A globally-important colony for seabirds has been sold to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to ensure the 100,000 gannets and 10,000 puffins that live there will benefit from top-notch conservation management. Owned by the Scottish noble Dalrymple family for 320 years, Bass Rock and the neighboring uninhabited island of Craigleith have long […] The post Noble Family Sells ‘Wildlife Wonder of the World’ Bass Rock to Protect 100,000-strong Seabird Population appeared first on Good News Network.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Every orange you eat comes with a second product most people toss without thinking. The peel is packed with limonene and other essential oils, citric acids, flavonoids, polyphenols, and antimicrobial compounds. Gardeners have been finding uses for it, and the list keeps growing. “I do use orange peels in the garden because they’re an easy way to reuse kitchen scraps and help the soil,” says Anna Ohler, owner of Bright Lane Gardens. Here is what the practice actually involves, and where it holds up. Adding orange peels to your compost pile Orange peels break down in compost over time, adding nitrogen and potassium as they go. “I’ll toss orange peels into my compost pile, where they break down over time,” Ohler says. “They add nutrients, especially nitrogen and potassium.” One important exception: if you compost with worms, keep citrus out entirely. The oils and acidity can damage a vermicompost bin. For standard piles without worms, peels are fine. Chop them into smaller pieces first to speed up decomposition, and keep them proportional to the rest of your compost mix. Scattering dried peels to deter insects “Orange peels can act as a natural, eco-friendly pest deterrent due to the citrus oils they contain,” says Justine Reichman, founder and CEO of NextGen Purpose. “The oils repel pests like ants and mosquitoes.” Ohler has found similar results around plants affected by aphids. The oils work by affecting insect nervous systems, functioning without synthetic chemicals. The catch: they evaporate quickly. Peels need to be replaced regularly, so this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it fix. Cleaning and disinfecting garden tools Orange peels have natural antimicrobial properties, attributed to their concentration of citric acids, limonene, flavonoids, and polyphenols. These compounds can clean bacteria and fungi off garden tools, seed trays, compost bins, gloves, and watering cans without chemical disinfectants. Keep the amounts reasonable Too much citrus concentrated in one spot can raise soil acidity beyond what most plants prefer. Ohler is clear: “The key is not overdoing it with orange peels. Too much citrus can make the soil too acidic.” The same goes for other citrus scraps: lemons, grapefruit, and limes. Covering odors in the garden Fresh or dried orange peels work as a natural scent buffer near pungent areas: a manure pile, bags of fertilizer, a compost corner. Zesting the peel first releases more oil and strengthens the effect. Dried peels tucked into sachets work well for outdoor spots where you want something that lasts longer. Keeping cats out of beds Some gardeners scatter orange peels around beds to deter cats from using them as a bathroom, and some have success with it. Ohler is candid about the results: “Keeping the cats away is hit or miss in my experience.” Worth a try if you’re dealing with the problem, but not a reliable solution on its own. What to watch out for Fresh peels can attract slugs and raccoons. They dry out fast, which means they lose potency before they fully decompose. And as noted, they will disrupt a worm bin. Start small, replace often, and treat them as a short-term tool rather than a permanent fix.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post 5 plant-health boosting orange peel tricks to use in your garden this summer first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM There is a small mobile cart somewhere in the Netherlands right now, and if you bring it a handful of cigarette butts, it will give you poffertjes. Those are Dutch mini pancakes, in case you were wondering, and yes, the exchange is real. WasteBar is the project behind it. You collect litter from the ground around you, bring it to the cart, and get food or drinks in return. Cigarette butts and cans are the main currency, while a portion of poffertjes is one of the rewards. Why cigarette butts in particular The Netherlands discards between five and ten billion cigarette butts every year. Each filter is made of cellulose acetate, a plastic that takes up to a decade to break down, leaching nicotine and heavy metals into soil and waterways along the way. WasteBar partners with artist Angelina Kumar and the organization UPPACT, which recycles plastic waste into new products. Kumar built an installation called Het Peukenbos (The Cigarette Butt Forest) from over 500,000 collected butts, shown in Utrecht through September 2025. The 2026 campaign is going for one million, with the plan to turn them into a recycled bench or garden set through UPPACT. The education piece When you show up at the cart, the WasteBar team does not just hand over pancakes. They talk with you about what cigarette butts do to the environment and walk you through how to separate and recycle other kinds of waste. It is low-key about it. You came for the food, and you leave with something extra. There is a version of this logic that sounds like it should not work. People pick up strangers’ cigarette butts because they get a snack? But the numbers tell a different story. The Netherlands generates an estimated 50 million kilograms (about 110 million pounds) of litter a year, and this cart has figured out how to make the cleanup feel like something. A bar where the price of entry is the problem itself The friction in environmental action is usually not valued. Most people are not opposed to a cleaner street. The problem is that cleaning up after other people feels thankless and pointless. Mini pancakes, it turns out, are enough to change that calculation for a lot of people. You might bring ten cigarette butts. You might bring a hundred. Either way, the street is a bit cleaner, and you got something out of it.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post WasteBar turns cigarette butt waste into food currency in the Netherlands first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

The clothes hanging in Lydia Wendt’s loft atelier in Los Angeles’ Fashion District shimmer in earthy tones: an orange sleep set dyed with California poppies, a coral lounge set colored with madder root, undyed tees in off-white cotton. Pointing to the dark disk of a dried sunflower, Wendt explains, “The Navajo used this to dye fabric black, and I’m trying to find a rich natural black.” Nearby, a dried indigo branch pinned to a white pegboard hints at her latest experiment, naturally dyed blue athletic wear. Across oversized worktables, swatches in shifting shades of lavender and plum suggest the studio is part dye lab, part textile archive, part manifesto.  Wendt, founder of California Cloth Foundry, is trying to build a fashion system that behaves more like a healthy ecosystem than a conventional apparel business. Her garments are made from American-grown fibers, dyed largely with plants instead of petrochemicals, and designed to be compostable at the end of their life cycle. Her goal is not to make clothing “less bad,” but to create what she calls regenerative fashion: garments that can ultimately return nutrients to the soil rather than accumulate as waste. The central premise of regenerative fashion is that textiles could function as biological nutrients instead of landfill waste. Credit: Michaela Haas “One solution while we’re trying to readjust our consumerism and our values around [overconsumption] is to create things that can go back to the earth without any detrimental effects,” she says. Founded in 2014, California Cloth Foundry is part of a broader reckoning with fashion’s environmental cost. The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion pieces of clothing every year, generating up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and roughly 20 percent of global wastewater annually, with textile dyeing and treatment among the major culprits. Synthetic fibers derived from fossil fuels now dominate clothing production, contributing to microplastic pollution and mounting waste streams. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second. Against that backdrop, regenerative fashion has become a growing movement among designers, farmers and textile advocates seeking to reconnect clothing to soil health, human well-being and regional manufacturing.