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Producers promoted chemical recycling – processes used to break plastics into constituent molecules – but knew of limitations
Plastic producers have pushed “advanced recycling” as a salve to the plastic waste crisis despite knowing for years that it is not a technically or economically feasible solution, a new report argues.
Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, refers to a variety of processes used to break plastics into their constituent molecules. The industry has increasingly promoted these technologies, as public concern about the environmental and health effects of plastic pollution has grown. Yet the rollout of these technologies has been plagued by problems, according to a new analysis from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group.
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Padley Gorge, Derbyshire: In among the fresh lime-green oak leaves is a spotted flycatcher. I watch for movement, but there is none – yet
Even midweek, warm spring weather brings crowds to the top of Padley Gorge. Sheffielders bask on patches of grass beside the peaty trickle of Burbage Brook. The ice‑cream van on the road above does brisk trade. Kids shriek as they splash in the water. The lack of rain has brought out fire notices: “No barbecues”; and, in a sign of the times, “No shisha”. There’s a faint smell of weed, but that’s about it on the combustibles.
The world below is wholly different. Here the stream bed drops away and its banks become thronged with oaks. These are not the straight-stemmed specimens of manicured parkland. They are demotic, stunted, twisted, writhing wonders that jostle and clash, a labyrinth of shade and mystery. Paths run either side of the stream, and from my perch I can look down on small groups of people moving through this otherworld, occasionally looking up from the rocky path to gaze at the canopy.
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The University of Queensland system is intended to give policymakers idea of how species traverse the oceans and what it will take to save them
Off the east coast of Florida, female loggerhead turtles swim more than 1,000km north, hugging the edge of the continental shelf to get to feeding grounds.
Humpback whales move through Moreton Bay off the Brisbane coast in Australia, on their way to feed around the Balleny Islands more than 4,000km away off the Antarctic coastline, where wandering albatross circle above, travelling 1,000km a day.
Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email
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Small-scale schemes are replacing dirty diesel with clean electricity in remote areas – and ensuring a just transition
When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, Roxana Borda Mamani had to leave Mexico, where she was studying for her degree in rural development and food security, and return to her remote village in the Peruvian Amazon.
At the time, the Indigenous community in Alto Mishagua had neither an internet connection nor a reliable energy source. “How am I going to study?” Borda asked. “With energy from the sun,” replied her friend, a fellow member of the Latin American Observatory for Energy Geopolitics at the Brazil-based Federal University of Latin American Integration (Unila).
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Jaguars, giant armadillos and ocelots among species threatened by shrinking habitat in one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world
In the Gran Chaco forest, vast green expanses – home to jaguars, giant armadillos and howler monkeys – have turned to fields of dust. The forest once brimmed with life, says Bashe Nuhem, a member of the Indigenous Qom community, but then came a road, and soon after that logging companies. “It was an invasion. Loggers came without any consultation and families moved away. Those that stayed were left with only a cemetery of trees,” she says.
The Gran Chaco is South America’s second-largest forest after the Amazon; its 100m hectares (247m acres) stretch across Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia. It is also one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the world – host to more than 3,400 species of plants, 500 birds, 150 mammals, 120 reptiles and 100 amphibians.
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Weardale, North Pennines: This one is showing its worth, teeming with aphids, ready to kickstart a vast and far-reaching food web
Sunbeams flicker through the translucent young foliage of the sycamore canopy overhead. A shadow darts among them: a blackcap, pecking aphids from the underside of the leaves.
The insects hatched from overwintering eggs in early April, congregating on loosening bud scales, waiting for tender new leaves to unfurl. Now there are legions of them, aligned along leaf veins, hypodermic stylets plugged in, siphoning sweet sap while simultaneously giving birth to more. They stand with regimented parade-ground spacing, just close enough to stay in touch with their long antennae. A shiver of fidgeting sweeps through the colony as the blackcap approaches.
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Greens co-leader to table private member’s bill on a worker-led green transition in attempt to seize narrative back from Nigel Farage’s party
The Labour government is standing back and letting Reform UK “sell the lie” that net zero will harm working people, Carla Denyer, the Greens’ co-leader has said as she prepares to step back from the role she has held for four years.
Denyer, who will not contest this summer’s party leadership re-election process, told the Guardian that she wanted to focus on her Bristol Central constituency, and to campaign on particular issues, including a net zero policy shaped to the needs of workers.
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Far right accused of misinformation over turbines at Reinhardswald, which has left local people divided
Deep in the woods that inspired the Brothers Grimm, past the tower from which Rapunzel threw down her hair and the castle in which Sleeping Beauty slumbered, lies a construction site that the far right has declared a crime against national soil and identity.
In this quiet corner of Germany’s “fairytale forest”, workers are clearing land and building access roads to erect 18 wind turbines.
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Many saw the beloved tree that Adam Carruthers and Daniel Graham cut down as a part of north-east England’s DNA
“It was just a tree,” said a mystified Adam Carruthers, one of the two men who illegally cut down the tree at Sycamore Gap in the early hours of a stormy night nearly two years ago. “It was almost as if someone had been murdered.”
Carruthers was right about the reaction to the felling. Many likened its loss to that of a good friend or relative. Its destruction prompted feelings of sadness, grief and then blind fury. Some people wept.
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Despite attempts to build resilience by improving infrastructure and first response, extreme weather events and US aid cuts have left many feeling vulnerable
When the monsoon rains came last September, they swept away most of the village of Panauti, in the foothills of the Nepali Himalayas. The Roshi River overflowed after the unprecedented rainfall, triggering landslides and destroying most of the roads and bridges.
Peering through the thick blanket of relentless rain “felt like waiting for morning to arrive so we could see the world again”, says Bishnu Humagain. “We lost everything – our home, our agriculture, and all of our belongings.”
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