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New data reveals an extra 5,000 tonnes of waste is sent to landfill or incineration from November to March
Plastic bottles are reviled for polluting the oceans, leaching chemicalsinto drinks and being a source of microplastics in the human body.
They even cause problems with recycling. When plastic bottles are mixed with cardboard in recycling bins, in the wet winter months the sodden cardboard wraps around the plastic bottles and trays, causing havoc at recycling plants.
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More lobbyists for the controversial technology were present this year, despite debate about its viability
At least 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, known as Cop29, the Guardian can reveal.
That is five more CCS lobbyists than were present at last year’s climate talks, despite the overall number of participants shrinking significantly from about 85,000 to about 70,000.
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The grim negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have shown the need for reform of the UN annual global climate talks
‘Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9C of warming by 2100.” It is a bleak assessment of our planet’s future and could have been made by just about any environmental organisation on Earth.
In fact, they are the views of an international group of climate experts that highlight, in sharp detail, the manifest failings of the UN’s annual Cop climate summits, whose 29th iteration is now being staged in Baku, Azerbaijan. These talks, they said last week, are no longer fit for purpose and need an urgent overhaul.
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Conservation group warns species threatened by exploding populations of grey squirrels who carry lethal virus
Red squirrels will soon disappear from England unless the government funds a vaccine against squirrelpox, one of the biggest groups set up to protect the species has warned.
Conservationists say the English population of non-native grey squirrels has exploded this year, triggered by warmer winters which enable mating pairs to feed and breed all year round, and estimate that 70% are carrying squirrelpox, a virus which is lethal only to red squirrels.
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Far-right president may announce country’s departure from agreement after meeting Donald Trump
There is growing concern that Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, is set to announce his country’s departure from the Paris climate accord.
Earlier this week, negotiators from Milei’s government were ordered to leave the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, after just three days. Now, the Guardian understands that Milei is considering announcing a formal withdrawal from the agreement, and that a decision could be made after a formal meeting with Donald Trump.
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Otterspool, Merseyside: This is land built on waste-tips and spoil, but wildlife is thriving. Perhaps one day the otters will return, too
A chill autumn day and the turnstones were there. I knew they would be; they always are at Otterspool. With their tweed plumage, bright red legs and rattling, confiding chatter, they delight me every time. With their clockwork skittering and scattering, they are best seen at high tide, when they take refuge on the steep sandstone steps from the promenade down to the River Mersey. There is a pecking order, with each one choosing a different step. I want to know how step status is agreed.
Otterspool, in south Liverpool, was once just that – the Otter’s Pool. The otters, the pool and the apostrophe are long gone (we live in hope that the former will return), but today the area attracts much life, both human and non-human. Emerging from an place of 1950s municipal waste tips and spoil from the construction of the first Mersey tunnel, Otterspool is now a green place resurgent.
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Brown bears, introduced into Trentino province 20 years ago, have begun to clash with the local human population
Franca Gherardini used to cherish the sublime views from her home in Caldes, a village surrounded by forests on the slopes of the Brenta Dolomites in northern Italy’s Trentino province.
But now she tries to shut out the scene as much as possible, rolling down the window canopy in the morning to avoid looking towards the area where her son, Andrea Papi, 26, was killed by a bear.
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Wildlife experts in US west have found small aircraft are ideal for protecting humans and livestock from predators
The first time that Terry Vandenbos watched a bear run from a drone, on a spring day two years ago, he was chasing the animal himself. After he saw the grizzly cross a road near his property, the Montana rancher hopped on his all-terrain vehicle, planning to scare it away from his cattle if needed.
But the bear began sprinting away when he was still far from it, looking over its shoulder as it ran, and Vandenbos looked up too; overhead, a small drone was following the bear, its four propellers emitting a high-pitched whine as it sent the animal towards a nearby lake.
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Campaigners blame United Utilities for blighting famous lake with raw effluent
• United Utilities refuses to hand over data on sewage discharges into Windermere
A short stroll from Beatrix Potter’s former farmhouse in the Lake District are the waters of Cunsey Beck, nestling in the breathtaking landscape that inspired the tales of childhood favourites Jeremy Fisher and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
Campaigners say the once clear waters are regularly blighted by raw sewage from a nearby works. New figures obtained by the Observerreveal the Near Sawrey plant is alleged to have illegally discharged untreated sewage on 56 days from 2021 to 2023.
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Her last book sold 2m copies. Now the Native American ecologist is taking on capitalism. She talks about how the ‘gift economy’ could heal divisions across the US
When the ecologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer is in a city for work and starts to feel disconnected from the natural world, she likes to do a breathing exercise. She inhales and thinks about how she is breathing in the breath of plants. And then she exhales, and she thinks about how her breath, in turn, gives plants life. “That is a super fundamental way to recognise our reciprocity in the living world; that we are not separate,” she tells me, speaking on a video call from her farm near Syracuse, in upstate New York.
Once you begin to recognise yourself as symbiotically connected to plants, it might shift your views on politics, too. One of the great “delusions” of market capitalism, Kimmerer continues, is its notion of self-interest. Because how should you define the self? “If my self is the economic me, supposed to maximise my return on investment, that’s a very different notion than if my self is permeable, if it includes the trees whose oxygen I am breathing, and those birds, and the soil,” she says.
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