Around The Web

British tea drinkers consume millions of teabags every day yet the vast majority are only 70-80% biodegradable, consumer body warns

UK consumers get through millions of teabags every day to make their favourite drink yet the vast majority are not fully biodegradable, a consumer organisation warns today.

A report published today by Which? Gardening reveals that teabags produced by top tea manufacturers such as Tetley, PG Tips, Twinnings, Clipper and Typhoo are only between 70-80% biodegradable. As a result, gardeners are finding the net part of teabags - caused by the inclusion of heat-resistant polypropylene - left on their compost heaps.

Continue reading...

The banana is a strong candidate for the ultimate low-carbon food.

• More carbon footprints: nuclear war, a cappuccino, more
• Understand more about carbon footprints

Bananas are a great food for anyone who cares about their carbon footprint. For just 80g of CO2e you get a whole lot of nutrition: 140 calories as well as stacks of vitamin C, vitamin B6, potassium and dietary fibre. All in all, a fantastic component of a low-carbon diet.

Continue reading...

Britain's worst-ever oil spill in 1967 was handled disastrously, is still killing wildlife today – and contains many lessons for those dealing with the Deepwater Horizon tragedy

Flop flop flop. The sound of a bird's wings batting futilely against the gloopy blanket of black oil echoes across the quarry. Then there is silence. A pigeon has crashed into this dark pool, 100 metres from the turquoise sea on the west coast of Guernsey. It sinks within seconds, resurfaces for a final flap, then joins the other small carcasses lying face down in the swirls of black slime. Since 1967, this deadly, oil-filled crater on the Chouet headland has acquired a new name: Torrey Canyon quarry.

On the morning of Saturday 18 March 1967, the Torrey Canyon ran aground on Pollard's Rock between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly. Over the following days, every drop of the 119,328 tonnes of crude oil borne by this 300m-long supertanker seeped into the Atlantic. Thousands of tonnes despoiled the beaches of Cornwall – and thousands more were propelled by winds and currents across the channel towards France.

Continue reading...

Actress relishes public role in campaigns for alternative energy and against overfishing

Greta Scacchi is urging fellow stars to step up and campaign for causes they believe in, regardless of any criticism they may receive. The actress, who last year promoted End of the Line, an influential documentary about over-fishing, by posing nude with a cod, says that she is delighted to have found a useful public role.

"It suits me in my older age. I am able to use muscles now that I was not able to use before, and it is very heartening to find I am not just asked what I wash my face with these days," she said.

Continue reading...

Wildlife conservationists in Guatemala use Obsession for Men to lure jaguars to cameras in order to film them

It's advertised as the "pure essence of masculinity", a fragrance with a musky, sensual aroma that, by implication, women are bound to find irresistible. But what's not mentioned in the marketing is that Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men has also proved a hit with jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle.

Scientists are using the cologne to lure the elusive big cats to hidden cameras in the Maya biosphere reserve, a protected tropical rainforest spanning 8,100 sq miles, to help them record, monitor and protect the animals.

Continue reading...

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

Continue reading...

As National Vegetarian Week gets underway, is it reasonable to expect our pets to forego meat too?

• Sustainable fishing move could help your cat reduce its eco pawprint
• Britain's problem with pets: they're bad for the planet

This week is National Vegetarian Week, the annual celebration of all things vegetarian. Taking the veggie option has never been easier for people, but what about vegetarian pets?

Jonathan Safran Foer's recent polemic Eating Animals makes much of the contrast between our love for our pets and our complacency at the horrors of the factory farm and the abattoir. That contradiction is no more keenly felt than by the vegetarian dog or cat owner, supporting the meat industry they abhor every time they stock up on pet food.

Continue reading...

Stephen Davis recounts how he was flung against a wall by explosion and kept at sea on work boat for 40 hours after rescue

• Deepwater Horizon oil spill reaches the coast

These things Stephen Davis cannot banish from his memory from that night of chaos aboard the Deepwater Horizon: the sensation of being flung into a wall by a powerful explosion, the desperate, muddy scramble on a deck lit only by the reflections from a huge pillar of flame; the look in men's eyes before they jumped 18 metres (60ft) into the water.

"You could taste the fumes, that godawful taste in your mouth," he said. "It was hard to breathe. The oxygen was being sucked out of the living quarters.

Continue reading...

Hugging the kerb can be deadly for women cycling in busy cities

As I cycle home I'm conscious of an ominous rumble behind me. A quick glance over my left shoulder confirms my worst fears: a looming heavy goods vehicle is blocking out the sun.

I don't fancy taking it on with only my helmet and luminous vest as protection, so I veer to closer to the kerb so it can overtake. We meet again at traffic lights, and again I shrink towards the edge of the road.

Continue reading...

Campaigners say a Bill Gates-backed geo-engineering project to whiten clouds and reduce global warming is 'risky'

Campaigners have criticised plans for a sea trial of cloud-whitening technology, funded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

A US-based research body, Silver Lining, which has received $300,000 from Mr Gates, is developing machines to convert seawater into microscopic particles to be sprayed into clouds. Scientists believe this will increase the whiteness, or albedo, of clouds and increase their ability to reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing global warming.

