Sunscreen protects our skin from sunburn. But did you know that it is harmful to coral living in the ocean?

Some chemicals in sunscreen, such as benzophenone, can kill coral. Every year, about 4,000 to 6,000 tons of sunscreen will flow into coral areas, according to the US National Park Service.

About one and half years ago, Zhang Baoxin, 17, who studies at Guangdong Experimental High School, read about this in an article. Then she had an idea – to make an environmentally friendly sunscreen to protect the marine environment.

To make this happen, Zhang read lots of literature and then put forward a new formula. She mixed natural plant oils with safe and commonly-used sunscreen ingredients, such as titanium dioxide and zinc oxide powder .

She tested about 10 kinds of plant oils, including jojoba oil and coconut oil, to figure out whether they can take in sunlight. She then used a microscope to find out if the oil could be mixed with the powder. After trying about 20 formulas, Zhang found a jojoba oil formula that is effective, cheap and easy to make.

Zhang wrote a paper to explain her findings with her experimental process and data. The project made Zhang a nominee(候选人) of the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, an award to celebrate teenagers who help solve major water challenges. She was the only nominee from the Chinese mainland in 2020.

After this successful experiment, Zhang made some samples and printed out flyers(传单) for her new formula. She gave them out to people at swimming pools and water parks. “With my formula, anyone can make sunscreen at home. You just need a blender to mix the oil and the powder,” she said.

Zhang wants to study environmental science in college. “I want to use my knowledge to make a better world,” she said.

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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.”