The Guardian
Product designers 'must reduce Pringles factor' to boost recycling
Recycling Association chief cites crisp brand as one of worst examples of multiple materials being used in single product
Product designers need to retreat from “the Pringles factor” in order to make their packaging more recyclable, an environmental expert has said.
Simon Ellin, the chief executive of the Recycling Association, which represents recyclers, pointed to the snack tube as a prime example of the failure to consider recycling in design – and listed a range of other offenders from Lucozade Sport drinks to whisky packaging.
Continue reading...Less than 1% of surplus food from farms and manufacturers used to feed hungry
A tiny proportion of excess food is being sent to charities and is instead ending up in landfill or left to rot, figures show
Less than 1% of edible surplus food produced by UK manufacturers and farms is being sent to charities to help feed the hungry, according to new figures.
Vegetables that are perfectly edible are being left to rot in the fields, and other foods not sold to retailers are put into anaerobic digestion or sent straight to landfill, the UK’s largest redistribution charity FareShare has warned.
Continue reading...Plant hunters discovered 1,700 new species last year
From a Turkish parsnip to Madagascar coffee beans and roses in China, the discoveries offer the prospect of better crops, medicinal uses and new garden displays
From new parsnips and herbs to begonias and roses, the world’s plant hunters discovered more than 1,700 new species last year, offering the prospect of better crops and new colours and scents in the garden.
The State of the World’s Plants report, led by scientists at the Royal Botanical Garden Kew in the UK and published on Thursday, reveals a cornucopia of new plants and assesses the risk to the plant world from pests and invasive species.
Continue reading...Toxin-tolerant plants take root in colliery's spoil tips
Middlehope Moor, Weardale Miners who left waste rock beside the burn created a perfect habitat for the spring sandwort
On a grey day in a tree-less landscape, buffeted by a bone-chilling north-easterly wind, only the calls of curlews and oystercatchers that had returned here to breed suggested this must be spring.
But when we reached the stony, undulating, ground near the entrance to the “governor and company’s level”, a mine tunnel driven into a hillside almost two centuries ago by the London Lead Company, we found an infallible floral indicator of the season.
Continue reading...Adani offered $320m deferment of Carmichael coal export royalties
Queensland premier will neither confirm nor deny deal under which full royalties due would only be paid in later years
The Queensland government has reportedly offered Adani a royalties pause worth up to $320m as the company decides whether to proceed with its Carmichael mine project.
The deal, in which Adani would pay a discounted $2m a year on exported coal in the mine’s early years, could be signed this week and has concerned some senior Labor figures, the ABC has reported.
Continue reading...Australian oil well leaked into ocean for months – but spill kept secret
Offshore oil and gas regulator says there was a 10,500-litre spill in April 2016 but refuses to reveal where it occurred or company responsible
An offshore oil and gas well in Australia leaked oil continuously into the ocean for two months in 2016, releasing an estimated 10,500 litres. But the spill was never made public by the regulator and details about the well, its whereabouts and operator remain secret.
In its annual offshore performance report released this week, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority included a mention of a 10,500-litre spill in April 2016. It provided limited details about, noting that it had been identified during a routine inspection.
Continue reading...Air pollution kills more people in the UK than in Sweden, US and Mexico
WHO figures show people in Britain are more likely to die from dirty air than those living in some other comparable countries
People in the UK are 64 times as likely to die of air pollution as those in Sweden and twice as likely as those in the US, figures from the World Health Organisation reveal.
Britain, which has a mortality rate for air pollution of 25.7 for every 100,000 people, was also beaten by Brazil and Mexico – and it trailed far behind Sweden, the cleanest nation in the EU, with a rate of 0.4.
