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Gove’s vision for the environment is undoubtedly ambitious but it is at odds with much government action – making it real will be a gargantuan task

Who knew? Environment secretary Michael Gove, arch Brexiter and seen just months ago grinning and thumbs up in eco-villain Donald Trump’s lair, turns out to be – in words, at least – a deep green.

His first major speech railed against “corporate greed and devil-take-the-hindmost individualism”, “extractive and exploitative political systems” and the “selfish agenda” of vested interests.

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Palm oil plantations on illegally deforested land in Sumatra – home to elephants, orangutans and tigers – have allegedly been used to supply scores of household brands, says new report

Pepsico, Unilever and Nestlé have been accused of complicity in the destruction of Sumatra’s last tract of rainforest shared by elephants, orangutans, rhinos, and tigers together in one ecosystem.

Plantations built on deforested land have allegedly been used to supply palm oil to scores of household brands that also include McDonald’s, Mars, Kellogg’s and Procter & Gamble, according to a new report.

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A pod of pilot whales, nesting storks and a clan of hyenas are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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Sixty-five MPs have written to the environment secretary urging him to include the measures in his new strategy to tackle the air pollution crisis

A cross party group of MPs is calling on Michael Gove to adopt a clean air bill in his new strategy to tackle the crisis of air pollution in the UK.

Sixty five MPs have written to the environment secretary as he prepares to address the most pressing issue in his intray – a demand by judges for a new air quality strategy by 31 July to cut illegal levels of pollution from diesel vehicles.

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Drivers who fail to give cyclists enough space when overtaking will be pulled over, and officers will explain how to overtake cyclists safely

London’s police force has launched a new initiative to tackle drivers who pass cyclists too closely, using plain clothes officers.

From Friday, the Space for Cyclists initiative will be carried out by UK’s only cycle-mounted police command, the Met’s cycle safety team, after months spent adapting the tactic for London’s roads from a West Midlands Police initiative, introduced last year.

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Environment Secretary Michael Gove plans to pay farmers for protecting the environment and creating rural jobs.

North Lees, Derbyshire The site of the old smelting works felt wholly reclaimed, and as the rain ended the air filled with insects and soon after wrens

The rain started as I crossed the pasture above North Lees Hall, the model, it is widely accepted, for Thornfield Hall in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. It’s a house the author visited more than once, staying with her friend Ellen Nussey in nearby Hathersage, and the intertwining of the names – thorn being an anagram of north and lee derived from the Anglo-Saxon for field – coupled with the detailed description Brontë gives, are persuasive.

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Big reductions in no-take marine protected areas are being considered, going beyond those recommended by an earlier federal government review

Australia’s marine protected areas look set to be slashed by the federal government, with plans announced for cuts that go beyond those recommended by a review commissioned by the previous Abbott government.

Draft management plans released by the Director of National Parks on Friday propose that large areas of Queensland’s Coral Sea, as well as off the coast of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales, will lose or have their protection downgraded, to make way for expanded long-line fishing and seafloor trawling – which have been shown to damage the conservation value of the oceans.

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Moving on from the world's biggest battery in SA, Elon Musk broke the internet week with Tweets about his new, new thing: The Boring Company.

Solar is expected to be a $US1 trillion market within five years, driven by EV uptake, micro-grids and corporate purchases, and as unsubsidised solar and storage reaches cost parity with the grid in most major markets.

Developers of wind and solar projects may try and accelerate their projects to get in in front of the proposed generator reliability obligation.

While Malcolm has been pumping Snowy 2.zero, Craig has been promising death by renewables, Josh reckons we are on track to meet Paris commitments and Barnaby is backing coal.

Battles against takeaway coffee cups, marine plastic pollution and energy wastage will get support from the City of Sydney’s latest round of environmental knowledge exchange sponsorships.

Conservatives may be pushing for new coal generator in north Queensland, but the region is about to become the country's first significant exporter of solar power.

South Miami this week became the first city outside of California to require all new homes to install solar panels on their roofs.

Under a non-exclusive Memorandum of Understanding with JinkoSolar, Greatcell noted it would make available developmental perovskite cells for further evaluation.

Over the past 15 years, the rapid melt of Arctic sea ice has made seabed mapping easier for new territorial claims and fossil fuel exploitation.

The bag was used by astronaut Neil Armstrong to collect the first ever samples of the Moon in 1969.

