Trash and garbage are other words for waste. In San Francisco, they are also words for art. A local recycling (回收) company, called Recology, created a program to give artists the opportunity to reuse unwanted objects. Artists are paid to work for four months on changing things like old tires and toys.

Ma Li, one of the artists at the center, is working on a project that includes plastic bottles and cloth. She is turning them into sculptures (雕塑). She says she learned recycling from her parents while growing up in China in the 1980s.

San Francisco artist Michael Arcega works with recycled wood and old leather belts (皮带). His artwork shows what he says is the wasteful culture of the American people. He says looking through the trash is not easy. It is hard to separate what is useful and what is really garbage.

A gallery (美术陈列室) in Los Angeles is exhibiting some of the art from the San Francisco project. The show includes sculptures from old metal and saws (锯子) cut to look like trees. Los Angeles gallery owner Liz Gordon says artists have a history of recycling. “People who don’t have resources find supplies from garbage and have been using them for many years.”

Artist Ma Li says these art works have a message. “So everyone can come together to actually make a change in their daily life to save the environment and resources.”

Mike Sangiacomo heads the recycling company. He says he hopes to see as much waste as possible reused. “Along the way, if some of it is made into some fun pieces of art and draws people’s attention to the problem, we think it’s a great way to do something that’s good for our business, good for our community, and good for society.” The project shows how a little imagination can change one person’s trash into another’s art work.

Climate change has been a long-standing issue that continuously drives scientists to find green, sustainable fuels. The universe’s most abundant element, hydrogen (氢), has drawn their attention and is now on its way to becoming the future of green fuel.

More than $150 billion worth of green hydrogen projects were announced globally in 2020, according to Reuters. Airbus, a European multinational aerospace corporation, has taken the lead in the new sustainable fuel industry. It has designed self-contained hydrogen fuel cell pods that can be attached to the underside of airplane wings, promoting the use of hydrogen fuel for long-distance flights, which aim to achieve zero emissions. The company plans to launch hydrogen-powered aircraft in 2035, according to Daily Mail.

Compared to fossil fuels, hydrogen is a much more eco-friendly fuel. When hydrogen burns, the only by-product is water. However, the traditional way to get hydrogen from natural gas or coal generates considerable carbon emissions. The greenest way is to obtain hydrogen from water using electrolysis (电解) powered by renewable energy, although this process requires so much electricity that it is quite expensive. The key to making hydrogen competitive with fossil fuels is to lower the production cost to under $1.50. This would require lowering around 50 percent of renewable power costs and 75 percent of electrolyzer costs, according to Australia’s renewable energy agency.

Also, shipping liquid hydrogen is challenging, given that needs to be chilled to -253℃ to do so. Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries is set to complete the construction of the world’s first liquefied hydrogen carrier by early 2021. According to Reuters, most of the world’s big hydrogen export projects are looking to ship hydrogen in the form of liquid ammonia (氨), which can be changed to hydrogen and needs to be chilled to only -33 C.

With more and more countries aiming to cut down carbon emissions to solve the issue of global warming, green hydrogen will help decarbonizing industries that can’t be electrified hit the targets.

“We could use these circumstances, where loads of public money are going to be needed into the energy system, to jump forward towards a hydrogen economy,” said Diederik Samsom, who heads the European Commission’s climate cabinet.

Until 13, Parker Liautaud was an ordinary kid. That changed after he met polar explorer Robert Swan. They began an email correspondence which turned into a friendship that eventually saw the then 14-year-old invited to join a trip to the Antarctic. He said yes almost instantly. Friends and family, to whom he’d so far shown he had no particular interest in outdoor pursuits, particularly polar ones, were thrown into total confusion, to say the least. He ate lots of chicken, spent a long time in the gym, and proved them wrong.

The following year, Liautaud cooked up a more ambitious plan: to become the youngest-ever person to go to the North Pole. He found a new partner, Doug Stoup, and through a mixture of charm and luck raised the roughly $150,000 needed for the record attempt. Then disaster struck. The early months of the year, when the two set out, were among the warmest on record. The North Pole, which is essentially a GPS location on a constantly-drifting collection of ice sheets, became virtually inaccessible, surrounded by pieces of uncovered ocean.

A trip which had intended to raise awareness of melting ice caps had been obstructed by melting ice caps. “We would get up, battle through these difficult conditions for 150 hours, then wake up the next morning and find that we were further away from the Pole than we’d started the previous morning,” he said. After 14 days’ trying, they admitted defeat.

Liautaud came home and decided to try again the next spring. Conditions were cold but perfect, and he and Soup reached the Pole n no time. While it might not have made him the youngest North-Poler, the success did give Liautaud a platform to continue advocacy against climate change, through his campaigning website. His view is that it’s his generation that must push hardest for cuts in carbon emissions. He has already contributed to research projects carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency and will soon set up two stations to record weather data.