2 . In a county of Britain, a pair of pig farmers has managed to feed one million bees by turning over half of their land to wildflowers. Four years ago, brothers Mark and Paul Hayward decided to fill 81 acres of their farm land with wildflowers. This week, a study found they were feeding one million bees at any time.

“This was our target when we started, to, grow enough flowers to feed a million bees on a single day.” Mark said. “We are acutely aware that bees are under threat from modern farming methods and that East England is one of the worst places where bees are seriously suffering from lack of wildflower diversity,” he continued.

“Every third bite of food you eat can come from bees and we wanted to create an operation on our farm that did not push nature out but rather hugged it-as a central part of our ecology system and our food cycle,” he said.

The farm uses all kinds of seeds which can produce many different wild plants and of course, the bees can get food from different wildflowers.

“We are taking a very small role in helping society restore a balance and this starts with plant diversity to encourage insects, bees, small mammals(哺乳动物), and birds,” said Paul. “At the end of the day, we see ourselves as caretakers of this land. Between us we have six children and we owe it to them to farm sustainability(持续性)and set an example for the generations to come,” added Paul.

According to the Bee Conservation Trust, many types of bees have seen their populations decline by 70%, and two species have become extinct in the last century.

Gill Perkins, CEO of the Bee Conservation Trust said, “Thanks to Mark and Paul, at least here, a million bees can keep living, which is of great significance for ourselves now and future.”

3 . Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are now thought as the top source of green-house gases. One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to reconsider how much, and how often, you travel.

Going car free for a year could save about 2. 6 tons of carbon dioxide, according to a study from the University of British Columbia. How can you stop using a car? Try taking a train, bus or better yet, riding a bike.

But let’s be realistic. You will likely need to use a car this year. So, when you do, here are some tips to make your trip more climate-friendly. Driving efficiently can help to reduce emissions. Go easy on the gas and brakes and drive like you have an egg under your foot. Regularly service your car to keep it more efficient. Keeping your tires pumped correctly can re-duce emissions. Low tire pressure will hurt your fuel economy. Air conditioning and frequent city driving can make emissions go up. So cut down on these as often as possible. Use cruise control (定速巡航) on long drives-in most cases, this can help to save gas. Don’t weigh your car down with extra things that you don’t need on your trip.

Fly often? Taking one fewer long round-trip flight could reduce your personal carbon footprint significantly. If you use public transportation often and fly less, your carbon foot-print might still be relatively sustainable, but if you drive and fly a lot, your emissions will be sigher. If you can’t avoid flying, you can offset them by donating money to sustainable proacts, such as supplying efficient stoves to rural homes, or projects which help farmers deal with crop waste environmentally.

5 . Sugar cane (甘蔗) contains around 10% sugar. But that means it contains around 90% non-sugar — the material known as bagasse (甘蔗渣) which remains once the sugar-bearing juice has been squeezed out of the cane. World production of cane sugar was 185m tonnes in 2017. That results in a lot of bagasse.

At the moment, most of this is burned. Often, it fuels local generators, so it is not wasted. But Zhu Hongli, a mechanical engineer at Northeastern University in Boston thinks it can be put to better use. "With a bit of improvement bagasse makes an excellent replacement for the plastic used for disposable food containers such as coffee cups," says Dr. Zhu.

Dr. Zhu is not the first person to have this idea. But previous attempts tended not to survive contact with liquids. She thought she could overcome that by combining the bagasse pulp (浆状物) with another biodegradable (可生物降解的) material. She discovered that the main reason past efforts failed is that bagasse is composed of short fibres which are unable to give resilience (韧性) to the finished product. She therefore sought to insert a suitably long-fibred substance.

Bamboo seemed to fit the bill. It grows quickly, degrades readily and has appropriately long fibres. When the researchers mixed a small amount of bamboo pulp into bagasse, they found that the short and long fibres combined with each other closely.

To put their new material through its paces, Dr. Zhu and her colleagues fist poured hot oil onto it and found that their invention showed resistance to oil. They also found that when they made a cup out of the stuff and filled it with water heated almost to the boiling point, the cup remained good for more than two hours. Though this is not as long as a plastic cup would last it is long enough for all practical purposes. Moreover, the new material is twice as strong as the plastic used to make cups, and is definitely biodegradable. When Dr. Zhu buried a cup made out of it in the ground, half of it rotted away within two months.

8 . Sports can help you keep fit and get in touch with nature. However, whether you are on the mountains, in the waves, or on the grassland, you should be aware that your choice of sport might have great influence on the environment.

Some sports are resource-hungry. Golf, as you may know, eats up not only large areas of countryside, but also tons of water. Besides, all sorts of chemicals and huge amounts of energy are used to keep its courses(高尔夫球场) in good condition. This causes major environmental effects. For example, in the dry regions of Portugal and Spain, golf is often held responsible for serious water shortages in some local areas.

In fact, there are many environment friendly sports. Power walking is one of them that you could take up today. You don't need any special equipment except a pair of good shoes; and you don't have to worry about resources and your purse. Simple and free, power walking can also keep you fit. If you walk can regularly, it will be good for your heart and bones. Experts say that 20 minutes of power walking daily can make you feel less anxious, sleep well and control your weight better.

Whatever sport you take up, you can make it greener by using environment friendly equipment and buying products made from recycled materials. But the final goal should be "green gyms". They are better replacements(代替物) for traditional health clubs and modern sports centers. Members of green gyms play sports outdoors, in the countryside or other open spaces. There is no special requirement for you to start your membership. And best of all, it's free.

9 . Fishing cats are a kind of cats that love water and love to fish. They are like tigers and lions, only much smaller, around twice the size of an average pet cats. They live in wetlands of south Asia and mangrove forests (红树林) of south and southeast Asia. Like many other endangered species, fishing cats are in danger of dying out more than twenty years ago, mainly because of the great international need for food fish and people’s cutting of mangroves at an extremely fast speed.

Mangroves of southeast Asia are home to a great many fantastic species like fishing cats, turtles, shorebirds and others. Mangroves can protect soil and they can be the first line of protection between storms, tsunamis and millions of people who live next to them. The fact is that mangroves can store almost five to ten times more Carbon dioxide than other forests. So protecting mangroves may well be like protecting five and ten times more of other forests.

Ten years ago, in south India, many people came together to change the future of their home. In less than ten years, with international support, the state forest departments and the local people work together to restore over 20,000 acres of unproductive fish and shrimp farms back into mangroves. Now experts are working with them in helping study protect the mangroves as well as species living in them. Fish and shrimp farmers are now willing to work with the experts to test the harvest of nature protection like fishes, turtles and other species in mangroves. The local farmers are encouraged to protect the plant mangroves where they have been lost. A win-win-win situation for fishing cats, local people and the global ecosystem is being built.