A recent heatwave in Siberia’s frozen wastes has resulted in outbreaks of deadly anthrax and a series of violent explosions

Strange things have been happening in the frozen tundra of northern Siberia. Last August a boy died of anthrax in the remote Yamal Peninsula, and 20 other infected people were treated and survived. Anthrax hadn’t been seen in the region for 75 years, and it’s thought the recent outbreak followed an intense heatwave in Siberia, temperatures reaching over 30C that melted the frozen permafrost.

Long dormant spores of the highly infectious anthrax bacteria frozen in the carcass of an infected reindeer rejuvenated themselves and infected herds of reindeer and eventually local people.

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The recent decision by Australia’s big two supermarkets to phase out free single-use plastic bags within a year is just the latest development in a debate that has been rumbling for decades.

State governments in Queensland and New South Wales have canvassed the idea, which has been implemented right across the retail sector in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

So far, so good. But are there any downsides? Many of you, for instance, face the prospect of paying for bin liners for the first time ever. And while that might sound tongue-in-cheek, it shows the importance of considering the full life-cycle of the plastics we use.

Pros and cons

On a direct level, banning single-use plastic bags will avoid the resource use and negative environmental impacts associated with their manufacture. It will reduce or even eliminate a major contaminant of kerbside recycling. When the ACT banned these bags in 2011 there was a reported 36% decrease in the number of bags reaching landfill.

However, the ACT government also noted an increase in sales of plastic bags designed specifically for waste. These are typically similar in size to single-use shopping bags but heavier and therefore contain more plastic.

Ireland’s tax on plastic shopping bags, implemented in 2002, also resulted in a significant increase in sales of heavier plastic waste bags. These bags are often dyed various colours, which represents another resource and potential environmental contaminant.

Keep Australia Beautiful, in its 2015-16 National Litter Index, reported a 6.2% reduction in the littering of plastic bags relative to the previous year, while also noting that these represent only 1% of litter.

Meanwhile, alternatives such as paper or canvas bags have environmental impacts of their own. According to a UK Environmental Agency report, a paper bag would need to be re-used at least four times, and cotton bags at least 173 times, to have a lower environmental impact than single-use plastic bags in terms of resource use, energy and greenhouse outcomes.

This illustrates the importance of considering the full life cycle of shopping bags to arrive at an evidence-based decision rather than one based on emotion or incomplete data. I am not suggesting this is the case with plastic shopping bags; I’m just pointing out the value of proper analysis.

Simply banning a certain type of bag, while this may be a good idea in itself, could result in other knock-on impacts that are harder to manage. Replacing shopping bags with heavier, more resource-intensive ones may solve some environmental impacts but exacerbate others.

Plastics, not plastic bags

In a 2016 discussion paper, Western Australia’s Association of Local Governments suggested the focus of action should be plastics in general, not just shopping bags.

As the Keep Australia Beautiful data show, plastic bags are just a small part of a much bigger problem. Many other plastic items are entering the litter stream too.

With this in mind, it pays to ask exactly why we are banning plastic shopping bags. Is it the litter issue, the potential impact on wildlife, the resource consumption, all of the above, or something else? Is it because they are plastic, because they are disposable, or because it saves supermarkets money?

The answers to these questions can guide the development of an effective strategy to reduce the environmental (and perhaps economic) burden of taking our shopping home. With that in place, we can then develop an education strategy to help shoppers adapt and make the scheme a success. But this costs money.

The triple bottom line

There should be plenty of money available. The Victorian state government’s Sustainability Fund, for instance, has A$419 million to spend over the next five years on researching alternatives to shopping and household waste management. Developing a shopping bag strategy would consume only a small part of this and would be money well spent.

The concept of the “triple bottom line” – ensuring that decisions are based equally on environmental, social and economic considerations – needs to be applied to decisions about whether to ban single-use plastic bags, and what alternatives will result. The problem with simply announcing a ban is that this leaves it up to shoppers themselves to work out what to do to replace them.

Evidence-based policy is crucial. We first need to find out how many people already use re-usable bags, whether they always take them to the shops, and what items they put in them. Do people generally know how many times each type of bag should be re-used in order to be an environmentally better choice than the current plastic bags? What’s the best material for re-usable bags, taking into account not only their environmental credentials but also their ability to get your shopping home without breaking?

When it comes to environmental impacts, it’s important not to simply exchange one problem for another. If all we’re doing is swapping between different types of plastic, it’s hard to see how we’re solving anything.

Trevor Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.