RMIT-led study recommends a national recycling scheme to reduce the 200,000 tonnes of textiles sent to landfill each year
Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
Most Australians are confused about what to do with their unwanted clothes, leading about a third to throw their closet clutter in the rubbish, according to the first national survey of clothing use and disposal habits.
The RMIT-led survey of 3,080 Australians found 84% of people owned garments they hadn’t worn in the past year, including a third who hadn’t touched more than half of their wardrobe.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/01/2024 - 10:00
10/01/2024 - 06:36
Existing plant-based cheeses often fail to deliver the textures that dairy lovers prize
Stretchy dairy cheese could now be made without any cows, after the development of yeast strains that produce the crucial milk proteins.
The key to the development, by Israeli company DairyX, is producing casein proteins that are able to self-assemble into the tiny balls that give regular cheese and yoghurt their stretchiness and creaminess. Existing plant-based cheeses often fail to deliver the textures that dairy lovers prize, and the company believes it is the first to report this breakthrough.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 05:00
The smell of chlorine pervades Conyers as residents say BioLab’s accident was a danger hiding in plain sight
For Vonnetta West the plume of smoke rising in the sky outside her home in the city of Conyers, Georgia, was a sign not just of immediate risk – but a danger that had been hiding in plain sight for years.
The plume was the result of an accident at the BioLab pool and spa chemical company in the city of nearly 20,000 residents about 25 miles east of Atlanta. Tens of thousands of people were impacted by an evacuation order for those immediately nearby or by the wider shelter-in-place order for those further away. The smell of chlorine drifted over much of the Atlanta area.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 04:40
Government urged to use power to control companies such as Thames Water and reform the industry
Thames Water and other failing water companies should be placed into special administration to allow the government to tackle much-needed reforms to the industry, campaigners say.
Triggering special administration would put Thames and other failing companies in government control, removing company directors and ending the dividends paid to shareholders. The companies could then be transferred to new owners who could be publicly owned or controlled.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 04:00
The historic North Carolina city was touted as a climate ‘haven’ – a reputation deadly Hurricane Helene left in ruins
Nestled in the bucolic Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina and far from any coast, Asheville was touted as a climate “haven” from extreme weather. Now the historic city has been devastated and cut off by Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic floodwaters, in a stunning display of the climate crisis’s unlimited reach in the United States.
Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 02:00
Everyday Plastic calls supermarket takeback schemes a diversion and says there is too much plastic packaging
Seventy per cent of soft plastic collected in supermarket recycling schemes and tracked after collection ended up being burned, an investigation by campaigners has found.
By placing trackers inside packages of soft plastic that were collected by Sainsbury’s and Tesco in July 2023 and February 2024, campaigners found that most of them ended up being incinerated rather than recycled.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 01:00
Fifteen of the nimble, tree-climbing mammals were released last month at secret locations in Devon
Fifteen pine martens are darting through the woods of Dartmoor for the first time in 150 years after the rare but recovering species was reintroduced into south-west England.
The nimble, tree-climbing mustelids were released last month at secret locations in the steep, tree-lined valleys of Devon in what conservationists are hailing as a historic step in the restoration of the region’s woodlands.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 00:00
A project on Spain’s Costa Brava is reviving dwindling populations of the prized seafood – and keeping small-scale fishers in business
Clinging to almost vertical cliffs on the Costa Brava in north-east Spain, the resort of l’Estartit has a dramatic location but the real drama is unfolding under the waves, where an innovative approach to ancient techniques is helping to revive declining populations of prized cuttlefish
Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) are a valuable catch for Spanish fishers and a popular dish, either on their own or as a key ingredient in seafood paella. However, their numbers have declined on the Catalan coast through a combination of pollution and unregulated recreational fishing.
Continue reading...
10/01/2024 - 00:00
Kew study reveals areas with at least 100,000 undiscovered plant species – most likely to be under threat of extinction
Botanists have identified 33 “dark spots” around the world where thousands of plant species are probably waiting to be discovered, according to new research.
From a palm tree in Borneo that flowers underground to a Malagasy orchid that spends its life growing on other plants, researchers are still making dozens of new species discoveries every year.
Continue reading...
09/30/2024 - 20:28
A human rights-based approach to coral reef protection could ensure governments are held to account for safeguarding marine ecosystems.
