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Region begins push back against deluge of plastic and electronic waste from UK, US and Australia

For the past year, the waste of the world has been gathering on the shores of south-east Asia. Crates of unwanted rubbish from the west have accumulated in the ports of the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam while vast toxic wastelands of plastics imported from Europe and the US have built up across Malaysia.

But not for much longer it seems. A pushback is beginning, as nations across south-east Asia vow to send the garbage back to where it came from.

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Victoria is getting a lot of renewables. So much so, that one gigawatt of battery storage could mean it no longer needs the 45-year-old Yallourn brown coal power station next year.

The post How 1GW of grid batteries could see Yallourn coal generator close in 12 months appeared first on RenewEconomy.

BHP market analyst suggests electric vehicles could grab a share of more than 50% in the global market for new car sales by 2030.

The post BHP says half of global vehicle sales could be electric by 2030 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Battery storage and an electric vehicle can halve the payback period for a home solar system, and fast-charge the transition to renewables, a new report has found.

The post How electric vehicles and batteries can help slash rooftop solar payback appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Toyota Australia says hybrid version of popular RAV4 SUV has easily outsold the petrol equivalent since its arrival in Australia earlier this month.

The post Toyota’s electric shock as consumers flock to hybrid RAV4 appeared first on RenewEconomy.

The turbines for the $1-billion project will be up to 270 metres high, and in a first for Australia, they'll operate above an industrial pine plantation

A dry May seems to please just about everyone, but the continuing drought is worrisome

The soil is cracked and most river flows are classed as “notably low” by the Environment Agency. In other words, in central and eastern England gardeners, farmers and wildlife are desperate for rain. However, weather forecast presenters on radio and television continue to regard sunshine as always being good and rain as a downer.

Over the bank holiday weekend, this was perfectly reasonable with millions of people out enjoying the countryside and seaside, plus all those fetes and shows. But many will have noticed that, for the end of May, the countryside is dangerously dry. Tadpoles have lost the race to mature before ponds dried up and birds are struggling to feed their young.

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China is rapidly greening its economy, but that doesn't mean authoritarian governments are best placed to handle climate change. Sung-Young Kim, Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics & International Relations, Macquarie University Elizabeth Thurbon, Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor in International Relations / International Political Economy, UNSW Hao Tan, Associate professor, University of Newcastle John Mathews, Professor of Strategic Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Veteran Liberal MP is aiming to rid beaches of plastics, micro and nano plastics, but won’t commit to a ban

The Liberal MP Warren Entsch has launched a crusade against single-use plastics as part of his new role as special envoy for the Great Barrier Reef.

Entsch told Guardian Australia he was inspired by the 10-year-old campaigner Molly Steer – who convinced Cairns to phase out single-use plastics – comparing her example favourably with activists who he accused of “frightening the living Jesus out of kids” to recruit school students to climate strikes.

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A report shows that the animal’s food supply shifted, causing them to travel farther for food and moving them closer to shipping lanes

The endangered North Atlantic right whale faces increased odds because its main food supply has shifted due to ocean warming, according to new research.

Related: What’s the future for Sri Lanka’s ‘lost’ population of whales?

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Only one female of the critically endangered species remains in the country

Malaysia’s last surviving male Sumatran rhino has died, wildlife officials have said, leaving behind only one female in the country and pushing the critically endangered species closer to extinction.

Once found as far away as eastern India and throughout Malaysia, the Sumatran rhino has been almost wiped out, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

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Millions of people in Great Britain live more than a 10-minute walk away from their nearest park or green space, a study calculates.

Steve Biro snapped the picture of 'Bruce' the bald eagle at a raptor conservation centre in Canada.

The Duke of Burgundy is back from the brink – and the work to conserve it has helped other declining species. Does this mean there is hope in the face of Insectageddon?

Giles Wood pauses on our walk in search of the elusive Duke of Burgundy. “Look at that hideous field of oilseed rape,” he says, peering from the Wiltshire Downs over the Vale of Pewsey. “For an artist, it ruins the summer for two weeks.” No yellow paint, says Wood, can do justice to its “nitrogen-enhanced meconium”. The vast field poses another problem that the painter, environmentalist and one half of Giles and Mary, the upper-crust bohemians from Channel 4’s Gogglebox, is acutely aware of. Despite the acres of nectar-bearing flowers, there are no insects in sight. Wood, who is a butterfly-lover, despairs. “What I really object to is the frequency of spraying [insecticides]. It gets everywhere, even into the fat of seals in the Arctic.”

Wood hopes to show me “the duke” – not one of his posh mates but a small golden insect that seven years ago was hurtling towards extinction in Britain. In 2012, it was found in 160 colonies. This sounds plenty, but 60% of these numbered fewer than 10 butterflies, and the species had vanished from at least 260 sites since 1980. Extinction experts observe how endangered species enter a kind of death spiral in their final years, beset by disease, climatic changes and cruel twists of fate. And the duke – its distribution falling by 84% since the 1970s – was relentlessly spiralling down.

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Some Wangan and Jagalingou people oppose an agreement to extinguish native title over the Carmichael coalmine area

The federal court has heard allegations of “slurs” and “surreptitious” tactics in the latest instalment of a legal battle by a small group of traditional owners against mining giant Adani.

Some members of the Wangan and Jagalingou are appealing a federal court decision, which last year rejected their objections to an Indigenous land use agreement.

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday announced his new Cabinet after a shuffle that saw the responsibility for carbon emissions returned to the energy portfolio.

Highly prized for its swim bladder – served in soups and stews – the fish could disappear altogether from Africa’s Lake Victoria thanks to the lucrative trade

A thriving trade in fish maw – made from the swim bladders of fish – could lead to the extinction of the Nile perch fish in east Africa’s Lake Victoria.

Demand for fish maw has spawned such a lucrative business enterprise in the region that it is raising concerns of overfishing.

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Projected EU Parliament election results early Monday suggest the assembly will retain its stance of pushing for more ambitious climate policy, though its centrist parties will need to rely more on liberal and green lawmakers to stave off populist climate-sceptic members.

Burrowing deep underground, thousands of informal miners risk their lives to find gleaming red gems as a law change spurs opportunity in Myanmar’s “land of rubies”.

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Past images are presented here in extracts from a book by Rosamund Kidman Cox, published by the Natural History Museum

The watchful pelican
by Helmut Moik

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