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Exclusive: Leachate is tankered to treatment works where it mixes with sewage and industrial effluent
More than 750,000 tonnes of liquid from landfills are mixed with sewage at water treatment works and spread on farmland across England each year, it can be revealed.
Generated by hundreds of landfills across the country, leachate – the liquid that drains through landfill waste carrying a cocktail of chemicals – is regularly tankered to sewage treatment works, where it mixes with domestic sewage and industrial effluent to create sludge, also described as “biosolids”.
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Joint response by 25 bodies says proposals to speed up approval of new power plants weaken protection for public
A coalition of civil society groups is warning of the dangers of cutting safety regulations as the government pushes to “rip up the rules” to accelerate the construction of new nuclear power stations.
The 25 groups from communities neighbouring nuclear sites have submitted a joint response to a consultation by the nuclear regulatory taskforce, saying its proposals lack “both credibility and rigour”.
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Witton-le-Wear, County Durham: It’s a lucky dip of exotic and native plants, the old and the new. It will, of course, change again
It is almost exactly 49 years since we first botanised these gravel banks beside the River Wear, during the long summer drought of 1976. New to the area, we’d heard that the mounds of river‑smoothed pebbles, where the water table was always within reach of roots, were well known among local botanists as lucky-dip hunting grounds, even in the driest summers. A place colonised by a pioneering flora of native ruderal species, alongside a cosmopolitan community of exotic garden throw-outs washed up by receding floods in spring.
My diary for that day records monkey flower (Mimulus guttatus), a native to riverbanks in America’s Pacific north-west, but often cultivated upstream in Weardale’s cottage gardens. Memory can be treacherous, but my recollection is of drifts of its yellow flowers. Today, after half an hour’s searching, we found just one – monkey flower is an alien with a tenuous foothold here and has never become invasive, unlike some international arrivals. In the riverbank woodland, pink and white thickets of Himalayan balsam mingle with tall, yellow‑flowered drifts of Canadian golden rod and central European dotted loosestrife that all established a strong bridgehead then moved inland.
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Some days it can feel as if climate catastrophe is inevitable. But history is full of cases – such as the banning of whaling and CFCs – that show humanity can come together to avert disaster
Once upon a time, the world was powered by whale. Oil made from whale blubber burns cleanly and well, though it smells strongly of fish. It was, for a while, the perfect fuel. To meet the growing demand, whales were hunted almost to extinction.
And then we discovered that oil could come from the ground. Lamps once lit by rendered blubber were swiftly changed over to run on what Americans call kerosene and the British call paraffin. Later, those lamps were changed to run on electricity, and instead of burning oil in the lamps themselves, we began to burn it in power plants miles away.
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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In this week’s newsletter: a new Guardian documentary tells the story of a Rhode Island bird at risk, and what it takes to save a species
When you think about the climate crisis, Rhode Island in the United States is probably not the first place that springs to mind. But surprisingly, despite its mild climate, the state is one of the places where sea levels are rising at the fastest rates in the world.
For this week’s newsletter, I’d like to transport you to a serene ribbon of salt marsh there, to join the fight to save a species on the brink of extinction: the saltmarsh sparrow. Who is leading the fight? Septuagenarian and self-proclaimed “60s person”, Deirdre.
In the most untouched, pristine parts of the Amazon, birds are dying. Scientists may finally know why
Saving the world’s fattest parrot: can we vaccinate our rarest species before bird flu gets to them?
Collapsing bird numbers in North America prompt fears of ecological crisis – research
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A vast migrant labour force is helping India meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, drawn by promises of good wages and perks. But many say they are forced to ‘escape’ without pay
A month into his new job at the world’s largest renewable energy park in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch, Anawar Alam was planning his escape. Hired along with 17 others who had travelled with him to work on the construction of a solar project, Alam had hoped that the promised pay and perks would support his family back home on the farm in Bihar. But within two weeks he was having second thoughts.
“Nothing really prepared us for where we would be working or the fact that it was so far from the nearest village. The work was strenuous, the shifts were 12 hours, and we were living in makeshift tents,” says Alam.
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As Swiss glaciers melt at an ever-faster rate, new species move in and flourish, but entire ecosystems and an alpine culture can be lost
• Photographs by Nicholas JR White
From the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight.
People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers.
The Aletsch glacier viewed from Moosfluh, looking towards the Olmenhorn and Eggishorn peaks
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Australia’s soon to be announced emissions reduction target for 2035 will say a lot about how Labor will prioritise dealing with the climate crisis
Progress on the climate crisis is often slow and frustrating. But sometimes, when people are given an opportunity, change can come in a rush.
On 1 July, the government introduced a subsidy scheme for small battery systems that reduces the cost for most households by about $4,000, or 30%. The response has been rapid. More than 1,000 batteries are being installed across the country each weekday.
Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter
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A country plagued by power cuts has become the first to ban imports of petrol and diesel cars, as a new dam brings hopes of cheap green energy
When Deghareg Bekele, an architect in his early 30s, bought an Volkswagen electric car this year, he was a little sceptical. Not only is his home town, the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, prone to persistent power cuts, he also doubted the quality of his new vehicle.
Four months on, Deghareg is pleased with his purchase since he no longer has to endure long lines at the petrol pump, caused by Ethiopia’s chronic fuel shortages.
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