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Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m
A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.
The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.
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This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
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Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
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Government plans legislation giving landowners and tenants rights to cull deer to protect crops and property
It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.
Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, plans to bring forward new legislation to give landowners and tenants legal rights to shoot deer to protect crops and property.
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Langstone, Hampshire: It’s the time of year when dog foxes shadow receptive females – who only have the briefest of windows to mate
Walking the coastal path, I stopped to scan the flooded horse paddock for the kingfisher reported there in recent days. Three grey herons loitered along the fence line, hunchbacked and watchful. Where shallow pools had formed, teals dabbled and drifted in loose rafts, while a dozen little egrets fed on the margins, using their yellow feet to stir up the mud and flush out small invertebrates before snapping them up with their rapier-like bills.
The hoped-for flash of iridescent blue failed to materialise, but a russet streak caught my eye on the far edge of the field – a female fox, lean and alert. As I watched, I realised she was being followed by another – a thickset, wolfish dog fox with a grizzled coat. The vixen slowed, turned, dropped her forelegs to the ground and raised her rump, holding the pose briefly before springing away.
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Plastic production has doubled over the last 20 years – and will likely double again. For author Beth Gardiner, metal water bottles and canvas tote bags are not the solution. So what is?
Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”
Two months before that piece was published, a photograph of a seahorse clinging to a plastic cotton bud had gone viral; two years before that England followed Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and introduced a charge for carrier bags. “I was one of so many people who were trying to use less plastic – and it just felt like such a moment of revelation: these companies are, on the contrary, increasing production and wanting to push [plastic use] up and up.” Then, says Gardiner, as she started researching her book Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future, “it only becomes more shocking.”
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Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets
Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a report has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.
Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to meat-heavy diets that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.
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C M Taylor’s book, which will raise funds for charity, follows teenagers whose favourite swim spot is contaminated
A water company discharges sewage into a river with impunity and the government fails to stop them. The story may sound familiar, but this one is different: there’s a satisfying comeuppance all round.
The ongoing saga of sewage being pumped into the Thames has inspired a new YA (young adult) novel, Floaters – and when its limited first edition is published later this month, 50% of all profits will go to conservation and campaign charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).
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Many farmers in the Andes rely on growing blooms for export, but high water usage and risky pesticides threaten Indigenous communities
The fertile high valley near La Chimba trembles with sounds. The rhythms of brass bands and cumbia music clash like weather fronts, each playing its own beats in the Andean rain. A rainbow spans the slopes and white plastic greenhouses, protecting the region’s treasure: roses bred for beauty, shipped abroad, blooming far from home.
Amid the drizzle, Patricia Catucuamba and her husband, Milton Navas, share a jug of chicha, a maize brew vital to their harvest celebrations. Since 2000, they have worked as dairy farmers, but sustaining a milk business requires expanses of land beyond the reach of most smallholders.
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In this week’s newsletter: The south-east of the country is suffering through the worst heatwave since 2019’s ‘black summer’, while the government continues to back fossil fuel projects
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Australians are no strangers to blistering weather – being a “sunburnt country” of “droughts and flooding rains” is baked into our national identity. But since the 2019-20 bushfires, which burned through an area almost the size of the UK, and killed or displaced 3 billion animals, the arrival of warmer weather each year is accompanied by dread. This summer has brought punishing extremes of heat and fire that are brutal even by Australian standards.
More, after this week’s most important reads.
‘A different set of rules’: thermal drone footage shows Musk’s AI power plant flouting clean air regulations
The death of Heather Preen: how an eight-year-old lost her life amid sewage crisis
Trump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK
‘Landmark’ greenwashing case against Australian gas giant Santos dismissed by federal court
‘What’s more important, the electricity or food?’: extreme heat is driving up power bills in central Australia
What the Albanese government did on the environment amid the Liberals’ turmoil: threatened species, a new coal project and carbon leakage
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