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Year-end Gifting the Sustainability Action News Digest
For 18 years, we’ve covered climate science, energy transitions, food systems, democracy, public policy — always with local relevance. We highlight the inspiring — community resilience, regenerative practices, and real solutions.
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
All that glitters . . might be microplastic pollution
“Glitter is made of plastic, and since plastic doesn’t really degrade, almost every bit ever made can still be found somewhere. Glitter is essentially a microplastic in disguise, whose whimsical nature distracts from its insidious contributions to plastic pollution. Since it’s often too small to be filtered by wastewater treatment plants, it can end up in waterways. Glitter is now officially banned in the EU.
“Here are five reasons why you should ditch glitter this Christmas. Glitter makes products that you may normally wish to recycle, such as wrapping paper, no longer recyclable. Marine life often mistakes the floating particles for food. Microplastics are also increasingly being found inside human bodies. Microplastics work their way up the food chain. Due to its ubiquitous nature and minuscule size, glitter is already a microplastic, making it easier to spread and contaminate our soil, air, water and food.”
How animists’ mental models differ from those of industrialists
“Since this series aims to confront dualism in its primary form as a mind/matter split, we should devote some time to mental matters. What is it that we do with our brains, and how much of it depends on matter (i.e., physiology)?
“At its core, conviction of mind rests on the truth that one individual can’t experience another’s ‘inner’ experiences. And while clumsy, language does at least help to confirm predominantly-similar sensations among humans. Yet even via language, how can we really know what another’s pain feels like? We can’t, really.
“We have far less insight into the quality of [other species] experiences. Thankfully, only the hard-core supremacists still hold firm to the idea that only humans have ‘mindful’ experiences.
“Anyway, the essence of ‘mind’ is that individuals hold a subjective, private sense of what it’s like to be them. We do not have the means to measure, quantify, or compare any but the broadest similarities in experience. The ‘what it’s like’ phrase shows up constantly in philosophical discussions of mind or consciousness. ‘I feel it, therefore it is’ — seems to be what it comes to.
“But the main take-away is that brains create mental models that try to capture reality. They never can get the full, actual reality. Optical illusions are a good way to illustrate that our mental perceptions are not correct, yet still utterly convincing. Dreams are another place where it becomes clear that our brains are perfectly capable of producing convincing non-realities.
“But the main take-away is that brains create mental models that try to capture reality. They never can get the full, actual reality. Optical (and other) illusions are a good way to illustrate that our mental perceptions are not correct, yet still utterly convincing. Dreams are another place where it becomes clear that our brains are perfectly capable of producing convincing non-realities.
“Our mentally-reconstructed reality, whatever the inputs, is necessarily limited by the architecture and capacity of our cranial and sensory hardware. Some people are allergic to the word ‘limited’, but rejection of limits, too, is an aspect of filtered reality. Thus, mental models become mistaken for core truths, even when overtly wrong.”
Rich lifestyles worsen climate disasters, while others can’t afford privatized relief
“Every year at the Oscars, attendees leave with elaborate gift bags. But in 2025, Academy Award guests also received a grimmer gift: a yearlong subscription to a white-glove disaster recovery service called Bright Harbor.
“If your house is destroyed in a fire or flood, navigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s byzantine requirements for recovery assistance quickly becomes ‘a full-time job’, according to Bright Harbor’s chief growth officer, Emily Bush.
“Do you stay and rebuild? Does it make more sense to just move? Bright Harbor helps clients freeze their mortgage payments, apply for FEMA aid, navigate seemingly endless paperwork, and secure low-interest small business loans. The company’s luxury services do not come at a cost that all victims can afford to front.
“The private sector’s creeping influence over disaster recovery has been noted since at least 2007, when Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, the book that injected the term ‘disaster capitalism’ into a broader lexicon. Such measures are a consequence — and sometimes a cause — of the corrosion of public institutions originally intended to safeguard Americans.”
Cordage and textiles — a foundational technology
“Hank Green has added cordage and textiles to his list of the ‘foundational’ technologies of our species. His list now includes: language, agriculture, cordage and textiles, cooking and fire, containers, and stone tools.
“Some amazing facts about cordage and textiles technology:
- A single pair of blue jeans contains about six miles of thread
- One skilled spinner in pre-industrial India needed ~100 hours just to spin enough cotton for one pair of trousers
- Silk is not made of short fibres but one continuous filament that can be miles long and which must be carefully unreeled from the cocoon
- The earliest known string is about 50,000 years old and was likely made by Neanderthals; it was clearly ‘manufactured’—twisted and then plied in opposite directions for strength and durability
- The sail for a Viking ship took more total labour to produce than the ship itself
- Textiles were once the most commonly stolen items, serving as an alternative underground ‘currency’ in many cultures, and until the 20th century clothing was the most expensive line in most people’s household budget”
Affordable mixed-use housing possible in defunct strip malls
“The U.S. housing shortage is so severe that demand outstrips supply by a stunning 3.8 million homes. Peter Calthorpe believes he knows how to lessen the housing and environmental crises at the same time with more densely populated cities, rapid public transit, and an end to sprawl and reliance on cars, called New Urbanism.
“The financial crisis of 2008 was also about the fact that what Wall Street was selling — ever more distant, single-family subdivisions — was unaffordable to the working class of this country.
“Wall Street had a lot of single-family inventory prior to the 2008 financial collapse, and they basically moved it into the pocketbooks of people who really couldn’t afford it. That’s the moment when the American dream of the Ozzie-and-Harriet single-family home in a cul-de-sac and a couple of cars really died.
