1 . Known as the birthplace of hip-hop, the South Bronx in New York City is a global center for music and art. However, it also suffers from poverty and pollution. Heavy trucks deliver unwanted construction waste to sorting stations, which then transfer waste to distant landfills.

Just graduating from college and working for an environmental group, Omar started to think about redirecting waste to those in need. He wondered, “Instead of destroying things like old doors, why not make this business a ‘cooperative’, which means people who work in the business own it and share the profits?”

Omar decided to start his business. He handed out flyers (小传单) along the truck-jammed, waste-filled streets to find individuals with similar ideas and interests to join him. Eventually, Omar found four workers and secured a warehouse. They reached out to relevant people, offering to remove items from construction sites for free. Soon, their warehouse was filled with donated materials, including 80 new toilets, unwanted doors, theater seats, and even a giant popcorn machine.

A few years ago, Omar started his first cooperative devoted to reusing construction waste. The cooperative began selling construction supplies at reasonable prices to neighborhood builders and home owners. With support from city officials, Omar began developing a new training program to equip local residents with the necessary skills for environmentally impact jobs.

Omar said, “Think about a wooden door that you’ve just bought. In order to produce that, someone had to cut down trees. In order to ship it across the country, someone had to pump oil out of the ground. You can avoid all that if you buy a good used door. And at the same time, you can reduce pollution, save money, and create jobs in communities like the South Bronx.”

Omar even had the image of a future with a whole network of green cooperative businesses in the area, which would work together to reuse different kinds of construction materials. “If you have a use for something,” Omar said, “it’s no longer waste.”

3 . Getting rid of old tyres has long been a problem. Every year more than a billion reach the end of the road. Until recently, most were thrown into landfills or piled up in storage yards. Tougher environmental laws mean many countries now insist tyres are recycled.

Some firms, therefore, have begun exploring a great idea. Since tyres are mostly made from hydrocarbons, it should be possible in principle to turn old tyres into low-carbon fuel which can be used to run the vehicles they came from. One of the most ambitious firms pursuing the idea is Wastefront, which is based in Oslo, in Norway. Later this year the company will start building a giant tyre-recycling plant. In a couple of years, when the plant is fully operational, it will be able to turn 8m old tyres into new products, including some 25,000 tons of a black liquid called tyre derived oil (TDO).

The process works by deconstructing (解构) a tyre into three main parts. One is steel, which is used to brace the structure of a tyre. The second is carbon black, a powdery carbon used to improve the durability of the tyre. The third is rubber.

In order to do the deconstructing, the tyres are first shredded and the steel bracing removed. The remaining material then goes through a process called pyrolysis (热解). This involves exposing a material to high temperatures in the absence of air. That causes the rubber to turn into a mix of hydrocarbon gases, which are drawn off. What is left behind is pure carbon black. Once the drawn-off gas has cooled down, a part of it changes into TDO. The remaining gases, which include methane, are funneled back around to be burned, fuelling the reactor.

The overall output of the process by weight is 40% TDO, 30% carbon black, 20% steel and 10% gas. The recovered TDO is similar to crude oil fresh from the ground. The carbon black can be re-used to make new tyres, which is of interest to tyre-makers. This, says Vianney Vales, Wastefront’s boss, creates a closed-loop system that prevents emissions.

5 . These days, kids seem to spend most of their time on the smart phones or the video games. It’s _________ to be a bit pessimistic (悲观的) about their future. But if you look closely, there are some young minds that are trying to solve_________ world problems.

Jackson _________ away “Blessing Bags” for the homeless in Chicago: snacks, socks and other things. Jackson started his _________ at 9 years old.

In Bali, Melati and Isabel began a campaign to _________ the beaches and keep their country far from plastic pollution in 2008. Bali is now plastic-free. But they don’t _________. They are focusing on the rest of Indonesia.

Ryan was 7 years old when he _________ Ryan’s Recycling. He collected over 200, 000 bottles and cans a year from 50 customers.

In Sierra, Kelvin started bringing _________ and a community radio station to villages by making batteries (电池). He was 13 years old. Most importantly, Kelvin _________ other children that they could make a __________.

So far, teenager Slat has __________ over $ 13 million for his project Ocean Cleanup that uses the ocean’s waves to collect plastic __________.

At age 15, Ann __________ a flashlight that uses body heat for power to keep batteries __________ landfills (填埋).

Kids around the world are raising much money for cancer research and environmental problems __________ by running juice shops, sewing dresses and selling flowers.

6 . Alone on a barren island, Ding Peng and his colleagues bring the Chinese crested tern (凤头燕鸥) back from the edge of extinction. From time to time, Ding Peng makes his way across the waves to Zhongtiedun, an island that dots the vast East China Sea.

Born in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China’s Gansu Province, Ding grew up seeing bare mountains and sandstorms, and had an early awareness of environmental protection.

In March 2013, Ding landed on Zhongtiedun with more than 30 experts to choose a breeding (繁育) area for Chinese crested terns. They wanted to restore their populations through manual intervention (人工干预).

