2 . A growing number of companies are making food and drink products out of things traditionally considered waste. And according to new research, consumers increasingly accept — and even prefer — such products.

“Consumers are actually willing to pay more for food made from surplus (剩余的) products,” says Professor Jonathan Deutsch, who led the study. Deutsch and his colleagues presented study participants with different food products. They had one of three labels “conventional”, “organic” or “value-added surplus”. The third was the study’s term for food normally seen as waste. Participants were not, as food companies have long assumed, disgusted by the idea of using “waste” in their food. Instead, they felt positively about the opportunity to help the environment.

The problem of food waste has been getting more attention in recent years. Globally, up to a third of all food is damaged or lost before it can be eaten. Waste can happen anywhere along the food chain. Farms fail to harvest crops due to bad weather. Food goes bad during transport. Companies throw out trimmings too small to use, and supermarkets reject produce for imperfect looks. Restaurants throw out food after its use-by date.

As consumers become increasingly aware of the problem, a number of companies are betting on surplus foods. Washington, D. C-based Misfit Juicery sells cold-pressed juices made from ugly fruits. Dutch company Barstensvol makes heat-and-eat soups from surplus vegetables. Some of these companies are meeting with major success.

Deutsch reminds that transparency (透明度) is key when using surplus food. Consumers like the idea of helping the environment. They don’t like feeling a company has something to hide. ABC News reported that meat companies often use beef trimmings in ground beef. The product is perfectly safe to eat. But its pink appearance, and the idea that the meat companies were hiding its presence from consumers, caused great anger.

3 . Recycling is good for our planet, but it can be confusing. Can I recycle plastic bags? What about pizza cartons? Toothpaste tubes? Which bin should I use? There are so many questions, and more than half of Americans are unsure about how to recycle.     1     Here’s a handy four-step guide on how to recycle effectively:

Know what to put in the recycling bin. Keep it simple and focus on the most commonly recycled items, such as paper, glass, aluminum and plastic.     2     Don’t use the recycled symbol as a guide. “The number on the container is really for people to identify the type of resin (树脂). That’s not helpful for the common consumer,” said Cody Marshall, a strategist at nonprofit Recycling Partnership.

    3     It is really important to know what you cannot put in your bin. You can always check with your city or at BeRecycled.org. If you live in the US, just plug in your postcode to search. Recycling companies struggle with the same problem items: hoses (软管), cords, needles and clothing, according to Marshall, so don’t put those items in your bin.

Wash or clean items. Do a quick clean to make sure there is no food left in containers before you put them in the bin.     4     Save food for composting (堆肥) in your garden.

Don’t bag it. Unless you live in a place that requires it, like New York City, keep the recyclables lost in the bin. “A lot of the time, it’s not safe for our employees to tear those bags open, or it takes too much time,” said Keller. “    5    ”

5 . More than 85% of the world’s bird and animal species live in mountains, particularly in forest habitats, but researchers report in the journal One Earth on March 17 that these forests are disappearing at an accelerating rate.

Though their uneven location once protected mountain forests from deforestation, they have been increasingly exploited since the turn of the 21st century as lowland areas become depleted. A team of scientists led by Xinyue He, Dominick Spracklen and Joseph Holden at Leeds University in the United Kingdom, and Zhenzhong Zeng at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China wanted to investigate the extent and global distribution of mountain forest loss.

To do this, the team tracked changes in mountain forests on a yearly basis from 2001 to 2018. They quantified both losses and gains in tree cover, estimated the rate at which change is occurring, compared different charts and types of mountain forests -- boreal, temperate, tropical -- and explored the impacts of this forest loss on biodiversity.

They found that logging was the biggest driver of mountain forest loss overall(42%), followed by wildfires (29%), shifting or “slash-and-burn” cultivation (15%), and permanent or semi-permanent agriculture (10%), though the importance of these different factors varied from region to region. Significant loss occurred in Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, and Australia, but not in North America and Oceania.

Worryingly, the rate of mountain forest loss seems to be accelerating: the annual rate of loss increased by 50% from 2001-2009 to 2010-2018, when we lost approximately 5.2 million hectares of mountain forests per year. The authors write that this acceleration is probably largely due to rapid agricultural expansion into highland areas in mainland Southeast Asia, as well as increased logging of mountain forests either due to decrease of lowland forests or because these lowland forests became protected.

“Any new measure to protect mountain forests should be adapted to local conditions and contexts and need to reconcile(兼顾) the need for enhanced forest protection with ensuring food production and human well-being.” the authors write.

7 . Farming is destroying the planet. But there could be a much more environmentally friendly way to feed ourselves: using renewable energy to turn carbon dioxide (CO₂) into food.

“This is becoming a reality,” says Pasi Vainikka at Solar Foods. The company is building the first commercial-scale factory, near Helsinki in Finland, which will be able to make food directly from CO₂.

At the factory, renewable electricity will be used to break down water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be added to large containers, where the bacteria grow, along with CO₂ and ammonia(NH₃) to provide carbon and nitrogen separately. Some of the CO₂ will be taken directly from the air at a visitors’ centre at the factory, Vainikka says, and the rest will come from industrial sources. The end result will be a yellow powder called Solein that is made of bacterial cells and is up to 70 per cent protein. It can be used as an ingredient in all kinds of foods, from meat alternatives to grains and snacks. “We are aiming at replacing animal-sourced proteins, which we think have the highest environmental impact,” says Vainikka.

