Eden Reforestation Projects (Eden) is a nonprofit NGO that works in developing

countries to rebuild natural landscapes destroyed by deforestation. Eden works

directly with communities experiencing extreme poverty resulting from the
deforestation and destruction of the land that sustains them. The organization
employs thousands of local community members and provides them with the
education and tools necessary to plant, grow, and protect millions of trees each year.

They keep their systems simple, so they can be easily replicated and implemented
by people who don’t have many resources and must deal with treacherous roads,
unreliable electricity, and spotty internet. Putting the local community at the center of
their work inspires locals to have a sense of commitment to reforestation in their
country and a sense to protect their forests long-term.

Eden currently plants approximately 15 million trees a month, and in 2020, they
reached over 423 million trees, of which over 225 million are mangrove trees.

An estimated 3.5 billion people use smartphones, almost half of the world’s
population, and this number grows every day. It’s an environmental disaster,
because building every phone requires the polluting extraction of irreplaceable
elements like gold, cobalt or lithium.

A phone’s birth is the most contaminating part of its life cycle: around 80% of each
device’s carbon footprint is generated at the manufacturing stage. This is due to the
mining, refining, transport and assembly of the dozens of chemical elements that
make up cutting-edge tech. The extraction process generates mercury and cyanide
waste which contaminates river systems and drinking water. This sort of industrial
activity is a global problem which affects people as well as ecosystems.

Smartphones generate more greenhouse gases than any other consumer electronic
devices, although their carbon footprint is modest, mining for components is deeply
problematic, because besides contaminating the atmosphere, the process destroys
ecosystems and generates tailings, toxic byproducts which seep into the soil and
water.

Fairphone is a Dutch electronics manufacturer and social enterprise that designs

and produces smartphones with the goal of having a lower environmental footprint
and better social impact than is common in the industry. In particular, the company
aims to minimize the use of conflict minerals in its devices, maintain fair labor
conditions for its workforce and suppliers, and allow users to maintain their own
devices. The company was founded in 2013 as a social enterprise with the support
of the Waag Society, and is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Madrid City Hall had a plan to hunt and cull the majority of the 12,000 monk
parakeets in the Spanish capital, on the basis that they are a threat to safety and
biodiversity. They also sterilize the eggs of this invasive species, which is aggressive
and is affecting native birds such as sparrows

Santiago Soria Carreras, head of the Biodiversity Service at Madrid City Hall
The head of environment and mobility at City Hall

The plan is set to be carried out in the fall of next year, and will cost between €6 and
€8 for each parakeet, around €100,000 in total.

The population of monk parakeets in Madrid has increased 33% since 2016. The
small, bright-green birds, which are also known as the Quaker parrot, can live up to
20 years in captivity and reproduce rapidly, producing six to eight eggs a year.

As well as making unpleasant screeching noises, the monk parakeets transmit

diseases to other birds, consume their food and push out other species, explains
Santiago Soria Carreras. According to her, falling nests have not caused any
damage to passers-by yet, Madrid City Hall received 197 complaints about the birds
between January and August of this year

“It is an animal that adapts very well to conditions that are not its own. It has adapted
because it is very intelligent. It also eats many things and takes advantage of any
scrap of food or vegetable,” said Soria Carreras

The cold has not had any effect on the parakeets because their nests are very thick,
even though the bird comes from the warm climate of the semi-tropical rainforest
north of Argentina and south of Brazil. These nests can weigh up to 200 kilos,
although they are usually between 40 and 50 kilos. “If [the nests] are made at a
height of 15 to 20 meters, [the impact when they fall] is completely lethal,” added
Carabante.