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WA firms grip on booming battery market, as lithium refinery site selected
Invitation for written submissions: Exploring ways to improve farmer’s interaction with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
Invitation for written submissions: Exploring ways to improve farmer’s interaction with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation Innovation grants now open
AMP forges new path by appointing climate denier as chairman
Victoria wind and solar farms warned of curtailment
Genex appoints new CEO, new directors
The coffee cup which can be recycled in existing systems
JinkoSolar maintained its position as top solar PV module shipment provider in 2017, says GlobalData
Toxin linked to motor neuron disease found in Australian algal blooms
Impending blight: how Statoil's plans threaten the Great Australian Bight
Supporters say the oil firm has experience drilling in rough seas but conservationists fear damage to wildlife and fisheries
The cold and violent waters of the Great Australian Bight are home to one of the country’s most biodiverse and important marine ecosystems, the heart of its fishing industry, a growing tourism hotspot – and potentially its newest oil field.
Of the species in the bight, 85% are found nowhere else on the planet. It is a breeding ground for the endangered southern right whale and a feeding zone for Australian sea lions, great white sharks, migratory sperm whales and short-tailed shearwaters.
Livia Firth: It’s not realistic to think we're going to be in a world without leather or wool
Environmental fashion campaigner visits Tasmania to learn about wool production, its impact on the environment and mulesing
Livia Firth still has the wool sweaters she wore as a teenager. The environmental fashion campaigner, who grew up in Italy, remembers hand washing her sweaters each summer, carefully storing them away, then unpacking them the following winter. She would wear them year after year so she had to look after them. This was before fast, disposable fashion she says, “We did it a different way.”
These days, as the founder of Eco-Age, a brand consultancy firm that works with luxury fashion labels on improving their sustainability credentials, and as someone who makes frequent appearances on the red carpet alongside her Oscar-winning husband actor Colin Firth, she has an expanded wardrobe – yet it’s probably not as big as you may imagine. In 2010 Firth came up with the Green Carpet Challenge, using her visibility in front of the world’s media to wear only ethical, sustainable and repurposed fashion, and she’s often photographed repeatedly wearing the same gowns as part of her #30wears pledge.
Continue reading...Cracks in nuclear reactor threaten UK energy policy
Problems at Hunterston B in Scotland trigger doubts over six other 1970s and 80s plants
The government’s energy policy is under renewed pressure after the prolonged closure of one of Britain’s oldest nuclear reactors because of cracks in its graphite core raised questions over the future of six other plants built in the 1970s and 1980s.
The temporary shutdown of reactor three at Hunterston B in Scotland is also expected to burn an estimated £120m hole in the revenues of its owner, EDF Energy. The firm said this week that it was taking the reactor offline for six months after inspections revealed more cracks than expected.
Continue reading...New law to tackle electric cars’ silent menace to pedestrians
Sound emitters will give warning of vehicles travelling at low speeds
They are green, clean and make very little noise. It is this latter quality, initially seen by many as a good thing, that has become an acute concern for safety campaigners, who fear that the rising number of electric vehicles constitutes a silent menace.
When they travel at under 20mph the vehicles can barely be heard, especially by cyclists or pedestrians listening to music through headphones. “The greatest risks associated with electric vehicles are when they are travelling at low speeds, such as in urban areas with lower limits, as the noise from tyres and the road surface, and aerodynamic noise, are minimal at those speeds,” said Kevin Clinton, from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
Continue reading...English Heritage plans to restore ‘great lost garden’ of Alexander Pope
The restoration, even at huge cost, of what English Heritage calls one of “the great lost gardens of London” sounds a worthwhile, even noble, project. But what if that “lost garden” is a myth, a pipe dream never really built? English Heritage plans to transform the estate of Marble Hill, a grand house by the Thames, by reintroducing elaborate gardens it says were inspired by Alexander Pope, the satirist and poet, and 18th-century royal garden designer Charles Bridgeman.
The original designs featured a ninepin bowling alley, an ice-house seat and a flower garden, surrounded by twisting paths and groves of trees and English Heritage plans to recreate all this, alongside a “vibrant” cafe and children’s play area.
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