Solein was approved as a food ingredient in Singapore in October 2022, and Solar Foods is awaiting approval in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Compared with plant crops, Solein will use 100 times less water per kilogram of protein produced, 20 times less land—including the land used for energy production—and produce a fifth as much CO₂, according to Solar Foods. Compared with beef, a kilogram of protein can be produced using 600 times less water and 200 times less land, again counting the land used for energy production, while producing 200 times less CO₂, says the company.

There are other benefits, too: factories could be situated anywhere in the world and production won’t be affected by weather extremes. “With Solar Foods and other companies scaling up(扩大) their systems, this is truly stepping in a new age of agriculture,” says Dorian Leger at Connectomix Bio in Germany.

8 . McDonald’s is promising to offer sustainable Happy Meal toys made with dramatically less plastic by the end of 2025. The fast-food giant said that it has already decreased the use of virgin fossil fuel-based plastic in its toys by 30% worldwide since 2018 after starting the process in markets like France, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

More than 100 countries worldwide sell Happy Meals at McDonald’s locations. The burger chain began selling the meals in 1979. In 2018, after widespread concern about children’s meals at fast-food restaurants, the company revamped its options to selections that were lower in calories, sodium, saturated fat and sugar.

Murray said children and parents alike have been asking for more sustainable toys. In 2019, two British school children started a petition (请愿书) that generated international attention asking McDonald’s and Burger King to cancel the plastic toys in their children’s meal deals.

Some toys, like board game pieces, will be made with plant-derived (植物提取的) or recycled material. Others will have more significant changes to their appearance. Superheroes and movie characters will be 3-D cutouts rather than plastic figurines. The company is also looking into switching from plastic wrapping to plant-based and certified fiber packaging.

“As you can imagine, our entire supply chain has to change with this,” Murray said. “It has been a massive undertaking, and we’re really just changing the way we do our Happy Meals.”

McDonald’s chief sustainability officer Jenny McColloch said the company has already been learning from feedback in France, the UK and Ireland, where the toys have already rolled out. The goal is to make sure they are safe and sturdy enough for children.

According to McColloch, the more sustainable toys will begin rolling out widely in the US by January. The fast-food giant is also looking for ways to recycle the old plastic Happy Meal toys within its restaurants.

9 . In 1561, King Philip Ⅱ of Spain made the decision to move the capital to Madrid, which had a significant impact on the city’s environment that is still felt today. Some suggest that the move was motivated by a desire for a healthier environment for his wife, as well as Madrid’s closeness to the Manzanares River. However, the removal of the surrounding woodlands to support the royal court exposed the city to severe weather, leading to the saying “nine months of winter and three of hell”.

Today, Madrid continues to struggle with environmental problems, such as pollution from a large number of vehicles that enter the city each day. To battle with this issue, Madrid’s city planners are constructing a 75-kilometer-long Metropolitan Forest, which is one of the most ambitious initiatives of its kind in Europe. This forest will consist of 1.5 million trees of species native to Madrid, along with eco-friendly bridges and recreational centers. Additionally, a 23-kilometer-long Forest Avenue for cyclists and pedestrians will connect the new forest with existing parks, schools, offices, and the airport. In 20 years, the Metropolitan Forest should be able to remove more than 800,000 tonnes of CO from the city’s atmosphere.

The idea for the forest was born in 2019 when Madrid councilors for urban development asked the children what kind of Madrid they would like to see in 2040. The dominating response was a “green city”, which motivated the city council to plan seriously. The city council has been aware of Madrid’s environmental problems since the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2019, when a survey revealed that over 40 percent of the citizens cited the environment as the city’s number one   problem that they decided to take action.

The Metropolitan Forest project represents a significant investment in Madrid’s future, demonstrating how a willingness to listen to the next generation’s ideas and the public’s concerns can lead to positive change.

10 . What he believes was Philadelphia’s first 5K Earth Day Trash Walk came to Terrill Haigler in a moment of morning inspiration.

One day, Haigler, better known as “Ya Fav Trashman” on social media, thought about how he could combine trash pickup, helping the homeless, and a bit of fitness. Coinciding with Earth Day weekend, the event hopefully would bring volunteers from across the city to walk through Kensington, a Philly neighborhood suffering from drug and homelessness issues, and clean up while bathed in the sun.

The idea turned into reality on Saturday morning, when 200 volunteers picked up 8 tons of trash, collected 503 bags of litter, and distributed 200 hot meals to those experiencing homelessness in Kensington, all while laughing and smiling along the 3.2-mile route.

Volunteers, wearing running sneakers and carrying trash pickers and bags, walked, jogged, and skipped through the streets while cleaning up. As part of the event, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society had pledged (承诺) to plant a tree in a black or brown community over the next five years for every bag of trash collected. Haigler was “ecstatic (狂喜的)” to be able to tell the society that more than 500 trees would be planted.

Saturday’s walk is the latest in Haigler’s constant push to raise awareness of what sanitation workers (环卫工人) do to try to keep Philly streets clean and to help his city in creative ways.

Haigler first came to fame during the pandemic, when garbage began to pile up as sanitation workers called out sick due to COVID-19. On his account, he posted videos and host live sessions to teach residents about his job and all its difficulties.

Soon, Haigler turned from spreading awareness to community activism, holding a food drive for frontline workers during the pandemic and raising $32,000 to purchase protective equipment for his team. In 2021, Haigler stepped down from his job and now runs a nonprofit to bridge the gap between the community and the city’s sanitation team.