3 . A newly developed disposable paper battery promises to make a big impact on single-use electronics. The battery that has been demonstrated by researchers is biodegradable (可生物降解的), made from sustainable materials, and cheap to put together. What’s more, it can be produced in a variety of shapes and sizes as needed.

To give an idea of the power, a two-cell battery was enough to power an LCD alarm clock. While it won’t be charging up your computer anytime soon, there’s lots of potential for low-powered sensors. “We present a printed paper battery developed to power single-use disposable electronics and to reduce their environmental impact to the lowest level,” write the researchers in their published paper.

The battery is based on a metal-air electrochemical cell. Made from sodium chloride salt-diffused (氯化钠盐扩散的) paper, it can measure as little as one square centimeter, and is based on printed inks. All that’s needed, then, is a small amount of water, as little as two drops. This dissolves the salts within the paper, and then activates the battery as they travel. The battery starts producing power around 20 seconds after water is added, according to the experiments carried out by the team.

Although the performance decreases over time as the paper dries out, it can be topped up to some extent with more water. The researchers say they want to improve the efficiency of the battery in the future, and get it working for longer.

“With a rising awareness of the e-waste problem and the emergence of single-use electronics for applications, there is a growing need for low environmental impact batteries,” write the researchers.

5 . The Art of Recycling

Recycling is not new. Many civilizations have reused objects. However, recycling is more important today because there is more pollution and fewer natural resources.     1     Others use these recycled materials to make art!

    2     Artists use old tires, pieces of metal, cloth, etc. These materials might come from yard sales or swap meets(旧物交换会). In addition, businesses might give used materials to artists.

    3       For example, artists in New York City made a sculpture that looked like a giant white cloud. The sculpture, called “Head in the Clouds”, was more than 40 feet long and 15 feet high! People walked into the cloud sculpture and danced to live music.     4     That’s the number of water bottles that are thrown into the trash every hour in New York City! The artists wanted to show how many water bottles ended up in the garbage.

Many art projects are shown at outdoor art and music festivals. Many cities even have festivals specifically for recycled art.

Museums also exhibit recycled art. A museum in Texas allowed visitors to add to the art on display. The project was called the “Recycle Reef (珊瑚礁).” The background looked like an ocean reef, and people added to the “reef” with the recycled materials provided.       5    

Have you made something using paper towel tubes or water bottles? If so, you’ve made recycled art.

6 . Off the coast of Formentera, an island, lives seagrass that stretches 15 km. The seagrass, covering several kilometers, is made up of a single organism. The grasses are also long-lived, for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Along with two other kinds of coastal ecosystem—mangrove swamps and tidal marshes—seagrass fields are particularly good at taking carbon dioxide from the air.

This role was highlighted in a report published on March 2nd by UNESCO, on “blue carbon” —the carbon stored by Earth’s oceanic and coastal ecosystems. In total around 3,300 million tons of carbon dioxide (about three-quarters of the world’s emissions in 2019) are locked away in the planet’s blue-carbon sinks. Research by Carlos Duarte, the report’s author and an ecologist, has shown that one hectare of seagrass can suck as much carbon dioxide each year as 15 hectares of rainforest.

One reason that blue-carbon ecosystems make such effective sinks is that underwater forests are thicker than the land-based woods. They can also trap floating pieces and organic matter, which settles on the sea floor and can double the amount of carbon stored away. They possess another advantage, too. Climate change is leading to more wildfires around the world. As forests burn, their carbon stocks are sent back into the atmosphere. Unlike forests on land, blue-carbon ecosystems do not burn.

Blue-carbon ecosystems may not be fired, but they remain affected by other sorts of disasters. In May 2020 cyclone Amphan destroyed 1,200 square kilometers of mangrove forests. A marine heatwave in Australian waters in 2010 and 2011 damaged around one third of the world’s largest seagrass field in Shark Bay. Mangrove forests can weaken or control waves and provide natural barriers to storm surges. Protecting and expanding them, then, appears to be a must.

7 . More than one billion pounds of pumpkins are grown in the U.S. every year, and after they’ve been used for Halloween, millions of them will end up in a waste yard.

“Driving around after Halloween, you see so many pumpkins on top of their garbage cans. All of them will go to a waste yard and become methane gas(沼气),” says Kay McKeen, director of an environmental education organization based in Illinois.

Methane is a greenhouse gas. Compared to CO₂, it warms the atmosphere in a shorter amount of time, which means it’s a most important cause of climate change. And waste yards—where we send as much as 40 percent of the food we produce—take up 14 percent of methane produced in the US every year.

That’s why, in 2014, McKeen began a collection event where local people can bring their waste pumpkins to 69 different locations to send them off to the bins, and—of course—smash them to pieces.

“It puts nutrients(营养) back in our soil, it saves water, it doesn’t make methane gas—it’s just a win-win,” says McKeen.

But not everyone has access to pumpkin smashing events, so we asked our newsletter readers how they reduce their pumpkin waste. The answers are various, ranging from baking sweet treats to bringing a pumpkin treat to farm animals.

Going green is more than just a fad (一时的流行). Understanding the link between a clean environment and human life is not a new concept. In fact, it was noticed as early as ancient Rome and medieval Europe. However, it was only in the late 1960s that environmentalism grew to become a political and grassroots movement, influencing ordinary people around the world.

The movement has been able to influence governments across the world to be responsible towards the environment in a variety of ways, such as limiting the burning of fossil fuels and managing how harmful waste is thrown away.

Fast-forward to today and we see how green-living has entered so many areas of our everyday lives, from choosing the appliances that use less water and energy to using reusable bags instead of plastic bags and even buying clothes made from recycled sources. For many of us, making small environmentally-conscious decisions, such as bringing a reusable container to take away food, is how we change our normal habits one step at a time. However, there is a growing community of people who embrace a zero waste lifestyle and make great changes to the way they live to reduce their carbon footprint.

Living a zero waste lifestyle means doing one's best to achieve the aim of not sending anything to a landfill (垃圾填埋场). People who adopt this lifestyle cut down on their waste by reducing what they need and want. They reuse what they own and send few things to be recycled.

Despite what this movement is called, experts say true zero waste is difficult to achieve. This is because waste unavoidably comes about whenever an item is created, transported or repurposed (改换用途), either through emissions or energy. The idea, really, is to change mindsets and habits to lessen our negative impact on the environment as far as possible.