... Scotland is joining Wales and Northern Ireland in charging shoppers for carrier bags , in an attempt to encourage sustainable behaviour among shoppers. Last year, shoppers at Scotland’s main supermarket chains alone used 800m single-use bags, most of which end up as litter, landfill or polluting the country’s marine and natural environments. ...
... Fewer birds, including nightingales and cuckoos, are migrating between Europe and Africa due to combined factors of habitat loss, hunting and climate change. Bird populations that make the great journey between northern Europe and Africa – including the nightingale and turtle dove – are drastically declining, conservationists have warned. ...
... Without a complete overhaul, this flawed policy needs to be scrapped to make way for more effective means of meeting proposed 40% cuts in carbon emissions by 2030 If leaks are to be believed, when European council members meet next week, they will agree a headline target of a 40% cut in greenhouse gases by... ...
... Italy will become the first country in Europe to legally require “advanced biofuels” in cars and trucks, the BBC has learned. Made from waste, the new fuels are said to reduce the amount of land taken out of food production. The world’s first commercial scale plant making fuel from straw opened in Italy last year. ...
... Covert GPS surveillance of timber trucks by Amazon campaigners has revealed how loggers are defeating attempts to halt deforestation in the world’s greatest rainforest. Raids by law enforcement officers are expected early on Wednesday morning, acting on the evidence handed to them by Greenpeace Brazil. ...
... Mining companies are campaigning for the G20 leaders’ meeting to support continued use of coal as a solution to the global “energy poverty” crisis, as Australia resists the inclusion of climate change on the formal agenda. Peabody – the world’s largest private coal miner – has launched an online campaign titled the “Lights On” project... ...
... Global climate models have underestimated the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants, according to new research. Scientists say that between 1901 and 2010, living things absorbed 16% more of the gas than previously thought. The authors say it explains why models consistently overestimated the growth rate of carbon in the atmosphere. ...
... “Rent a bike from someone like you” runs the tagline on Spinlister, an appropriately streamlined website and app that seeks to do for underused bicycles (and snowboards and surfboards) what Airbnb has done for spare rooms the world over. Spinlister allows renters to browse a map (of New York in my case) and access pictures... ...
... These are findings of experts of the International charitable organization “Environment-People-Law” (EPL) who studied the ATO zone using MODIS2 data and Scanex technology3. The research is continuation of EPL’s work in the field of analysis of consequences of military actions for the environment in the ATO zone. Military actions are powerful factors of impact on... ...
... A surprising hotspot of the potent global warming gas methane hovers over part of the southwestern US, according to satellite data. That result hints that the US Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies considerably underestimate leaks of methane, which is also called natural gas. The higher level of methane is not a local safety or... ...