Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Determined to find a solution to the discarded plastic nets, Ian Falconer found a way to convert them into filament for 3D printing, for use in products from motorbikes to sunglasses Ian Falconer kept thinking about the heaps of discarded plastic fishing nets he saw at Newlyn harbour near his home in Cornwall. “I thought ‘it’s such a waste’,” he says. “There has to be a better solution than it all going into landfill.” Falconer, 52, who studied environmental and mining geology at university, came up with a plan: shredding and cleaning the worn out nets, melting the plastic down and converting it into filament to be used in 3D printing. He then built a “micro-factory” so that the filament could be made into useful stuff. Continue reading...

Perennial runner up finally claims the crown in the biennial Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll, ahead of Baudin’s black cockatoo and gang-gang cockatoo More Australian bird of the year content Download your free official 2025 bird of the year poster Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The tawny frogmouth has been named Australia’s 2025 bird of the year, after taking second place in the biennial Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll three times running. More than 310,000 votes were cast after polling opened on 6 October and the tawny led the charge from the start, despite being hotly and persistently pursued by two cockatoos: the Baudin’s black cockatoo and the ever-popular gang-gang. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Greenhouse gases from wildfires at sixth highest level on record after blazes in large areas of the Americas and Africa Carbon emissions from extreme wildfires increased by 9% last year to reach the sixth highest level on record. Intense fast-spreading fires devastated huge swathes of South America’s rainforests, dry forests and wetlands and decimated Canada’s northern forests, pushing up the levels of damaging greenhouse gases. Continue reading...

Researchers say carbon emissions change in Queensland tropical rainforests may have global climate implications Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Australian tropical rainforest trees have become the first in the world to switch from being a carbon sink to an emissions source due to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions. The change, which applies to the trees’ trunks and branches but not the roots system, began about 25 years ago, according to new research published in Nature. Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...