A librarian in Indonesia's Java Island is lending books to children in exchange for rubbish they collect in a novel way to clean up the environment and get the kids to read more. Each weekday, Raden Roro Hendarti rides her three-wheeler with books stored up at the back for children in Muntang village in exchange for plastic cups, bags and other waste that she carries back.

She told Reuters she is helping develop reading habits of the kids as well as make them aware of the environment. As soon as she shows up, little children, many accompanied by their mothers, surround her "Rubbish Library" and ask for the books. They are all carrying rubbish bags and Raden's three-wheeler quickly fills up with them as the books fly out. She is happy that the kids are going to spend less time on online games as a result.

Raden said,“Let us build a culture of literacy（读写能力）from young age to reduce the harm of the online world. We should also take care of our waste in order to fight climate change and to save the earth from rubbish.”She collects about 100 kilograms of waste each week, which is then sorted out by her colleagues and sent for recycling or sold. She has a stock of 6,000 books to lend.

Kevin Alamsyah, an eager 1l-year-old reader, searches for waste lying in the village. “When there is too much rubbish, our environment will become dirty. That's why I look for rubbish to borrow a book,”he says.

The literacy rate for above-15-year-olds in Indonesia has been around 96 percent, though a report by the World Bank warned that the pandemic(流行病)would leave more than 80% of15-year-olds below the minimum(最低的）reading level.

Hardware in general, and smartphones in particular, have become a huge environmental and health problem in the Global South's landfill sites (垃圾填埋场).

Electronic waste(e-waste) currently takes up 5 percent of all global waste, and it is set to increase rapidly as more of us own more than one smartphone, laptop and power bank. They end up in places like Agbogbloshie on the outskirts of Ghana's capital, Accra. It is the biggest e-waste dump in the world, where 10,000 informal workers walk through tons of abandoned goods as part of an informal recycling process. They risk their health searching for the precious metals that are found in abandoned smartphones.

But Agbogbloshie should not exist. The Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty, aims to prevent developed nations from unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries. The e-waste industry, however, circumvents regulations by exporting e-waste labelled as "secondhand goods' to poor countries like Ghana, knowing full well that it is heading for a landfill site.

A recent report found Agbogbloshie contained some of the most dangerous chemicals. This is not surprising: smartphones contain chemicals like mercury (水银), lead and even arsenic (砷). Reportedly, one egg from a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie contained a certain chemical which can cause cancer and damage the immune system at a level that's about 220 times greater than a limit set by the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA). Most worryingly, these poisonous chemicals are free to pollute the broader soil and water system. This should concern us all, since some of Ghana's top exports are cocoa and nuts.

Some governments have started to take responsibility for their consumers' waste. For example, Germany has started a project that includes a sustainable recycling system at Agbogbloshie, along with a health clinic for workers. However, governments cannot solve the problem alone, as there is an almost limitless consumer demand for hardware, especially when governments' green policies are focused on issues like climate change.

Only the manufacturers can fix this. A more economically sustainable and politically possible solution is through encouraging hardware manufacturers to make the repair, reuse and recycling of hardware profitable, or at least cost-neutral.

The human population of Sri Lanka is now believed to be over 20 million. As a result, large areas of trees are being turned into farmland, highways are being built, and elephants are being driven out of their habitats. This change causes turmoil, resulting in an increased number of uncontrollable events between elephants and humans.

The good news is that there is one place called the Elephant Transit Home (ETH) in Udawalawe National Park, the main purpose of which is to protect and care for baby elephants. A day at the ETH begins early in the morning when the baby elephants are given their first feeding of milk. During the course of the day, each baby will drink an average of 13 gallons of milk. Older elephants are fed mostly coconut leaves as well as other native plants. Then the elephants are set free to wander in the park.

The ETH spends almost $ 125 ,000 each year on powdered milk for these baby animals. To help pay for food and medical supplies, the ETH has a foster (领养) parent programme. Anyone, even schoolchildren, can help a lot by giving money to care for a baby elephant. Foster parents can name their elephants, take photographs of them, and even help send them back into the wild.

Now visitors are not encouraged to get close to the elephants. The goal of the ETH is for the elephants to return to the wild in the end. It usually takes three years for a baby elephant to be sent back into its natural habitat. This programme helps them return to the wild as members of a herd that will communicate with each other and take care of each other.