As Shanghai prepared to introduce mandatory (强制的) garbage sorting on July I, games and toys that examined fun ways to spread information about the garbage sorting were to encourage younger people to take action.

A 15-second video of a game went on Chinese social media. In the video, players wearing VR (虚拟) headsets saw four different types of trash can in front of them, and had to throw different types of garbage into the right buckets (桶) to get points. Although it was not the only VR game in the place, visitors lined up around the booth to explore it because of the garbage-sorting theme.

“As a Shanghai, I am in great need of this game. Maybe I won't need to check how to categorize (分类) each piece of garbage on my phone while going through all my garbage every day if I play this game more often,” said Zhou Zhou, a young Shanghai. But some social media users in Shanghai have complained (抱怨) about the difficulty of sorting different types of garbage.

Wu Xia, founder and CEO of VitrellaCore, the company that created the game, said the idea was to provide an interesting way of learning about garbage sorting. “It’s simple and easy to understand. People can practice sorting garbage without actually going through their trash, and it is a more fruitful method than using paper materials when training volunteers,” Wu said.

Time for Americans to act on climate change

The climate crisis is worsening at a rate that is becoming harder and harder to ignore. For more than two decades, scientific reports have made it clear that global warming is real, that humans cause it and that the consequences will be disastrous.

The scientific community has become increasingly panicked over the past year. The latest assessment from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a far more terrible picture than its previous analyses, and the long-awaited National Climate Assessment made clear that climate change represents a severe threat to human health as well as our economic security. Out of this panic came the treaty(条约)reached this past weekend by world leaders to keep the Paris climate agreement alive.

Yet many Americans still don’t regard the threat as a key priority for our government, and support President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris treaty. Campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies have convinced elected officials to look the other way. A certain amount of despair has resulted in widespread apathy(漠然).

But there is another reason that has been discussed far less openly. While a growing number of people understand that climate change will have significant worldwide consequences, many Americans have an intuitive(直觉的)belief that their nation is more capable than others of adapting to a changed environment. Why? Because they have before.

This historical success, however, resulted from the federal government taking science seriously, and making investments to urge revolution and innovation.

But these innovations did not happen by themselves, or simply because of the United States’ rich resources. They depended on consistent support from the leaders about the need to take action when faced with crises. This has been especially true in the environmental crisis.

President Bill Clinton had a shockingly modest record of advancing climate security, particularly given that his vice president, Al Gore, had been one of the most outspoken environmentalists in Congress. By far Clinton’s biggest accomplishment was assigning Gore to participate іn thе Куоtо Рrоtoсоl negotiations. Сlіntоn сhоѕе, hоwеvеr, tо аvоіd whаt ѕurеlу wоuld have been a terrible fight in the Senate to gain approval of the treaty. While this effort probably would have failed, it would have signaled to the American people how seriously the Democratic Party took climate change.

Thus, the time has clearly arrived for progressive candidates to start campaigning on a platform built around the need for a sustainability revolution. Such a plan should include a carbon tax, well-funded clean energy research, evolved agricultural policies and smarter public transport. Given that Generation X and millennials(千禧一代)never bought into the fiction that the United States is immune to the dangers of global warming, the time is ripe to make climate security a crucial government responsibility. Only by doing so can we begin the long-overdue(拖延好久的)campaign to save the planet.

Time for Americans to act on climate change

Nearly 50 billion pieces of litter are thrown along US roadways and waterways, according to a 2020 study by the non-profit Keep America Beautiful (KAB). That estimate includes more than 800 million pieces of fast-food packaging, 2. 6 billion food-packaging-film items, and 207 million pieces of personal protective equipment, like masks and gloves. Not all litter, however, is intentional. A large volume of litter also comes from unsecured items that fall off the back of vehicles or out of trash receptacles (容器).

To address the country’s ongoing litter problem, some public libraries are creating kits to help people clean up their neighborhoods.

”We want people to be involved in the community, says Samantha Hanchett, marketing coordinator (协调者) at Thomas County Public Library System (TCPLS). “Doing something that benefits everyone, even though it’s quite quiet, is really what a library does all the time.”

The library system launched a litter clean-up program with Keep Thomas County Beautiful (KTCB), the local KAB chapter (地方分会), in 2020. Actually, the chapter had previously held group clean-up events and naturally inspired more individual or joint efforts. As a result, KTCB partnered with the library to create kits for people in the library to check out.

Each kit contains items such as trash bags, gloves, reflective vests, and a booklet with guidance-lines and suggestions for where to clean up in the community. Litter kits are housed at the library system’s main branch in Thomasville, but people can request they be sent to their local branch for pick-up.

Hanchett estimates that kits are checked out between 30 and 45 times each year, noting that they are most popular with groups and grade school students. “People like the convenience of the kits because it’s something they can do on their own time,” she says. “It’s an elastic way of getting involved instead of having an appointed time in which you take part in the activity.”