Sustainability

Its nickname, the eighth continent, says it all, and is no exaggeration. Lying between California and Hawaii, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is three times the size of France and is the world's biggest ocean waste repository, with 1.8 billion pieces of floating plastic which kill thousands of marine animals each year.

In offshore wind farms, wind turbines are elevated over the sea level with different types of foundations, depending on the depth.

El abusivo e insostenible uso de los recursos naturales no solo daña la salud del planeta, sino que The abusive and unsustainable use of natural resources not only harms the health of the planet, it also wipes out entire species so that they disappear for ever. The frenetic loss of biodiversity means that a million plants and animals are currently under threat. Others had even worse luck. Below we list some of the extinct species that we can only reminisce about today.

The Madrid Climate Summit (COP25) ended on Sunday 15 December — instead of Friday 13 as scheduled, making it the longest of all the COPs — with lacklustre results as far as the negotiations were concerned, despite having had a substantial impact in terms of mobilising civil society as a whole.

"The coral reefs are being boiled alive". This statement from Gabriel Grimsditch, a member of the marine ecosystems division of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has set alarm bells ringing. Indeed, the outlook for coral is not very encouraging: scientists reckon that almost 90 % of these super ecosystems could be wiped out by 2050.

Volcanoes have darkened the skies of the whole planet, killing 82,000 people and burying cities and entire civilisations. Despite scientific progress, volcanoes are still unpredictable and in recent years eruptions have become more recurrent. In 2021 alone, volcanoes such as Etna in Italy, Fagradalsfjall in Iceland, La Soufrière in the Caribbean and Cumbre Vieja on the Canary Island of La Palma have been active.

Ayúdame3D is a project created in Spain that makes 'trésdesis' - prosthetic arms made using 3D printing techniques - for people without resources, anywhere in the world. The project sets out to improve their quality of life by harnessing innovation and the numerous possibilities of new technologies. Guillermo Martínez, one of the founders of this project, talked to us about this initiative and invites you to collaborate with them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected millions of people and claimed thousands of lives, on top of sending most of the world's population into lockdown. However, it has also considerably lowered daily CO2 emissions levels — by 17 % according to a report by the publication Nature Climate Change —. The question on many minds now is whether the promises made to combat climate change will be kept once the crisis is over, and the answer appears to be yes.