Continue reading...

Airblade maker accuses US hand towel manufacturer of landing low blow over bacteria claims and calls for independent analysis

• Should I ... use paper towels or a hand-dryer?
• American taste for soft toilet roll 'worse than driving Hummers'

"Hand-to-hand" combat has erupted between two of the companies responsible for drying the digits of the nation.

Dyson, the makers of the Airblade dryer, has accused Kimberly Clark of landing a low blow, by saying the air jets its machine uses increases the bacteria on hands. Dyson says the US paper towel corporation has used "biased and misleading" research to support the claim, and to state that paper towels are just as environmentally friendly as the air dryer.

Continue reading...

Former deputy editor of the Ecologist, Paul Kingsnorth, explains why he became disillusioned with the parables of environmentalism, so decided to write his own instead

It started last year with two men in a pub. It spiraled from there, and gathered in thousands of people from across the world who shared its vision. It is still expanding; so much so that the two men now have rather less time to spend in the pub, because much of their day is spent just trying to keep up with a minor global movement which they have accidentally brought into being.

This is the story of the Dark Mountain Project, a new cultural movement for an age of global disruption, of which I was one of the co-founders less than a year ago. It seems much longer; a lot has happened in a year. We seem to have touched a nerve. This is all the more interesting to me because this project began life as a response to a sense of disillusion with what environmentalism has become.

Continue reading...

Climate sceptics' favourite theory that volcanoes produce more CO2 than human activity has exploded in their faces with Eyjafjallajokull eruption

Along with the ash and lava, there have been many interesting asides tossed into the air for our consideration by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. We have noticed just how reliant our globalised systems are on air travel. We have been reminded of nature's brute force and primordial beauty. And we have been intrigued by what a wonderfully complex language Icelandic appears to be – to Anglo-Saxon ears, at least.

But one opportunity the volcano has gifted us in particular is the chance to put to bed once and for all that barrel-aged climate sceptic canard which maintains that volcanoes emit far more carbon dioxide than anthropogenic sources. It's always been a favourite, but has been pushed even further up the charts of popularity in recent months by the repeated claims of Ian Plimer, the Australian mining geologist who wrote the climate sceptic bible Heaven and Earth last year.

Continue reading...

Researcher in Indonesia captures rare photograph of tree-dwelling clouded leopard on the ground

A rare image of a clouded leopard on the ground has been captured by a researcher in Indonesia who was trying to photograph slightly less unusual sun bears.

Wai-Ming Wong is working on a doctorate at the University of Kent on how the bears ‑ which are regarded as less critically vulnerable than the leopards, but have received far less attention academically ‑ are surviving in human-dominated landscapes.

Continue reading...

Conservationists say rate of new species slower than diversity loss caused by the destruction of habitats and climate change

• Ghost orchid comes back from extinction

For the first time since the dinosaurs disappeared, humans are driving animals and plants to extinction faster than new species can evolve, one of the world's experts on biodiversity has warned.

Conservation experts have already signalled that the world is in the grip of the "sixth great extinction" of species, driven by the destruction of natural habitats, hunting, the spread of alien predators and disease, and climate change.

Continue reading...

Drax has shelved its biofuel plans, yet still boasts publicly about 'undertaking the largest biomass co-firing project in the world'

Drax is Britain's biggest power station. In fact, it is western Europe's biggest. It produces 7% of the country's electricity. By burning coal. For years, it has promised to replace some of that coal with locally grown biomass. But last week, its chief executive, Dorothy Thompson, appeared to tear up those plans.

If you travel north on the train from London towards York, you will have seen Drax. It is one of three gigantic power stations near the River Trent, in an area of lowland often called Megawatt Valley. Drax is the one with 12 cooling towers.

Continue reading...

Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report's author now says true estimate is still unknown

• Read the full story of the hacked climate emails
• Jeffrey Sachs: Sceptics recycle anti-tobacco control arguments

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

Continue reading...

The Roadster Sport isn't just the first genuinely head-turning electric car, a quick spin around London shows it is practical too

How often do police take your picture just because they like your car? Not very often, presumably. In which case, try driving the latest electric sportscar from Tesla Motors, the Roadster Sport.

Continue reading...

Judges say they are convinced José Luis Rodriguez staged prizewinning picture of wolf

The Natural History Museum's wildlife photographer of the year has been stripped of his £10,000 prize, after judges found he was likely to have hired a tame Iberian wolf to stage the image of a species seen rarely in the wild.

The judges of the award, which attracted more than 43,000 entries from 94 countries, said they were convinced José Luis Rodriguez hired the wolf called Ossian from a Madrid wildlife park, contradicting his claim the image was taken in the wild after months of patient tracking of the dwindling species.

Continue reading...

Travel disruptions mean cycling, with a few adjustments, may be the best bet for getting to work vaguely on time

Snow, for many, is already here. And after I'm done writing this, I'm going to put the knobbliest tyres I have on my bike for this morning's commute.

I've got used to riding with a big crowd of cyclists on my way to and from work, but I suspect that as it has snowed overnight in London, the rank and file of two-wheeled commuters will be thinned out substantially.

Continue reading...