The Top 5 Happy Eco News Stories for December 20, 2021
Only 11 more days until the end of 2021! This really has been quite a year. Much of the news in the last 12 months has been negative or even downright scary, but the Happy Eco News continues to remind us that a lot of people are working to ensure our future is as good as it can be and are making good progress.
I personally hold a great deal of gratitude, respect and admiration for those that do this sometimes difficult work.
In 2022, we at Happy Eco News intend to continue to celebrate and promote as many of their wins and successes as is possible. The good people doing good things deserve recognition and we will continue to do this in the newsletter, on the website and on social media.
Follow us on Instagram as Jamie continues to post the top 25 Happy Eco News stories of 2021, the number one story to be released on December 31.
In the meantime, we wish you a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season.
Grant Brown, Founder, Happy Eco News
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Thank you for reading Happy Eco News!
This week we have two blog posts. The first post is by Cindy Beeren and Sade Smith from EdiBee who give us some tips on how to make our kitchen greener. The second post is by Olivier Jumeau, Geography student at Thompson Rivers University, BC who tells us about the importance of faunal nationalism and the revival of the pine marten. We also have stories about how Iceland’s new carbon storing process could stop global warming, the women restoring Borneo’s rainforest, ways to avoid microplastics in your everyday life, how to reuse gray water sustainably, and Jane Goodall’s message of hope for the climate crisis.
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Guest Post by: Cindy Beeren, founder of EdiBee and Sade Smith, EdiBee’s Food Marketing Executive
As you are reading blogs on the Happy Eco News website, we do think that you personally have (hopefully!) an interest in the environment. You will have noticed and hopefully celebrated the substantial increase in global awareness for the environment during the last months. And although we do see clear pockets of improvement, the rise in awareness still needs to convert to more action. Especially during festive periods, our ethical, green choices may slip a little…
In this blog, we will bring some ideas to create a greener kitchen, which actually can be more fun, and definitely will not ruin any festive or celebratory spirits!
Disposable food packaging
Let’s first talk about disposables. Disposables are often front of mind when thinking about creating a greener kitchen, particularly the amount of plastic that our food products are packed in. “Bananas already have their own packaging” is probably one of the most quoted examples where it is felt that the food industry uses extensive amounts of wasteful packaging. From a food science point of view, however, there are often reasons for certain types of packaging…[read more].
‘Faunal Nationalism’ and the Revival of English Pine Martens
Guest post by: Olivier Jumeau, Geography student at Thompson Rivers University, BC
The European pine marten (Martes martes) is a carnivorous mammal indigenous to the British archipelago. Part of the mustelid classification of mammals, the pine marten was long believed to be extinct in the forests of England, with centuries of habitat destruction and historic persecution for their fur resulting in the last remaining viable populations being restricted to areas of northern Scotland and central Wales. In 2010 however, scat found at Kidland Forest in Northumberland, close to the Scottish border, indicated that a small number of pine martens had migrated south and into the forests of northern England. This relocation was confirmed the following year, when in 2011 DNA testing of scat found in Cumbria, another north-English county, established that European pine martens were indeed present in the area. It wasn’t for another four years however, before an actual sighting of an English pine marten was recorded…[read more].
Can 1 trillion trees capture enough carbon to save us?
Or should we focus efforts on carbon capture technology instead?
By Grant Brown, Founder, Happy Eco News
A big announcement at COP26, one that has really seemed to capture the attention of the press and the imagination of people all over the world, is an agreement to protect millions of hectares of forests, a number equating to around 85% of the total. It is not a new concept, the idea that we could possibly save our climate by planting trees or protecting existing forests is tantalizing and has been around for decades.
In 2015 Dr. Thomas Crowther was invited to help the UN with their billion tree program. His challenge? To identify exactly how many trees need to be planted to offset human-emitted carbon each year.
The first order of business for Crowther was to understand how many trees were already on the planet; a census had never been done before. By leveraging satellite data and combining it with modern computing power, Dr. Crowther estimated the total number of trees currently on the planet as about 3 trillion. As a side note, Dr. Crowther is part of another project called Restor that is partnered with Google and attempts to document all of the reforestation projects currently in process…[read more].
The Happy Eco News Weekly Top 5
A new venture in Iceland is being developed that could help reduce climate change. The facility CO2, right out of the air reducing the amount of the greenhouse gas in the air and storing underground in rock formations. Carbon capture is an energy-intensive process, so a geothermal plant taps into the heat of the Earth’s core to provide a supply of clean, cheap electricity to power the plant. Iceland could store about 50 times the annual emissions of mankind and is exploring ways of shipping in CO2 from other countries and burying it the same way.…[read more].
On the floodplain of the Kinabatangan river in Borneo there are teams of local women who have been working to restore the area’s degraded rainforest for over a decade. This is one of the most biodiverse areas of Malaysia which has been at risk due to the expansion of oil palm plantations. These women hope to create a forest corridor for wildlife to help mitigate the effects caused by the plantations.…[read more].
Since the 1950s, more than 8.3 billion tons of plastic has been produced by humans. 79% of the plastic we consume has ended up in dumps, landfills, and the natural environment. Fortunately, there are ways that we can avoid microplastics in our everyday life and it can be as simple as dusting and vacuuming regularly.…[read more].
Shreya Ramachandran is an 18-year-old who lives in Fremont, California and was inspired to find ways to reuse water from sinks, showers and laundry machines, (also known as gray water), after her county suffered extreme water shortages from an ongoing drought. Her research, (which has won numerous awards), is designed to help people use water more sustainably.… [read more].
Since the 1980’s Jane Goodall has become one of the most prolific environmentalists of all time. Through her non-confrontational approach and her stories, Jane Goodall has built a popular brand of environmentalism which is largely centered around hope. “If you don’t hope that your actions can make a difference, then you sink into apathy,” she says. “If young people succumb to the doom and gloom—if they lose hope—that’s the end.” … [read more].
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