At the beginning, there were no Chinese crested terns on Zhongtiedun and Ding’s first cask was to attract the birds to settle there. Their breeding period is usually from May to August, and they like to lay their eggs on small islands with little tree cover, so Ding and the team of experts settled on relatively flat Zhongtiedun. They also cut away the taller bushes, while 400 fake birds of the same size as Chinese crested terns were placed there, with a bird sound playback system installed to simulate the sound of courtship (求偶).

However, they were unable to attract any of the birds over the following two months. “The experts suggested withdrawing the equipment and making plans for the next year,” Ding recalls. Ding proposed the equipment that had been installed on the island not be taken down. Two days later, the team got what they wished for—several Chinese crested terns were found among the group of great crested terns flying in the sky.

“Though the life on the island is tough, things took a turn for the better in 2017, when more volunteers came to join the bird protection team. Everything was worth it. Now that more people are aware of the importance of protecting the birds, and now that their numbers are on the rise,” Ding says.

8 . A new form of real estate(不动产)is appearing along the beaches of South Africa and on the dry islands off its coast-tiny white beach huts. With good ventilation and a sea view, they are just big enough to fit a family of African penguins. Their unique selling point: a safe and cool place for penguins to breed.

African penguins, unlike their relatives that live in snow and ice, live well in the cold currents of the South Atlantic Ocean. But when they come to land, their thick black coat absorbs the heat, and they desperately look for cover-both for themselves and their fragile eggs.

Historically, the penguins dug burrows in layers of guano-accumulated seabird and bat feces- that lined Africa’s penguin colonies, but in the 19th century, traders started selling guano(鸟粪)as fertilizer, leaving the penguins and their eggs increasingly exposed to predators and the baking sun. This, combined with other threats such as egg poaching, overfishing and climate change, has caused African penguin populations to plummet. In 2019, they were thought to be less than 20,000 breeding pairs, down from an estimated 1.5 to 3 million birds in 1900.For more than a decade, the species has been listed as endangered by the IUCN.

To date, the African Penguin Nest Project has installed more than 1,500 nests across five of South Africa’s penguin colonies, and plans to expand into Namibia next year, the only other country with breeding populations of the species.

“This is still just a drop in the bucket,” says Graham, who anticipates they will need to deploy at least 4,500 more ceramic homes to protect penguins currently nesting in exposed areas. “The goal is that every penguin that needs a nest will get one.”

9 . Last summer, I was sent to take photos that could communicate the urgency of climate change in northern Canada. When I arrived at an abandoned village on Resolute Bay, I scanned the shore with my camera. Suddenly, I spotted a bear lying on the ground. It didn’t move for almost an hour. But when it finally stood up, I had to catch my breath. The bear’s once strong body was just skin and bones; every step that it took was painfully slow.

When I posted the photos on social media, I wrote, “This is what starvation may look like. I wonder whether the global population of 25, 000 polar bears would die the way this bear is dying.”

I did not say that this particular bear was killed by climate change. But news organizations around the world focused on it. The first line of the story published in National Geographic read, “This is what climate change looks like” — with “climate change” highlighted in yellow. Other news agencies even adopted more dramatic headlines.

It was estimated that my photos had been read by about 2.5 billion people around the world. But there was a problem: Most people and the news agencies didn’t recognize or misunderstood the real message I tried to send with them. Many people expressed gratitude that I’d provided shocking evidence on climate change, while others who are still trying to deny the existence of climate change charged me with spreading false information.

Perhaps I had made a mistake in not telling the full story — that I was looking for pictures that might foretell the future and that I didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear.

I can’t say that this bear was starving because of climate change, but I am happy that my photos have moved the conversation about climate change to the forefront, where it must remain until this problem is solved.

Until then, when I come across a scene like this one, I will again share with the world — and take pains to be sure that my intention is clear.

10 . As seabird biologist Bonnie Slaton slides off a small boat and walks through high water, the brown pelicans (鹈鹕) spread their wings overhead until she reaches Raccoon Island. The narrow island is a small piece of land separating the American state of Louisiana from the Gulf of Mexico. During the seabird breeding (繁殖) season, the placer, one of the few remaining places of safety for the pelicans, is full of noise.

Twelve years ago, there were 15 low-lying islands with breeding areas for Louisiana’s state bird. However, today, only about six islands in southeastern Louisiana have brown pelican nests and the rest have disappeared underwater.

Slaton and other scientists set u cameras to observe pelican nests on the island. The cameras show that in recent years the pelicans have faced some natural disasters. The main killer of them is flooding, which can wash away all the nests, as happened in April 2021. The disappearing islands are the location of a story of successful conservation. For many years, scientists have worked to bring the pelicans beck from tally dying off.

Mike Carloss is a state wildlife biologist in Louisiana. He said he never saw brown pelicans as a child in the 1960s. Their populations had been killed by the use of DDT, a kind of farm chemical. It thinned eggshells and prevented pelicans from giving birth to young birds. The beloved birds were completely gone from Louisiana, only appearing on the state flag. But a long-running effort to save them led to the birds’ return. After DDT was stopped in the U.S. in 1972, biologists brought young pelicans from nearby Florida to let them inhabit empty islands across the Gull of Mexico again. More than 1,200 pelicans have been set free in southeastern Louisiana over 13 years.

The brown pelicans can live more than 20 years. So, the final effect of disappearing breeding areas is uncertain and it will sill take time to become clear. And the future for pelicans is uncertain on the islands.