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DSO and DER – an important conversation about control of your rooftop solar and battery storage that deserves better acronyms.

Which? says people often don’t understand various symbols found on packaging

A confusing array of symbols on household packaging is leaving consumers in the dark about what can be recycled, research reveals.

Nearly half of respondents to a survey carried out in the UK by consumer group Which? thought that products stamped with the so-called green dot (a circle of two intertwined arrows) were recyclable, when in fact it means only that a manufacturer has paid into a scheme that supports recyclable packaging and systems.

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Almost 30 years ago the world responded to the realisation that our ozone layer was in trouble. The resulting Montreal Protocol was a rare example of global cooperation, but there's no room for complacency. Shane Keating, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and Oceanography, UNSW Darryn Waugh, Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Millions of tonnes sent to China, and from there to other countries as finished wood products, should be considered ‘high risk’

Millions of tonnes of illegally logged timber, felled from forests across Papua New Guinea, are being exported to China and from there to the world as finished wood products, a new report from Global Witness has revealed.

Global Witness’s investigation has found that the majority of logging operations in PNG are underpinned by government-issued permits, which are often illegally “extended” and which fail to enforce laws surrounding logging in prohibited and ecologically sensitive areas.

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Firm operating MS Bremen in Svalbard claims ‘self defence’ as critics online condemn killing and wildlife tourism

A polar bear has been shot dead after injuring a guard working for cruise ship tourists visiting an Arctic archipelago in Norway.

The bear was shot dead by another employee, the cruise company said after the incident on Saturday.

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The ecological pawprint of doggies, moggies and more.

Coral bleaching is affecting the world’s largest coral reef system, the Great Barrier Reef, but what does a dying reef look like? These images from the Climate Council and Great Barrier Reef Legacy show the difference in what they should look like and what happens as they move from bleached to dead

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Prof Tim Cockerill of the University of South Wales explains where you can find snakes in the summer.

Oil company criticised for its findings on animals and plants at planned Narrabri coal seam gas project

Conservationists have said the oil company Santos has not addressed questions about how its proposed 850-well Narrabri coal seam gas project in New South Wales would affect threatened species.

Two new reports, including one by a former ecologist for the NSW environment and heritage office, say the company had not adequately responded to submissions which raise concerns about animal and plant surveys Santos conducted for its environmental impact statement.

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Farmers’ representatives and government officials meet to tackle impact of the prolonged dry weather

Farmers are to meet with Whitehall officials this week for an emergency drought summit amid fears that the heatwave could have a serious impact on the UK’s food supply.

What the National Farmers Union describes as “tinderbox conditions” have severely reduced grass growth and depleted yields for many crops, leading to concerns that there will be a shortage of feed for livestock and dairy farmers later in the year. Concerns about the fragility of the UK’s food chain come at a sensitive time after the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, admitted last week that the government was taking steps to ensure that there were “adequate” supplies for Britain in the event of a no-deal departure from the European Union. The revelation led to speculation that the UK might be forced to start stockpiling food.

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As Britain faced a heatwave, the Observer’s architecture critic found himself between Norway and the north pole, exploring icy Svalbard on an epic trip for artists and writers

In a tragicomic photograph to be found on the internet, a hydrogen balloon lies sideways on the sea ice, somewhere north of Svalbard. Still inflated, it clings to its spherical dignity, while the ropes that connect it to its upended basket describe elegant. It is a dark silhouette against a horizonless surround, in which the white ice of the foreground grades into a lightly greying sky.

The two men posing by the basket and the one behind the camera don’t have long to live. They will make it across the ice back to land but, with inadequate provisions and equipment, will die there. It will take some decades before their remains and their camera are found. Such was the fate of the 1897 expedition, brave to the point of idiocy, in which the Swede SA Andrée tried to fly to the north pole. He used a steering system that was almost certain not to work, and he set off in his newly made balloon without final checks for leaks.

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As technology finds innovative ways to recycle, waste products are being used in an unlikely range of goods in high street stores

First it was “bags for life”, chunky doormats and, more recently, clothing such as fleeces, swimwear and pack-away macs. Now towels made from recycled plastic bottles are to go on sale in the UK for the first time in August – the latest initiative in the war against single-use plastics and the result of a technological breakthrough that has produced a fabric deemed soft and fluffy enough to use on human skin.

The new range of eco-friendly bath towels will go on sale online and at 18 branches of John Lewis in the last week of August, after nearly two years of extensive testing and work with suppliers. The polyester from the recycled plastic bottles accounts for 35% of their content, while the rest is regenerated cotton.

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Scientists use genetics to help save marsupial from its diet of deadly cane toad flesh

Australia’s northern quoll, one of the world’s rarest carnivores, has developed a feeding habit that puts its very existence in peril. The squirrel-sized marsupial turns out to have a fondness for the poisonous flesh of invasive cane toads, introduced into Australia in the 1930s. And this appetite has wiped out vast numbers of the species across the country. As a result, the northern quoll is now considered to be nationally endangered.

But scientists have launched a remarkable project aimed at saving the little nocturnal hunters. They have pinpointed an isolated group of quolls that have evolved an aversion to cane toads and, instead of munching meals of their venomous flesh, give cane toads a wide berth and seek other prey.

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Next to nothing was known about sperm whales in the Southern Ocean. That is, until the Australian Antarctic Division started listening to their clicks.

White Gum Valley, a suburb 3km from Fremantle WA has 110 housing units powered 100% from solar power and communal batteries, all linked using blockchain technology. The electricity also powers electric vehicles.

Dirk Erler at Southern Cross University is harvesting biosolids found in human sewerage, and the waste from milk and meat production as valuable sources of nutrients and energy.

The Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin is investigating methane hydrates in the Gulf of Mexico as a future energy resource.

A daily summary of our news plus bite-sized updates from around the world.

Whale is one of just 75 in an endangered group off the coast of Washington state and Canada

A grieving mother orca near Vancouver Island has been carrying her dead calf for four days, after refusing to leave her baby behind when the rest of her pod left.

The mother whale, named J35 by researchers, gave birth Tuesday in what was initially a hopeful moment. Mother and female calf were seen swimming together that morning near Victoria, British Columbia, according to the Washington state-based Center for Whale Research.

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Recycling should be the last option, says Lucy Siegle. Instead we should record, reduce, replace, refuse, refill, rethink – and reuse

The recycling crisis is forcing us all to consider what to do with our waste, but recycling should be the last resort for the global problem of plastic pollution.

In her new book Turning the Tide on Plastic, eco lifestyle expert and regular Guardian contributor Lucy Siegle sets out a better strategy, namely record, reduce, replace, refuse, reuse, refill, rethink, recycle.

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