes,” said Aldina Franco.