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How do we strip back our lives, smell the roses, embrace frugality and simplicity?

Australian states with bans in place see rise in consumers and retailers resorting to thicker bags to escape the rule

Shoppers in states that have banned single-use shopping bags are reportedly buying reusable plastic bags then throwing them away.

The Australian Capital Territory requested an investigation into the use of thicker plastic bags last month, after reports that retailers and consumers had simply switched their plastic bag consumption to thicker bags to escape the ban.

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Schools will receive an alert every time air pollution is high enough to pose an acute health risk, under new plans announced by Sadiq Khan

Schools in London will receive an alert every time air pollution in the capital is set to pose an acute risk to health as part of a renewed push to highlight the scale of the capital’s toxic pollution crisis.

Air pollution causes 40,000-50,000 early deaths a year in the UK – more than 9,000 in London – and the young are particularly vulnerable.

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On this small, densely populated island, clashes between elephants and humans are rapidly increasing. Rangers and villagers are working to find ways to avoid the conflict and the devastating, at times deadly, impacts on both sides

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Blended fuel powers 15-hour Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 flight between LA and Melbourne, reducing carbon emissions by 7%

A Qantas plane powered partly by mustard seeds has become the world’s first biofuel flight between Australia and the United States, after landing in Melbourne on Tuesday.

The 15-hour flight used a blended fuel that was 10% derived from the brassica carinata, an industrial type of mustard seed that functions as a fallow crop – meaning it can be grown by farmers in between regular crop cycles.

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30 January 1959: Conditions described as “very grim” by the AA, with visibility in south-east London varying between nil and ten yards

Fog stretched last night from the Home Counties westwards into Devon and South Wales and northwards through the Midlands and East Anglia up to Yorkshire. It is expected to persist to-day.

Related: How the Guardian reported on London's Great Smog of 1952

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Reaction to Victoria outages emphasise two points: One is that despite spending tens of billions, and inflating everyone's power bills, networks are still the biggest cause of blackouts. And two, the tolerance of such outages is close to zero.

Tens of thousands of Victorians were left without power over the long weekend as the distribution network struggled with blistering temperatures, reigniting fears about the stability of our energy system.

The Tesla big battery now has a widget to show its ground-breaking activities - rapid charge and discharge - on Australian energy market.

Report warns Australia must act quickly to take advantage of its leading position in the global lithium resources market, or risk missing out on what could be a $2 trillion value supply chain.

Security-of supply justifications are seen in Spain as just political schemes to support the status quo. Hello Australia.

Remember the predictions that the solar market would consolidate from 4000 businesses to four or forty major solar companies serving the Australian market? The opposite happened.

The Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership, Australia’s fastest-growing national climate program for local government, today welcomed 35 new councils to the fight against climate change.

JinkoSolar today announced that it participated in an exclusive interview with CNN as part of the network’s Marketplace: Middle East program. which focuses on business developments in the Middle East reason.

Annual issuance of green bonds not only passed $100bn in 2017, it sailed right past it, says BNEF, driven by 67% yoy growth.

As more media outlets use automated algorithms to write news stories, are journalists doomed?

Help us to move these issues up the public agenda and challenge governments to do more

Australia’s fragile environment is under attack. Environmental protections have been dramatically eroded and funding slashed. The threat to climate change so dominates debate that other pressing and immediate environmental dangers struggle for attention. Few Australians know that our country has one of the worst records for species loss, with even the koala threatened; that microplastic pollution is so prevalent it can be found in the sediments of our river estuaries and nearby ocean floors; or that land clearing rates are just as severe as the notorious deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon.

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• Founder of Patagonia firm donates 1m acres of private land
  
• President Bachelet signs ‘unprecedented’ measure into law
  

Chile has created five sprawling national parks to preserve vast tracts of Patagonia – the culmination of more than two decades of land acquisition by the US philanthropists Doug Tompkins and Kristine McDivitt Tompkins and the largest donation of private land to government in South America.

The five parks, spanning 10.3m acres, were signed into law on Monday by Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet, launching a new 17-park route that stretches down the southern spine of Chile to Cape Horn.

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There has never been a more serious time to pay attention to Australia's environment, yet Bob Brown, Peter Garrett and other activists say protections have been slashed, funding cut and charities silenced

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Our new in-depth series focuses on the less-scrutinised threats to Australia’s natural places, and you can get involved

Threats to the Australian environment get reported in bursts – a contested development decision or a particular conservation campaign can thrust an issue into the headlines and on to the nightly news bulletins for weeks before a deal is crunched and a “solution” heralded.

Related: 'The Franklin would be dammed today': Australia's shrinking environmental protections

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