Retailer responds to concerns about environmental impact of millions of e-cigarettes thrown away each week
Superdrug will stop selling disposable vapes in all its UK and Ireland stores after concerns about the environmental damage from millions of single-use e-cigarettes.
Brands such as Vuse GO and Flavaah Bars would no longer be sold, the retailer said, adding that it would have the stock completely cleared by the end of the year. Superdrug said it sold an average of 1,300 units of single-use vapes a week in stores and did not sell them online.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/22/2023 - 09:16
Brazil's supreme court has blocked efforts to dramatically strip back Indigenous land rights in what activists called a historic victory for the South American country's original inhabitants. Nine of the court's 11 members voted against what rights groups had called the 'time-limit trick' - an agribusiness-backed attempt to prevent Indigenous communities claiming land they did not physically occupy in 1998
Brazil supreme court rules in favor of Indigenous land rights in historic win
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09/22/2023 - 06:05
Government accused of ‘ignoring science’ as it considers allowing use of a toxic neonicotinoid
Bee-killing pesticides have been found at dangerous levels in English rivers, as the government considers allowing the use of one that is banned in the EU.
Environmental groups and farmers are waiting to hear whether a toxic neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam, will be approved by the government for English sugar beet farms for a fourth consecutive year. Wildlife campaigners say it is “unacceptable” that ministers have “ignored the science” and allowed the use of these dangerous chemicals.
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09/22/2023 - 05:00
A proposed federal law would wipe out existing state laws that prevent farm animal brutality and the spread of disease
Many animals raised for meat in the US spend their lives in spaces barely bigger than their own bodies. Pregnant pigs are held in gestation crates so small they can only sit, stand or lie down in them. Chickens are packed into battery cages so crowded they often can’t extend their wings. And calves raised for veal are packed into crates without enough room to turn around.
While these conditions are part of what makes factory-farmed meat so cheap in the US, a growing number of consumers are rejecting these brutal practices, with more than a dozen states even enacting their own laws to ban them. But a new proposal in Congress would reverse these advances in animal welfare, threatening to upend years of work – and victories – by animal rights activists, farmers and food safety advocates.
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09/22/2023 - 02:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including hungry bears, a goliath grouper and a dew-covered dragonfly
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09/22/2023 - 01:13
There is nothing Australians like more than running over living things in their car
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09/22/2023 - 00:00
Exclusive: wildfires, once rare in the UK, more than doubled last year to nearly 24,000 with devastating effects on wildlife habitats
Wildfires recorded by UK fire brigades surged in 2022 amid extreme heat and droughts, new figures show, as a growing number of fire services invest in new equipment to deal with the rising fire risk due to climate change.
Figures obtained by the Guardian under Freedom of Information Act requests show the number of wildfires recorded by fire brigades in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland more than doubled last year, reaching 23,699 in 2022, compared with 9,307 the year before.
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09/22/2023 - 00:00
IEA says firms are announcing more projects but waiting for government support before investing
The global push for clean hydrogen is being held back by rising costs and “lagging” policy support from governments, a report has found.
Announcements of low-emission hydrogen projects are rapidly expanding but developers are waiting for government support before investing in them, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The report found hydrogen made through processes that are clean or less polluting account for less than 1% of the gas’s total production and use.
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09/21/2023 - 23:49
Bifenthrin was found in water, sediment and crayfish samples from Hazelbrook Creek, the Environment Protection Authority says
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An insecticide was the cause of a major crayfish kill in the Blue Mountains last month, the New South Wales environmental regulator has confirmed.
About 1,000 dead and dying giant spiny crayfish were found in a tributary of Hazelbrook Creek, near Horseshoe Falls, by a tour guide.
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09/21/2023 - 23:00
Critics decry lack of political will in Serbian capital to clean polluted air that residents say they can ‘feel and taste’
When the Yugoslav prime minister Džemal Bijedić promised to clean the country’s air at a conference in Belgrade in 1974, a reporter from the New York Times wrote that there was little hope of early relief for the city’s residents, who felt the pollution was getting worse. “The choking, sulphurous atmosphere of Belgrade and several other major Yugoslav cities reddens eyes, shreds nylon stockings and ruins pianissimo passages in the concert hall because of the nearly continuous coughing it causes in audiences,” the writer said.
Half a century later, residents of Belgrade are still holding their breath. “I have asthma and it’s killing me,” says Dejan, 40, a graffiti artist and MC who runs a paint shop in the industrial Palilula district. “It’s not smog, man, it’s a black fog. You cannot see.”
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