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Directive seeks better access to safe drinking water to reduce use of throw-away containers

The EU is to oblige national governments to provide greater access to drinking fountains, encourage restaurants to offer free tap water, and raise the standards required of suppliers, as part of a move to clamp down on plastic waste and improve the health of Europeans.

Related: Bottled water is a nonsense. Just ban it and fill our towns with drinking fountains | Sonia Sodha

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NSW Premier suggests intervening in Liddell closure as way of "guaranteeing cheap and reliable electricity" for state.

The climate system will heat well past 1.5 °C and perhaps up to 2°C without any further fossil fuel emissions, new research finds.

Herbert Smith Freehills has cemented its reputation as the pre-eminent firm for project finance in the renewables sector across Australia and New Zealand after topping the Inframation Deals league tables for 2017 .

NAIF's first loan - to the oil and gas industry - is an effective subsidy to accelerate climate change.

Best performing utility in US says it will be soon be cheaper to install new renewables than to continue operating existing coal and nuclear plants.

Landis+Gyr announced that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with energy retailer Simply Energy to provide smart metering services to more than 550,000 households across Australia .

Arizona – a Republican Party stronghold – is poised to take the lead on energy storage as it mulls an 80 per cent clean energy target by 2050.

Cullen Range, the first solar farm to be co-located with a wind farm formally opened, to be followed by at least a dozen more.

Researchers have discovered that salmon from the chalk streams of southern England are genetically unique.

Plenty of cafes these days will let you take home some used coffee grounds, to put on your garden. It's a versatile material with loads of potential uses - as long as you treat it properly first. Tien Huynh, Senior Lecturer in the School of Sciences, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Energy retailer Powershop signs up for new 200MW solar farm and two major wind projects and says it was "stunned" by the low prices offered. It will also buy three hydro generators, but will need to more than double customers to match output.

After a growth spurt from the 1960s to the '90s, then 20 years of stagnation, the Era of Nuclear Decommissioning is upon us.

While the US suffers an overdose epidemic, most of the world misses out on painkillers.

It's 15 years since disaster struck as the Columbia returned to Earth following a research mission.

Campaigners ask Westminster to ‘drive war on plastic waste’ and Prince Charles calls for action

Campaigners are demanding that the UK parliament cuts its use of throwaway plastics, as new figures show the Westminster estate purchased more than 2m plastic straws, bottled drinks, plastic-lined coffee cups, food sachets and cutlery items last year.

Freedom of information requests submitted by Surfers Against Sewage show that hundreds of thousands of items of plastic cutlery, more than a million takeaway coffee cups and nearly 22,000 plastic straws were used last year in the Commons and Lords.

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Boxset comes with message from David Attenborough as PM hopes for China’s help to cut pollution

Theresa May will present Xi Jinping with a Blue Planet boxset when the two meet in Beijing on Thursday, but the Chinese president may have already seen the BBC series – considering its huge popularity in his country.

The seven-part series was watched by millions across the globe, and proved especially popular in China where an estimated 26 million people saw the first episode and approximately 100 million watched the second online, resulting in the country’s internet slowing to glacial pace.

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Xavier Bettel is at Cape Canaveral in Florida to see his nation's latest space project go into orbit.

Naturalist describes accolade as ‘Boaty McBoatface in book form’ after Fingers in the Sparkle Jar beats Wind in the Willows and The Peregrine

When academics asked readers to vote for Britain’s favourite piece of nature writing, they probably didn’t expect a celebrity memoir about Asperger’s to trounce otters, badgers and peregrines.

But Chris Packham has seen off famous poets and naturalists such as John Clare, Kathleen Jamie and Gilbert White, as well as much-loved children’s classics The Wind in the Willows and Tarka the Otter, to top the online poll organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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Study warns that use of anti-malarial nets may reduce people’s protection and affect fish stocks, and calls for urgent research into potential impacts

Anti-malarial mosquito nets are being used to catch fish around the world, according to the first global survey, risking harm to people and fish stocks.

More research is urgently needed to assess these impacts, say the scientists, but they also caution that the draconian bans on mosquito net fishing seen in some countries may cause more harm than good, particularly where people rely on the fish caught to survive.

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