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UK does not have capacity to deal with extra plastic waste after a Chinese import ban, says industry group.

Battery powered vehicles are not as green as they are promoted due to the environmental economic, and geopolitical consequences from mining for minerals to their eventual disposal.

Black Banks Plantation, Weardale, County Durham Maintenance of insulating plumage is vital for a bird whose survival depends on feeding underwater

It was a morning of brittle beauty, the best kind of winter day. Last night’s magical transformation remained intact; rusty-brown bracken fronds fringed with frost crystals and ice-encrusted leaves that crunched underfoot. No hint of a thaw yet; the low elevation of the sun had left this side of the riverbank in deep shadow. The cold air stung our cheeks.

In still pools beside the river, the 6mm-thick ice must have frozen gradually overnight, from the edges inwards as the water level dropped, creating concentric oval patterns with elegant art nouveau flourishes around their margins. In a few places, ice sheets remained suspended between the trunks of alders, creaking and groaning when the wind disturbed their branches.

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Transport overtook power generation for climate-warming emissions in 2017 but the Trump administration is reversing curbs on auto industry pollution

Some of the most common avatars of climate change – hulking power stations and billowing smokestacks – may need a slight update. For the first time in more than 40 years, the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the US isn’t electricity production but transport – cars, trucks, planes, trains and shipping.

Related: Fightback begins over Trump's 'illegal and irresponsible' clean power repeal

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The BBC's global science correspondent, Rebecca Morelle, reveals what to watch out for in the new year.

BBC News looks ahead to some of the biggest science and environment stories coming up in 2018.

Alanna Mitchell's stage adaptation of her best-selling novel about the health of the world's oceans - Sea Sick.

Globally it's thought that shark populations and diversity are in decline, as scientists start the first systematic survey of sharks and rays in the Indo-Pacific.

A look back at the best science stories of 2017.

Paul Keating's government, faced with the prospect of international action on climate change, took steps to preserve the coal industry - a tactic that has been rebooted many times since. Marc Hudson, PhD Candidate, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Researchers in London have developed scanning techniques that show what is written on the papyrus that mummy cases are made from.

1 January 1918 It was from a food-hunting flock of tits, vigorously working from tree to tree, that a great tit detached itself with harsh cries of alarm

The birds are not sentimental; the death of the old year, the passing of time, does not worry them. They know that winter is a strenuous season, for food is hard to find and every beakful means a search; perhaps they feel at times that the days are lengthening and are stirred by the promise of better times, but beyond that the close of one year and the opening of the next have no meaning. It was from a food-hunting flock of tits, vigorously working from tree to tree, that a great tit detached itself with harsh cries of alarm. It came down from the upper twigs, dropping from bough to bough, until, still scolding, it was just above my head, and there, jerking its body from side to side, it made emphatic remarks in tit language. Mr. Hudson, in Birds and Man, tells how some Surrey goldcrests mobbed him because, he believed they mistook his tweed cap for a coiled-up cat. If this tit made a similar mistake it was surely short-sighted; I am rather inclined to the view that it had, even so early, felt the first vernal instincts that move the birds to seek mates and hunt for suitable nesting sites, and which later cause them to look upon intruders in the woods as possible enemies.

Related: Goldcrest combs the gorse for slim pickings

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Now that China and Hong Kong won’t take our rubbish, it’s time to get real

Right now you may well be surveying the wreckage of Christmas, all that old wrapping paper. Whereas in previous years I’ve skipped through the issue of post-Christmas waste in an upbeat “how to” guide, this year’s advice might be summed up as “Brace, brace”.

Let me explain. Back in July the Chinese government announced a clampdown on so-called “foreign garbage”. To get slightly more technical, that means bringing in very tight contamination limits on 24 categories of scrap, especially waste paper and plastic. This concerns us, because since 2012 the UK has shipped more than 2.7 million tonnes of plastic scrap to mainland China and Hong Kong. Put simply there is no other market to replace it right now.

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The second part of our selection of the best science and environment reads this year.

Using biomass instead of fossil fuels may not be the answer to averting global warming

Policies aimed at limiting climate change by boosting the burning of biomass contain critical flaws that could actually damage attempts to avert dangerous levels of global warming in the future. That is the stark view of one of Britain’s chief climate experts, Professor John Beddington, who has warned that relying on the cutting down and burning of trees as a replacement for the use of fossil fuels could rebound dangerously.

Beddington, a former UK government chief scientific adviser, said there was now a real risk that increasing wood-burning in order to help European countries, including Britain, reach renewable energy targets could turn out to be misguided. “These policies may even lead to a situation whereby global emissions [of carbon dioxide] accelerate,” he states in a blog on Carbon Brief, the UK-based website that covers climate and energy issues. He says wind and solar projects should dominate programmes to boost renewable energy generation in Europe.

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When Stephen Moss was a boy, the seasons followed predictable patterns

When I was growing up, in the 1960s and 1970s, we had what my nan used to call “proper weather”. Snow in winter, showers in spring, sun (or at least, sunny intervals) in summer and gales in autumn. Britain’s weather may have been changeable by the day, but the seasons were seemingly set in stone, with a reassuringly predictable regularity.

That certainly suited the country’s fauna and flora. Wild animals and plants, and by extension their habitats, evolved to cope with short-term unpredictability and long-term stability. If change did occur, it happened slowly, over decades or centuries; rather than rapidly, in a single year.

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Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space, has been recognised in the New Year's honours.

She broke the solo record for sailing round the world, but now she is dedicating her life to an even greater challenge – saving it from the destructive tide of plastic pollution

Trophies from her past glories as a competitive yachtswoman are placed discreetly around the 16th-century building on the Isle of Wight, the base of Dame Ellen MacArthur’soperations today.

On a blackboard in one of the meeting rooms, the targets of a different passion are spelled out. From uncovering the scale of plastic pollution in the oceans to targeting the textile waste of the fashion industry, MacArthur, who in 2005 broke the solo record for sailing round the world, is dedicating her life to saving it.

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Comins Coch, Ceredigion For years the robins ignored our open invitation to take up residence above the shed door

We inherited the old garden shed when we bought the house a quarter of a century ago. Over the door, someone had fixed an open-fronted nest box of the type thought suitable for a robin but, whether it was too exposed or the aspect was wrong, no birds took up the offer of accommodation.

Eventually, while repainting the shed, I took down the box and, for want of anywhere else to put it, left it on a high shelf just inside the door. That winter, the apple tree nearby lost a branch, breaking the shed window and adding another line to the list of jobs I would never get around to.

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From rosella pie to the ‘delicate’ flesh of baby emus, the 19th century ornithologist relished the taste of the creatures he so meticulously studied

Of all the changes to the study of ornithology in the past 200 years, the most striking, when reading John Gould’s seven-volume 1848 treatise The Birds of Australia, is the apparent lack of interest among modern scientists in what their subjects taste like.

Gould left no such questions unanswered. The prototype of his beautifully illustrated guide, digitised and made available online by the State Library of New South Wales, contains many tips for the keen sportsman on how best to shoot each of the featured birds and, where Gould had opportunity to sample them, what they tasted like.

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