Around The Web
Faster EV uptake needs auto and policy makers to work together: Nissan
War on Waste returns: Craig Reucassel dishes dirt on recycling crisis
Host of ABC sleeper hit of 2017 reflects achievements of season one, and what still needs to change
Who would have thought a show about garbage could be so compelling?
The success of last year’s sleeper hit War on Waste was a happy surprise to its presenter, Craig Reucassel, and the team behind the ABC TV show – not least because of how responsive audiences were to many of its suggestions. Sales of reusable coffee cups shot up, worm farm suppliers struggled to keep up with demand and the #BantheBag campaign helped to spur supermarkets to get rid of single-use plastic bags.
Continue reading...Know your NEM: Gentailers give corporate Australia “the bird”
‘We’ve suffered enough’: Durham locals fight new open-cast coal mine
The Banks Group mine is going ahead despite fears it will devastate the local environment
From the end of her garden June Davison can see and hear the heavy machinery stripping away the valley. Soon there will be explosions and dust to add to the 12 hour thrum of engines as the coal is stripped from below the earth.
After 40 years of local opposition that has helped keep this area of the Derwent valley in County Durham untouched, open-cast mining has begun between the villages of Dipton, Leadgate and Medomsley, once home to a deeply entrenched mining community around what was South Medomsley colliery.
Continue reading...Renewables cheaper than coal, says Gupta, “it’s obvious”
Country diary 1918: a word of support for the ragwort
23 July 1918 This beautiful weed attracts the summer brood of tortoiseshell butterflies just out from the chrysalis
The ragwort, a really beautiful weed, is out along the lane sides, but, perhaps thanks to women’s labour, is not over-abundant in our local fields. In Wales, where the fields are seldom as clean as they are in Cheshire, big rank ragworts and thistles dot the pastures, and often rise above the crops. The ragwort attracts the summer brood of small tortoiseshell butterflies just out from the chrysalis, but these showy flies visit it for its sweets and not as a food plant for the caterpillars. No one can class the tortoiseshell amongst destructive insects, for it feeds upon the common nettle, and thus helps to destroy a troublesome and prolific weed.
Related: Damned as dangerous but ragwort is full of life
Continue reading...New Energy Solar to acquire 87.0 MW Beryl Solar Project in NSW
Protecting marine life from microplastics and marine debris
Protecting marine life from microplastics and marine debris
No, minister Canavan, coal will not be king for 20 more years
Digging in the Pilbara and truffle hunting in the Victorian alps
Is ‘Zero Hour’ youth climate march a turning point, or more of the same?
How a solar farm in southeast England could bring a new dawn for renewables
Air-legal, all-electric “flying car” announced in the US
Recycled packaging 'may end up in landfill', warns watchdog
UK's plastic waste may be dumped overseas instead of recycled
Millions of tons of plastic sent abroad for recycling may be being dumped in landfill
Millions of tons of waste plastic from British businesses and homes may be ending up in landfill sites across the world, the government’s spending watchdog has warned.
Huge amounts of packaging waste is being sent overseas on the basis that it will be recycled and turned into new products. However, concerns have been raised that in reality much of it is being dumped in sites from Turkey to Malaysia.
Continue reading...Earth's resources consumed in ever greater destructive volumes
Study says the date by which we consume a year’s worth of resources is arriving faster
Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.
As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.
Continue reading...Remembering Antarctica's nuclear past with 'Nukey Poo'
Sanjeev Gupta: Coal power is no longer cheaper – and we'll prove it
The British billionaire investing in South Australia believes renewables are the future of energy, because it makes economic sense
The British billionaire who rescued the Whyalla steelworks from administration and is spending more than $2bn on clean energy and green steel developments in regional South Australia says most Australians are yet to grasp that solar power is now a cheaper option than new coal-fired electricity.
Sanjeev Gupta, an industrialist whose family-owned GFG Alliance group of companies has been credited with resurrecting Britain’s steel industry, says he considered investing in coal generation in the state’s Upper Spencer Gulf after buying Arrium’s steel mill last year but found solar backed by “firming” storage technologies made better economic sense.
Continue reading...