Seven local authorities in England have waste figures highlighted as government launches circular economy measures
New government data published on Monday showed that 95% of non-recycled waste in Essex is sent to landfill, as ministers launched their plans for a circular economy.
The data revealed that seven local authorities in England reported sending more than 40% of their residual waste to landfill in 2022 to 2023, with Essex county council at the top of the list.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/30/2024 - 13:04
12/30/2024 - 09:00
Part of their body is hollow, this amplifies the sound. The longer you listen to their sound, the more they seem to sync up
Of all the languages’ words for cicada, Croatian’s might be the best: cvrčak, pronounced: tvr-chak. The sound it makes is tvr-chi tvr-chi. I have a Croatian friend who taught me part of a poem – Cicada – when we were in high school. It is by Vladimir Nazor, who was Croatia’s first head of state. The first stanza includes the satisfyingly low on vowels and onomatopoeic phrase: “cvrči, cvrči cvrčak” (pronounced “tvrchi, tvrchi tvrchak”) – which translates as “chirp, chirp cicada”.
And the cricket chirps, chirps on the knot of the black spruce
Its deafening trochee, its sonorous, heavy iambic …
It is noon. – Like water, it spills out in silence.
A solar dithyramb.
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12/30/2024 - 07:00
Bumper grain crop set to weigh heavily as farmers count costs of seed, fertilizer – and effects of possible trade war
Many US midwestern grain farmers will lose money this year after reaping a bumper crop, and the outlook for their future income is bleak.
US farmers harvested some of the largest corn and soybean crops in history this year. Big harvests traditionally weigh on crop prices because of plentiful supply. And those price pressures comes at a time when costs remain persistently high to grow corn and soybeans, the US’s most valuable crops.
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12/30/2024 - 04:35
UN secretary general, António Guterres, says ‘we must exit this road to ruin’ in annual new year message
The world has endured a “decade of deadly heat”, with 2024 capping 10 years of unprecedented temperatures, the UN has said.
Delivering his annual new year message, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the 10 hottest years on record had happened in the past decade, including 2024.
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12/30/2024 - 01:00
I wind my thread around their holes to create sculptures that connect with ageing and time
I have collected hundreds and hundreds of broken shells. I select them by holding them up to the sea, looking at the shape of them and deciding whether I want to work with them – and whether they will work with my thread.
To me, a shell that is broken is more interesting than a shell that is perfect. A broken shell has lived a life. I can see what the sea has done to it, what has happened to it on the rocks and stones. We spend so much of our lives searching for or trying to obtain perfection. But as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that perfection is unattainable – and the search isn’t worth it.
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12/30/2024 - 00:00
Part of an international initiative to combat organised wildlife crime, similar seizures in Australia and Norway have recovered more than 50,000 eggs
More than 6,000 eggs have been seized in the biggest haul of its kind in UK history, after police carried out raids in Scotland, South Yorkshire, Essex, Wales and Gloucester. Thousands of eggs were found secreted in attics, offices and drawers.
The UK raids took place in November as part of Operation Pulka, an international effort to tackle organised wildlife crime – specifically the taking, possessing and trading of wild birds’ eggs. The raids began in June 2023 in Norway, and resulted in 16 arrests and the seizure of 50,000 eggs. In Australia, an estimated 3,500 eggs have been seized, worth up to A$500,000 (£250,000).
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12/29/2024 - 19:01
Analysis of insurance payouts by Christian Aid reveals three-quarters of financial destruction occurred in US
The world’s 10 most costly climate disasters of 2024 caused $229bn in damages and killed 2,000 people, the latest annual analysis of insurance payouts has revealed.
Three-quarters of the financial destruction occurred in the world’s biggest economy, the US, where climate denier Donald Trump will become president next month.
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12/29/2024 - 09:00
Exclusive: Report finds poorer areas particularly affected by varying availability and cost of charging electric cars
The UK is at risk of a drastic slowdown in its transition to electric cars because of big disparities in the availability and cost of charging points, especially in poorer areas, a report says.
The study, by the consultancy Stonehaven, argues that given rapid advances in batteries and car range, persuading more people to move to electric vehicles is now less an issue of technology than one of “urban management and social equity”.
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12/29/2024 - 06:00
A car is often essential in the US but while owning a vehicle is better than not for life satisfaction, a study has found, having to drive too much sends happiness plummeting
The United States, with its enormous highways, sprawling suburbs and neglected public transport systems, is one of the most car-dependent countries in the world. But this arrangement of obligatory driving is making many Americans actively unhappy, new research has found.
The car is firmly entrenched as the default, and often only, mode of transport for the vast majority of Americans, with more than nine in 10 households having at least one vehicle and 87% of people using their cars daily. Last year, a record 290m vehicles were operated on US streets and highways.
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12/29/2024 - 03:00
In 2024 horticulturalists made single biggest introduction of rare seeds to collection in the past decade
The Codonopsis clematidea smells like a skunk, the Tulipa toktogulica has a peculiar, elongated bulb and the Fritillaria imperialis is exceptionally tall. But to the horticulturalists who journeyed to remote alpine meadows and forests to find these rare flowers growing in the wild this year, they are nothing less than the “jewels of the earth”.
Now, the seeds from these and hundreds of other wild plants that were collected in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan have entered the living collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
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