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Exclusive: Almost 300,000 hours of raw effluent poured into waterways, figures show, up from 196,000 in 2023
A record 50% more raw sewage was discharged into rivers in England by Thames Water last year compared with the previous 12 months, data seen by the Guardian reveals.
Thames, the largest of the privatised water companies, which is teetering on the verge of collapse with debts of £19bn, was responsible for almost 300,000 hours of raw sewage pouring into waterways in 2024 from its ageing sewage works, according to the data. This compares with 196,414 hours of raw effluent dumped in 2023.
The Amersham balancing tanks in Buckinghamshire, which are supposed to safely store excess sewage after heavy rain, discharged 4,842 hours of raw sewage in 2024.
Amersham was the scene of the longest unbroken individual discharge, when the equivalent of 154 days of raw sewage spilled into the River Misbourne, a chalk stream, last year.
Marlborough sewage treatment works dumped raw sewage for 2,786 hours.
At the Chesham sewage treatment works there were 2,681 hours of sewage discharges.
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Ana Toni also criticises the UK’s plans to slash overseas aid to fund defence spending
Countries looking to boost their national security through rearmament or increased defence spending must also bolster their climate efforts or face more wars in the future, one of the leaders of the next UN climate summit has warned.
Some countries could decide to include climate spending in their defence budgets, suggested Ana Toni, Brazil’s chief executive of the Cop30 summit.
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Some of the caves I dive in are hundreds of thousands of years old and the marine life is unique. But they can be very dangerous places
Cave diving is like swimming through the history of the planet. There are remains of both humans and animals but also stalactites and stalagmites. These cannot form when the cave is flooded, so you can see when parts of it were submerged and when it was dry.
Yet when I’m in a cave, time does not tick. There is no natural light, so the cave looks the same, whether it’s midday or midnight. If you cave dive without the right training, equipment and mindset, it can be a very dangerous place. I have a very meditative focus when I’m down there. I live in the now. I cannot think about anything else but what is happening in the cave. I find that very soothing and relaxing.
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Deal will restrict fishing near colonies on Robben Island and Bird Island for 10 years, after long debate between industry and conservationists
Efforts to stop the critically endangered African penguin from going extinct took a step forward on Tuesday after South African conservationists and fishing industry groups reached a legal settlement on no-fishing zones around six of the penguins’ major breeding colonies.
Sardine and anchovy fishing will not be allowed for 12 miles (20km) around the penguin colony off Cape Town on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, and Bird Island, across the bay from Gqeberha, also known as Port Elizabeth. There will be more limited closures around four other colonies, according to a court order formalising the agreement.
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Break in cross-party consensus on issue to be announced on Tuesday
Kemi Badenoch is dropping her party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, as she launches the Conservatives’ widest policy review in a generation.
The Tory leader will give a speech on Tuesday in which she will argue that hitting Britain’s legally binding climate target is “impossible”, abandoning one of the most significant policies enacted by her recent predecessor Theresa May.
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Revealed: Edelman worked for Brazilian trade group accused of pushing for environmental rollbacks in Amazon
Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency, is in talks to work with the Cop30 team organising the UN climate summit in the Amazon later this year despite its prior connections to a major trade group accused of lobbying to roll back measures to protect the area from deforestation, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
The summit is set to take place in November in the city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged by deforestation linked to Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. For the first time, the talks will be “at the epicenter of the climate crisis”, the summit’s president wrote last week. “As the Cop comes to the Amazon, forests will naturally be a central topic,” he added.
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New study finds dolphins, including critically endangered Burrunan, have among the world’s highest levels of chemicals banned decades ago
It has been half a century since governments around the world, faced with overwhelming evidence, started banning early generations of what we now call forever chemicals. Industrial chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and the notorious pesticide DDT had been widely used – DDT is credited with saving millions of lives from insect-borne disease, while PCBs were vital in electrical safety – before it was understood that they were serious environmental toxins.
“The problem with these legacy contaminants,” environmental scientist Chantel Foord says, “is that they’re amazing in our products because they don’t break down, but they’re equally devastating in our environment because they don’t break down.”
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Witnessing near-miss roadkill on a daily basis makes me wonder if we can be better neighbors to wildlife
Heart racing, I hold my breath and brace to witness the impact.
The spindly fawn crosses first, tottering its way across the two-lane artery that borders my house. I watch a truck approaching in the opposite direction and wait for it to slow down. Will it?
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Vast Simandou complex has 2.8bn tonnes of iron ore deposits, but many worry about its environmental cost
Deep in the south of Guinea lies Simandou, an impressive mountain range with a lucrative underbelly: the world’s largest untapped iron ore deposits, amounting to an estimated 2.8bn tonnes.
In 2013, it was at the centre of one of the biggest mining financial scandals in history, stemming from an ownership tussle over development licenses awarded in the 1990s during the regime of the west African country’s former authoritarian president Lansana Conté .
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From the earthquake-defying joints that support a 13th-century temple to the delicacy of sashimono puzzle boxes, a new exhibition shows off the myriad possibilities of this centuries-old craft
Do you know your ant’s head from your shell mouth? Or your cogged lap from your scarfed gooseneck? These are just some of the mind-boggling array of timber jointing techniques on display in a new exhibition spotlighting the meticulous craft of Japanese carpentry. The basement gallery of London’s Japan House has been transformed into a woody wonder world of chisels and saws, mortises and tenons, and brackets of infinite intricacy, alongside traditional clay plastering, shoji paper screen making and tatami mat weaving. It is a dazzling display of the phenomenal skills behind centuries of timber architecture and joinery, celebrating elite master carpenters with the spiritual reverence of a high priesthood.
“In Japan we have a deep respect for our forests,” says curator Nishiyama Marcelo, who heads up the team at the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum in Kobe, a temple to the history of Japanese joinery. “If a carpenter uses a 1,000-year-old tree, they must be prepared to take on more than 1,000 years of responsibility for the building that they create.”
It is a momentous duty, and one we should heed. As debates around the embodied carbon of the built environment dominate the construction industry, there could be no more timely exhibition to remind us of the importance of designing with longevity, care and repair in mind. Numerous specialist tools have been shipped over from the Kobe museum, along with a team of master carpenters who have built a remarkable series of structures in the gallery, replicating parts of buildings that have lasted for hundreds of years in the face of wind, rain, snow and earthquakes.
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