3 . The Forest Eye project aims to create the largest living forest feature in England by growing 5,000 alder, beech and maple trees into the shape of a child’s eye. The trees are being planted in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, with the help of local young people. The trees will form an eye 300 meters wide that will be visible from the sky in about six years, when they have grown.

The project hopes to focus on the importance of young people’s ideas for creating a health y natural environment. It was designed by a company called Sand in Your Eye and has been created by Forestry England, an organization that protects forests and woodlands.

Josephine Lavelle, director at Forestry England, says, “Having the gaze of a child growing in the heart of this beautiful and ever-changing forest is a powerful symbol of how we need to listen and respond to the needs and vision of future generations.”

The project also aims to highlight the important role that forests play in fighting climate change. As well as providing a home for wildlife, trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and create oxygen that humans need to breathe. When the trees have grown, they will provide a place for lots of wild animals, like bats, birds and small mammals to live. The Forest Eye will also create a space for people to explore and connect with nature.

Jamie Wardley, artistic director at Sand in Your Eye, has plenty of experience creating pieces of “land art”. These are huge drawings and sculptures made from grass, ice and sand, including a 60-meter portrait of Swedish climate-change campaigner Greta Thunberg on a school field in Yorkshire. He says, “The trees are my paint.” “Our work is about prompting people to think deeply and respond emotionally to some of the biggest issues facing us, including the climate crisis.” Wardley also plans to develop the Forest Eye into an even bigger project. “It is our ambition to create the whole face of a young girl at the same scale, measuring 2,000 meters across. Those trees that are planted in the Forest Eye are the very beginning of this,” he says.

8 . For Beth Terry, when she read an article about how seabirds are being killed by discarded plastics, she realized that it was time to give up plastics.

First, she focused on her kitchen and got rid of the shopping bags and other plastic products. Then she turned to her bathroom. Toothpaste without plastic packaging was extremely hard to find, so she started making her own with baking soda.

Sometimes her personal war on plastics created awkward moments. During a vacation to Disneyland in California to run a half-marathon, Ms Terry and her husband left their reusable cloth bags in the hotel, soon discovering that the local supermarket only had plastic bags. How should they carry her fruits like apples, oranges, pears and melons?

“We just rolled them up in our T-shirts and carried them that way,” said Ms Terry, 54, recalling how she crab-walked back to the hotel to stay true to her principles. “ If I let myself off the hook this time, it would be easier for me to take plastics next time,” she said.

Treating plastics like a drug habit that needs to be kicked is a lifestyle promise being shared by more and more consumers, horrified by tens of millions of tons of plastics created worldwide each year, much of it in the form of single-use items like straws that end up in landfills(垃圾填埋场）or,worse, the oceans.

If you gathered up all your plastic waste each week, as Mr. Terry once did, you would have a small hill on the floor. How should we begin? “The one thing I want to make people know is to go step by step. Don’t try to do everything at once,” said Ms. Terry, who is the author of Plastic-Free:How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.

9 . Bob enjoys breakfasts of caviar, swims in his own saltwater pool and receives foot massages on the beach. A comfortable life, perhaps, but you could say he deserves it: Bob serves as an ambassador for conservation(保护大使). Bob,you see,is a flamingo(火烈鸟).

Odette Doest rescued Bob in 2016,after the bird crashed into a window in Curacao and hurt his left wing. While taking care of the bird at her wildlife sanctuary(庇护所），Doest discovered that Bob previously had been trained by people: He felt at ease with people,but he suffered from bumblefoot. The foot disease would have weakened his ability to catch food in the wild.

For those reasons, Doest decided to keep him as an educational animal at her sanctuary, alongside 90 other animals. When Doest began taking Bob on her foundation's weekly visits to schools on the island,the flamingo became famous instantly.

“Bob is like the hot item-everyone likes Bob,”Doest says. That's because most people have never seen such an elegant colorful bird up close.“Just don't try to take a Bobselfie. That's not what Bob is about,” Doest says firmly.“I have Bob for students to think about nature and the environment, and how a slight change in their habits can have a big effect on nature around us.”

That could mean choosing reusable cups instead of plastic bottles or skipping the balloons at a birthday party or picking up rubbish on the beach--all things Doest says children take to heart because they're so dazzled by Bob. Many of Doest's rescued birds were caught in fishing lines. In her talks, she stressed the environmental threat caused by fishing lines, along with plastic pollution.