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Draft regulations would ban mini-shampoo bottles and throwaway cups, with push towards reuse over recycling

The EU executive wants to ban mini-shampoo bottles in hotels and the use of throwaway cups in cafes and restaurants, as part of sweeping legal proposals to curb Europe’s mountains of waste.

A draft EU regulation published on Wednesday also proposes mandatory deposit and return schemes for single-use plastic drinks bottles and metal cans, as well as an end to e-commerce firms wrapping small items in huge boxes.

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Guardian unpicks complex web of investment firms, wealth funds and tax haven-based businesses that own most of sector

• England’s water: the world’s piggy bank
• Can global water investors be held to account?
• England’s water: is privatised model a fair system?
• England’s water firms respond to investigation into role of global investors

Foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses lodged in tax havens own more than 70% of the water industry in England, according to research by the Guardian.

The complex web of ownership is revealed as the public and some politicians increasingly call for the industry to be held to account for sewage dumping, leaks and water shortages. Six water companies are under investigation for potentially illegal activities as pressure grows on the industry to put more money into replacing and restoring crumbling infrastructure to protect both the environment and public health.

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Guardian analysis reveals more than 70% of English water industry in foreign ownership

• Revealed: more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership
• England’s water: the world’s piggy bank
• Can global water investors be held to account?
• England’s water: is privatised model a fair system?

The water companies responded to the Guardian’s requests for comment as follows.

A Severn Trent spokesperson said: “Since privatisation, Severn Trent has invested £25bn in infrastructure, including £100m each year improving the rivers in our region.

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A 'historic' deal on the inclusion of maritime in the EU ETS has been provisionally struck by EU negotiators in Tuesday evening’s trilogues meaning 40% of maritime emissions would be covered in 2024 and phased-in to full-scope in 2026, but discussions are still open regarding other EU ETS-related reform bills, a senior MEP involved in the talks said on Wednesday morning.

EUAs rose to their highest in three months as buying interest continued to drive the market despite relatively light volume overall, while the UK allowance contract continued to lose ground compared to its EU counterpart ahead of the afternoon's fortnightly auction.

The European Commission has appointed a new director-general for its climate directorate after the previous head died unexpectedly this summer.

Minister confirms pollution penalties will be ringfenced for environment rather than going to Treasury

Water company fines for pollution are to be used to pay for environmental improvements in England rather than given to the Treasury, the government has said.

Since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded 56 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, securing fines of more than £141m. Most of these were from one company, Southern Water, which received a record penalty of £90m last year.

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Interest in and registration of soil carbon projects has skyrocketed in Australia in recent years, however only one project has ever been issued Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

Show omits massive challenges to the industry posed by climate crisis, bycatch and bottom trawling, claims Our Seas alliance of 350 organisations

Shot in fishing vessels on the high seas, amid crashing waves that threaten to sweep all on deck overboard, the long-running BBC documentary programme Trawlermen offers viewers an insight into how a crew navigates one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

However, the new series, Trawlermen: Hunting the Catch, launched in October, fails to mention “even briefly” the environmental and climate crisis challenges or problems with bycatch faced by the fishing industry, according to the Our Seas coalition of 350 conservation and fishing organisations.

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The UN released this week data on GHG emissions from forestry for Indonesia in 2018-20, reporting that the forest-rich Southeast Asian nation had been able to achieve annual average GHG emissions savings in that sector of nearly 200 million MtCO2e for the three-year period.

The global palm oil industry should contribute to the recovery of past harm made in oil palm-rich landscapes, regenerating nearly 1 million hectares (ha) of forest, according to a non-profit report released on Wednesday.

New National Reconstruction Fund to allocate up to $3 billion to support manufacturing of wind, solar, battery and hydrogen components in Australia.

The post Can Australia make solar panels? Renewable manufacturing to share $3bn in new funding appeared first on RenewEconomy.

One of Japan’s biggest power companies is considering capturing and shipping up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 annually to be stored at a floating CCS hub off the coast of Australia.

The New Zealand government has announced it will bring all “scientifically robust” forms of carbon sequestration, including native forestry, into its emissions trading scheme from 2025, in a bid to placate the agriculture sector.

With digital bioacoustics, scientists can eavesdrop on the natural world – and they’re learning some astonishing things

Scientists have recently made some remarkable discoveries about non-human sounds. With the aid of digital bioacoustics – tiny, portable digital recorders similar to those found in your smartphone – researchers are documenting the universal importance of sound to life on Earth.

By placing these digital microphones all over Earth, from the depths of the ocean to the Arctic and the Amazon, scientists are discovering the hidden sounds of nature, many of which occur at ultrasonic or infrasonic frequencies, above or below human hearing range. Non-humans are in continuous conversation, much of which the naked human ear cannot hear. But digital bioacoustics helps us hear these sounds, by functioning as a planetary-scale hearing aid and enabling humans to record nature’s sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capacities. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), researchers are now decoding complex communication in other species.

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Nestle has partnered with a New Zealand dairy farming company to develop a commercially viable net zero carbon emissions dairy farm by 2032, as the wider dairy sector has urged the government to ditch its proposed split-gas farm-level GHG pricing scheme.

Woodside secures traditional landowner agreement for first 50MW solar farm in Pilbara, with up to 500MW planned depending on customer demand.

The post Woodside secures landowners agreement for first 50MW solar project in Pilbara appeared first on RenewEconomy.

A submersible off the coast of Western Australia chanced upon an 45-metre-long deep-sea siphonophore arranged in a feeding spiral, trailing its deadly tentacles

In 2020, about 600 metres (2,000ft) down in an underwater canyon off the coast of Western Australia, scientists encountered a long gelatinous creature suspended in a giant spiral. “It was like a rope on the horizon. You couldn’t miss it,” says Nerida Wilson from the Western Australian Museum. “It was so huge.”

It was a deep-sea siphonophore, a relative of the portuguese man o’ war, or blue bottles, that bob like party balloons on the sea surface, trailing deadly tentacles through the water. This one was probably a new species from the genus Apolemia, a group that generally look like tangled feather boas.

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Exclusive: Fatih Birol says claims that limit is dead are ‘factually incorrect and politically very wrong’

The world can still limit global heating to 1.5C, and to claim that the target is now out of reach is to play into the hands of fossil fuel proponents, the world’s leading energy economist has warned.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, the global authority on energy, slammed scientists and activists who have claimed that the recent Cop27 UN climate summit killed off hopes for the crucial 1.5C limit.

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Fossil fuels, fisheries and farming: the world’s most destructive industries are protected – and subsidised – by governments

In every conflict over the living world, something is being protected. And most of the time, it’s the wrong thing.

The world’s most destructive industries are fiercely protected by governments. The three sectors that appear to be most responsible for the collapse of ecosystems and erasure of wildlife are fossil fuels, fisheries and farming. In 2021, governments directly subsidised oil and gas production to the tune of $64bn (£53bn), and spent a further $531bn (£443bn) on keeping fossil fuel prices low. The latest figures for fisheries, from 2018, suggest that global subsidies for the sector amount to $35bn a year, over 80% of which go to large-scale industrial fishing. Most are paid to “enhance capacity”: in other words to help the industry, as marine ecosystems collapse, catch more fish.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

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