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Company convicted of trying to export used nappies and other contaminated materials illegally
One of the UK’s biggest waste firms has lost a case in the court of appeal to overturn a criminal conviction for exporting dirty waste to China.
The Environment Agency, which brought a successful criminal prosecution a year ago against Biffa Waste Services Ltd, which was convicted of trying to send used nappies and other contaminated materials illegally to China, welcomed Friday’s ruling and said exports of this kind of illegal waste “blighted the lives and environment of people overseas”.
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The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a hatching crocodile and Mexican grey wolf cubs
Scottish court rules that environmental group defied court order banning the protest
Greenpeace has been fined £80,000 after a Scottish court found it guilty of the “wilful defiance” of a court order banning it from occupying a North Sea oil rig.
Lady Wolffe, sitting in the court of session in Edinburgh, said Greenpeace UK had deliberately broken an interdict, or injunction, against occupying a platform owned by the US contractor Transocean in June 2019.
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Frequency of heatwaves and cumulative intensity has risen through the decades, research finds
Heatwaves have increased in both length and frequency in nearly every part of the world since the 1950s, according to what is described as the first study to look at the issue at a regional level.
The study found the escalation in heatwaves varied around the planet, with the Amazon, north-eastern Brazil, west Asia (including parts of the subcontinent and central Asia) and the Mediterranean all experiencing more rapid change than, for example, southern Australia and north Asia. The only inhabited region where there was not a trend was in the central United States.
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Tees Valley mayor hails rental scheme as ‘clean energy, socially distant mode of transport’
Residents of Middlesbrough in north-east England will be the first in the UK to legally ride electric scooters on the open road when the law changes on Saturday, as the government struggles to prevent a recovery from coronavirus based on cars.
Though e-scooters have been whizzing illegally around many UK cities for the past few years, the pandemic has prompted the government to speed up plans to pilot public rental schemes.
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Areas with a drier climate have seen greater loss of biodiversity from global warming
Dry tropical forests are more vulnerable to the impacts of global heating than had been thought, according to new research, with wildlife and plants at severe risk of harm from human impacts.
Some tropical forests are very wet, but others thrive in a drier climate and scientists had thought these drier forests would be better adapted to drought, and therefore more able to cope with the effects of the climate crisis.
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Nicky Woo has won the Marilyn Stafford award 2020 with her project As the Water Comes, documenting rising sea levels in Saint-Louis
Communities in Bristol are devising their own solutions to problems linked with the city’s role in slavery
During lockdown, the wild grass in Bristol’s Greenbank cemetery has grown higher than many of the tombstones, transforming the land above the dead into a gothic meadow. Nominally closed to the public before 4pm each day, the grounds are a popular location for joggers, strollers and dog walkers, who enter through a gap in the fence. For Zakiya Mckenzie, a local writer, this is the furthest from home she has been in three months, but she has chosen this spot for an interview because of its historic symbolism – a subject that has has come to the fore like never before in the wake of the pandemic.
She leads me down wooded slopes to a waist-high monument set in a glade, a little apart from the other tombs. It is the relocated grave of a group of Baptist people, including Fanny Coker, who was born a slave in the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1767 and died in Bristol in 1820, serving as a housemaid to one of Bristol’s wealthiest plantation-owning families.
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A fast growing mountain of toxic e-waste is polluting the planet and damaging health, says new report
At least $10bn (£7.9bn) worth of gold, platinum and other precious metals are dumped every year in the growing mountain of electronic waste that is polluting the planet, according to a new UN report.
A record 54m tonnes of “e-waste” was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21% in five years, the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor report found. The 2019 figure is equivalent to 7.3kg for every man, woman and child on Earth, though use is concentrated in richer nations. The amount of e-waste is rising three times faster than the world’s population, and only 17% of it was recycled in 2019.
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Thames Water overflow pipe pumped waste for 1,000 hours into London wetlands last year
Raw sewage was discharged for more than 1,000 hours from a Thames Water overflow pipe into an environmental wetland at the Olympic Park last year, the Guardian can reveal.
The combined sewer overflow (CSO) at Mulberry Court pumped untreated waste 91 times into the waterway that feeds into the River Lea. To April this year, the same CSO has so far discharged for 34 hours in 20 incidents.
Continue reading...The first person to get blood plasma as a coronavirus treatment explains why she's taking part in the trial.
Landmarks will be lit up blue ahead of a nationwide applause celebrating 72 years of the health service.
A study of patients in Italy suggests the symptoms improve with time for most people.
By piecing together statements and claims, we have created a chronology of events.
The figures from the ONS are the first to reveal the full toll of the epidemic in care homes.
But data for regional drive-thru centres and mobile units in England show significant progress made.
The data in England was missing for weeks, leading to concerns about the local spread of the virus.
The bio-detection dogs are already trained to detect odours of cancers, malaria and Parkinson's disease.
A Swedish study found twice as many people had protective T-cells as tested positive for antibodies.
There has been a huge increase in the number of LGBT people seeking suicide-prevention support.
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