“If we’re not going to build more subdivisions in cow pastures, where do we put the housing? We’ve overbuilt single-family homes, and we need more multi-family housing. It turns out that strip mall commercial land is completely underutilized. So you have these wastelands of asphalt, major arterial roads inhospitable to people and kids and bikes and lined with parking lots and single-story buildings that produce very little tax base or benefit to anybody.
“There’s bound to be a lot of opposition to this. The biggest one is NIMBYs, people who live in especially wealthy communities and don’t want multi-family dense housing because it represents a different class of people. Well get over it. They’re the school teachers and the firemen and the policemen, and they’re everybody who makes your world work.”
Indigenous peoples best at stewarding ecosystem conservation
“Spanning nine nations and covering more than 5.5 million square kilometers —roughly the size of the continental United States — the Amazon is the world’s largest rainforest. It regulates the global climate, maintains freshwater cycles, and sustains life on a planetary scale. Yet the Amazon is not a single uniform forest. It is a vast mosaic of interconnected ecosystems of extraordinary biodiversity.
“Indigenous populations settled the region as far back as 39,000 years ago, while Afro-descendant communities — descendants of enslaved Africans — developed ‘escape agriculture’, a subsistence strategy that kept communities hidden from colonial powers while sustaining them. Over centuries, these practices evolved into landscapes that are both productive and resilient, preserving biodiversity and storing carbon.
“Most of the world’s irrecoverable carbon — carbon that, once released, cannot be reabsorbed for decades — is stored in peatlands, mangroves, marshes, and old-growth forests, ecosystems that often overlap with Indigenous and Afro-descendant lands. By maintaining traditional practices that conserve forests, wetlands, and mangroves, these communities help lock away carbon that would otherwise accelerate global warming.
“Conservation works best when rooted in local knowledge and reinforced by secure land tenure. Secure rights empower communities to defend their territories, ensuring forests, wetlands, and mangroves remain intact.”
Citizen science by Serbian farmers for healthy soils
“In the territory of Vojvodina, Serbia, farmers and young people are stepping up to care for the soil. ‘Guardians of Soil Health’ is a citizen science project that teaches participants how to monitor key indicators of soil health, such as organic matter decomposition, pH value, moisture, structure, texture, and microbial activity.
“As the largest terrestrial ecosystem in the EU, healthy soil supports many economic sectors, while land degradation costs the European Union tens of billions of euros each year. In addition to financial losses, land degradation in Europe would also mean loss of fertility, threats to global food security, and deterioration of the quality and nutritional value of agricultural products.
“This is where projects like ‘Guardians of Soil Health’ come in. Through a series of practical, scientifically grounded experiments, participants assess the biological activity, fertility, and structure of the soil, thereby gaining a better understanding of regenerative processes.
“Through simple experiments, Ivan Sudarević found that he could independently evaluate the biological activity of his soil and understand the changes occurring within it. ‘These experiments showed me that you don’t need a lot of money to understand soil fertility – just a bit of curiosity and willingness, and you can immediately see how healthy your soil is’, Sudarević emphasizes.
“Farmers often think short-term, seeking higher yields, which can reduce productivity in the long run. Citizen science transforms farmers into active participants in research and land management, leading to more sustainable and innovative agriculture. Through education and returning the land into [farmers’] hands, the goal is to encourage critical thinking and better decision-making in the future.”
Climate adaptation required, as decarbonization has failed
“As 2025 draws to a close, we are confronted by a harder truth. Britain [and the world] is nowhere near zero carbon. When Extinction Rebellion emerged in 2018, its call for net zero by 2025 was deliberately bold: It reflected the urgency of the science and the moral weight of the UK’s historical emissions.
“Seven years on, then, it is clear that decarbonisation at anything like the required scale and pace has not happened. That failure leaves us with uncomfortable lessons. The climate crisis is shaping the conditions of our lives now. In short, we urgently need a wave of wider mainstreamed action — if we are to have a future.
“A powerful way to enable this goal is by focusing far more seriously on adaptation — on preparing for the impacts that are already unfolding. It is time for climate activists and policy-makers and diplomats to let go of fantasies of achieving full decarbonisation. Instead, we need to pivot hard towards a strategy based in climate adaptation.
“At a local level, communities can take part in retrofit programmes that make buildings safer in heatwaves and storms, as well as reducing energy bills. Households and neighbours can work together to reduce flood-risk by choosing planting over paving.
“With governments and corporations rolling back on their decarbonisation commitments, the climate-delaying far Right on the rise, the 1.5 degree planetary boundary in the rearview mirror, and energy-hungry AI about to let rip, let us agree that this is a necessary moment to get very real about just how much trouble we are in.”
Highly flammable ceders pose urban and rural wildfire hazard
“This past March, a wildfire tore through 130 acres in Yates Center, consuming the Yates Center Health and Rehabilitation Center. Dense stands of eastern red cedar trees near the building provided ample kindling for the blaze.
“The highly flammable trees are everywhere in Kansas, including places they never used to grow. Across the state, prairie is being converted to forest as trees expand across the landscape. Woody encroachment, as this phenomenon is known, now converts more grassland in the Great Plains than row crop agriculture.
“‘This is something that is happening in every grassy area on our planet right now’, said Jesse Nippert at Kansas State University. The causes are myriad, he said. Trees, especially eastern red cedar, are thriving in arid regions of Kansas where they never before survived. ‘As the CO2 continues to go up, the space that these plants can occupy also goes up, because now they can grow and survive on less water’, he said.”
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