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Exclusive: UK’s biggest water company assessed risks before cutting back on cost of environmental work, investigation shows
Thames Water intentionally diverted millions of pounds pledged for environmental clean-ups towards other costs including bonuses and dividends, the Guardian can reveal.
The company, which serves more than 16 million customers, cut the funds after senior managers assessed the potential risks of such a move.
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- Read more from My DIY climate hack, a series on everyday people’s creative solutions to the climate crisis
Single-use plastic bags are not only wasteful,they cause serious damage to the environment and our health. Anne-Marie Bonneau, 56, is on a mission to put more reusable produce bags into the world. With the help of her sewing bee group, who make them from upcycled fabric, they’ve given more than 4,000 bags away.
As more cities and states implement plastic bag bans,Bonneau, who is known online as the Zero-Waste Chef, is helping people in California’s Silicon Valley make the move away from single-use plastic bags and spreading joy in the process.
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Every few years, a team from Brazilian state body Funai enter the forest hoping to find signs of the community in order to assesses their wellbeing and security. Here is what their most recent mission revealed
In 1999, when Jair Candor came across four huts, several hunting blinds and a fishing spot used by a previously unknown group of people, he immediately followed government policy and retreated.
Brazil’s 1988 constitution requires that such places – where uncontacted peoples or isolados are proven to be – be declared Indigenous territory and outsiders should avoid making unwanted contact with communities living there.
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Exclusive: Efforts to eradicate American mink help boost population of river-residing mammal in 11 areas of country
Water voles continue to decline in their distribution across Britain but there are signs of recovery in some regions, with populations bouncing back in 11 key areas, according to a report.
The river-residing mammal, which inspired Ratty in the Wind in the Willows, has revived in number in parts of Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and East Anglia thanks to targeted conservation work.
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For ecologists restoring the vast bogs of remote Karelia, wild reindeer are not just part of the environment but entwined with the ancient culture of the boreal forests
The Finnish folk musician Liisa Matveinen lives in a mustard-coloured house in Ilomantsi, 12 miles (20km) from the Russian border. Large books of folk songs line her walls. Sitting in her kitchen, Matveinen sings about a humble hunter going into the woods to find reindeer.
The song tells us how they were “honoured” providers of food, clothing and a sense of place, says Matveinen, who is recognised as a doyenne of Finnish folk music.
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Machynlleth, Powys: After many decades of the closest observation, good humour and protection, she will be much missed
Every other Saturday for 41 years, the word “Machynlleth” would alert nature-lovers to Bill Condry’s latest dispatch for the Guardian’s country diary. His milltir sgwâr – “square mile” – was the RSPB’s Ynys-hir nature reserve, of which he was warden.
On my way north this week, I turned in here. While there, two ravens quarrelled
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OECD’s Pisa program will measure the ability of students to take action in response to climate anxiety and ‘take their position and role in the global world’
“It’s going to get hot and everything’s going to be on fire and the oceans will rise,” says a year 11 student, Josh Dorian. “That’s just like the worst of the worst. How do you combat that?
“Well, you fix it, you stop it from happening, you take preventive measures,” says Josh, who is studying VCE environmental science at Mount Lilydale Mercy College, a high school in Melbourne’s outer east. “Involving kids in that is scary but I think it’s necessary.”
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Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Aceh in 2004. Now warning systems are in place, but some feel more could be done
It was just before 8am on Sunday 26 December 2004 when the earthquake struck. Abdul Rahem, 47, a fisher, was strolling along the beach, enjoying the morning breeze near to his home in Lam Awe, a sleepy fishing village on the coast of Aceh in Indonesia. He retreated to paddy fields when the violent shaking and swinging stopped. But it wasn’t until he heard the cries of neighbours that he realised something was seriously wrong. People were shouting: “The water is coming.”
Rahem raced home to get his elderly father, and supported him as they tried to flee along the broken road, which had been twisted and torn by the quake. His father urged him to go ahead and leave him, but Rahem refused. “I said, ‘No, no, no, if we die, we die together.’”
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Elevate the basics with cupboard staples and when it’s all finished store the leftovers quickly
Turning a dish from what you might have at the weekend to something special to impress guests can often be achieved just by adding something which is already in the fridge or cupboard.
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Critically endangered grasslands in Tasmania’s Midlands were being destroyed by agriculture, but an innovative partnership has protected the remaining ecosystem – and local farmers’ profits
When Tasmania’s lowland native grasslands were first recommended for national listing as a critically endangered ecosystem in 2007, mistrust between farmers and conservationists was high.
“We walked out of a stakeholder meeting in the Ross pub,” says Simon Foster, whose family have been farming on the Midlands since 1823.
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