Continue reading...Clothes moths are driving me mad. How can I be free of these insidious pests? | Suzanne Moore
I know there are much bigger and more terrible things in the world, but these tiny creatures have come to represent a sense of doom and decay
Here they are again, always in my peripheral vision, the tiny papery things that make me feel neither strong nor stable. Indeed, I would probably vote for anyone who vowed to get rid of the clothes moths that I always think have gone, until they come fluttering back. Everything may feel manageable but they are here to undermine that – by the time you see them, the damage is done. They serve only to remind you of that, for moths don’t eat anything at all – the larvae do. Once you see them, you have lost and they have won.
They acquire all the nutrition they will ever need as caterpillars. They live on nothing. Their mouth parts have atrophied, their only goal is to reproduce. Every year I think I have stopped their life cycle, that I am in control – and every year it turns out that I haven’t. They are eating their way through clothes that are loved and unloved. The world appears infested and the world is warming, so they appear more and more.
Continue reading...Pesticide that Trump's EPA refused to ban blamed for sickening farm workers
Nearly 50 farm workers experienced nausea and vomiting apparently caused by a pesticide whose scheduled ban was overturn by the Trump administration
A pesticide that was set to be banned before the Trump administration reversed course has been blamed for causing sickness to nearly 50 farm workers who were exposed to the chemical in California.
Spraying of Vulcan, a brand name chemical, on an orchard southwest of Bakersfield led to the pesticide drifting to a neighboring property operated by Dan Andrews Farms. A total of 47 farm workers were harvesting cabbage at the time and subsequently complained of a bad odor, nausea and vomiting. One was taken to hospital with four other workers visiting doctors in the following days.
Continue reading...Whitley Awards for nature conservation 2017 winners – in pictures
Finalists for his year’s prestigious ‘green Oscars’ include a Turkish conservationist working with fisherman to create a marine reserve and a woman partnering with prisoners to protect the critically endangered Philippine cockatoo
Continue reading...Fossil fuel lobby could be forced to declare interests at UN talks
Developing countries score significant victory for greater transparency from outside parties at UN climate negotiations
A push from developing countries to force fossil fuel lobbyists taking part in UN climate talks to declare their conflicts of interest has won a significant battle against resistance from the world’s biggest economies including the European Union, US and Australia.
The UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) has agreed to enhance “openness and transparency” for outside parties and will accept submissions from any stakeholder – which could be any person or group affected by climate change or climate change policy – on how it could do so.
Continue reading...Mersey feat: world's biggest wind turbines go online near Liverpool
UK cements its position as global leader in wind technology as increasing scale drives down costs
The planet’s biggest and most powerful wind turbines have begun generating electricity off the Liverpool coast, cementing Britain’s reputation as a world leader in the technology.
Danish company Dong Energy has just finished installing 32 turbines in Liverpool Bay that are taller than the Gherkin skyscraper, with blades longer than nine London buses. Dong Energy, the windfarm’s developer, believes these machines herald the future for offshore wind power: bigger, better and, most importantly, cheaper.
Continue reading...Tank-like oil beetle hauls out to the highway
Dartmoor A lone traveller, the beetle made progress, jointed legs paddling the ground as it hefted its giant abdomen onward
At the western edge of Dartmoor high terrain that rises in exposed granite peaks gives way to the gentle swell of undulating farmland. Step from rough ground over the cattle grids that mark the national park perimeter and the verges become thick with vegetation.
In warm weather the roadside flowers are busy with flying insects, and I take lazy pleasure in knowing such diversity is beyond my naming abilities.
Continue reading...Check out the fussy falcons of Nottingham | Brief letters
Warnings about young people dropping off the electoral register were issued a long time ago (Report, 15 May). The next government needs to take swift action and automatically register 16-year-olds when they receive their national insurance number. Policies were set out last year by the all-party parliamentary party in its report on the Missing Millions and have cross-party support. Urgent action is needed so that next generation of citizens are included in the democratic process.
Dr Toby James
Senior fellow to the all-party parliamentary group on democratic participation, University of East Anglia
• Mrs May’s battlebus has lettering in the Swiss typeface Akzidenz. Voters may wish that Akzidenz will happen (but it doesn’t translate so helpfully). Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche uses the British Gill Italic, which leans to the right. Read the runes.
Richard Hollis
London
NY Times’ Stephens can’t see the elephant in the room on climate change | Dana Nuccitelli
Hint: the elephant is the obstructionist political party’s symbol
There was tremendous outcry when the New York Times hired opinion columnist Bret Stephens, who has a long history of making misinformed comments about climate change. Stephens didn’t assuage those fears when he devoted his first column to punching hippies, absurdly suggesting that our lack of progress on climate policy is a result of greens being too mean to climate deniers.
Stephens lamentably stayed on the subject of climate change in his second and third Times columns as well. In those pieces, he used corn-based ethanol subsidies as an example of where climate policy has gone wrong:
Continue reading...Toxic timebomb: why we must fight back against the world's plague of plastic | Jennifer Lavers and Alexander Bond
We must reduce our dependence on plastics, especially single-use items, and seek out alternative materials
• 38 million pieces of plastic waste found on uninhabited South Pacific island
It’s everywhere. From the Mariana Trench to the floor of the Arctic Ocean, on tropical beaches and polar coasts. It’s in wildlife, seafood, sea salt and even on the surface of Mars. The world is blighted by plastic. Up to 12m tonnes of the stuff enters the world’s oceans every year (that’s one new tonne of plastic every three to 10 seconds) and it doesn’t go to that magical place called “away”.
Once in the oceans, it can float around for years, or even decades, before being swallowed by a bird or a whale. During that time, it can travel tens of thousands of kilometres, all the while absorbing contaminants from the sea water, concentrating them like a sponge. When wildlife ingest plastic, the brew of toxic chemicals can be transferred to the animal’s tissues with potentially dangerous consequences.
Continue reading...38m pieces of plastic found on uninhabited Henderson Island – video report
Henderson Island in the South Pacific Ocean is believed to be one of the world’s worst polluted places. Australian scientists say they found its beaches littered with about 38m pieces of plastic during an investigation in 2015. The island is in the path of the South Pacific Gyre, an ocean current known for its accumulation of plastic debris
Continue reading...10 years of Ciwem Environmental Photographer of the Year – in pictures
The Charted Institute for Waste and Environmental Management (Ciwem) Photographer of the Year competition was set up 10 years ago to chronicle human impact on the natural environment. The 2017 competition launches this week and judges include Stephen Fry, Ben Fogle and Steve Backshall
Chinese appetite for totoaba fish bladder may kill off rare vaquita
Only 30 vaquita are left in Gulf of Mexico as pirate fishermen net them when fishing for highly valued totoaba maws
The world’s rarest marine mammal is on the verge of extinction due to the continuing illegal demand in China for a valuable fish organ, an undercover investigation has revealed.
There are no more than 30 vaquita – a five-foot porpoise – left in the northern Gulf of Mexico today and they could be extinct within months, conservationists have warned. The population has been all but eradicated by pirate fishermen catching the large totoaba fish and killing the vaquita in the process.
Continue reading...Down with the bilberry bees
Buxton, Derbyshire They look like animate furry fruit bonbons. The queens hatch late and their preferred food is bilberry and heather
After the most rainless spring that I can recall, the vegetation on the moor tops is frazzled to an August tinder. The full sweep of folded slopes look grey rather than the usual heathery brown, and even the deepest gullies are dry bottomed and crunchy underfoot. Yet the strong north-easterlies have kept the entire season freeze-dried, and there are almost no swallows through the blue overhead, while the pipits, parachuting down in song display, whose notes are flat at best of times, were picked to desultory shreds by the currents of cold air.
It was so dry that I could at least lie among the bilberry bushes to escape the wind and there, in a condition of enforced sloth, I chanced upon a search method for the creature I’d come to see.
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