Environment news

• This LA school is planting trees to ‘supercharge’ childhood development

  16-05-2025 21:43 via theguardian.com
  
  Parks, trees and green spaces are critical to kids’ health and wellbeing, but in many cities, residents have unequal accessOn a recent Saturday morning at Washington Elementary Stem magnet school in Pasadena, California, a group of volunteers and staffers from Amigos de los Rios hauled soil for a new pollinator garden of native plants that support local habitats such as those for butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. They also filled up 37 planter beds that will grow fresh veggies such as ca
  
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• Most of LA’s trees are in wealthy, white neighborhoods. This school is smashing concrete to plant their own

  16-05-2025 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Amigos de los Rios is helping campuses once paved and treeless now blooming with shade, gardens and play spacesOn a recent Saturday morning at Washington Elementary Stem magnet school in Pasadena, California, a group of volunteers and staffers from Amigos de los Rios hauled soil for a new pollinator garden of native plants that support local habitats such as those for butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. They also filled up 37 planter beds that will grow fresh veggies such as carrots and sweet po
  
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• Global recycling rates have fallen for eighth year running, report finds

  16-05-2025 13:00 via theguardian.com
  Researchers call for investment in ‘circular solutions’ as consumption rises faster than growth in populationGlobal recycling rates are failing to keep pace with a culture focused on infinite economic growth and consumerism, with the proportion of recycled materials re-entering supply chains falling for the eighth year running, according to a new report.Only 6.9% of the 106bn tonnes of materials used annually by the global economy came from recycled sources, a 2.2 percentage point dr
  
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• Weather tracker: dry spring in northern Europe sets off drought warnings

  16-05-2025 09:26 via theguardian.com
  Belgium and UK could experience driest spring in more than 100 years as high pressure dominatesNorth-west Europe has been experiencing an unusually dry spring. Belgium, in particular, has had four times less rain than it would typically expect, according to data from the Uccle measuring station, stoking fears that this will be the driest spring in 130 years. This has triggered a warning for extreme drought.The UK has also recorded only 80.6mm of rain, making it the driest spring in more than a c
  
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• Week in wildlife: hitchhiking cygnets, a criminal duck and hopping hares

  16-05-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Low emission zones are successful in cutting air pollution, study finds

  16-05-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Team in Belgium find improvement in air quality after launch of traffic measures in Brussels, Antwerp and GhentLow emission zones are successful at reducing air pollution and its effects on health, researchers have found.The team, working for the Belgian mutual health insurer Mutualités Libres, were looking at the best ways to cut air pollution and its impact on health. Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: Skylarks and swallows bring life to the chambered tomb | Derek Niemann

  16-05-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  West Kennet, Wiltshire: We’re surrounded by miracles here – the otherwordly skills of birds in flight, and the heavyweight construction of our ancestorsUnseen hands have tied coloured ribbons to an oak tree at the foot of a whale-backed hill. Whoever crossed the chalk stream to fasten these pretty streamers in red, blue, gold and white found meaning in this place or with the people who came here before – those unknowables who lugged boulders many times their own weight to the t
  
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• ‘We sometimes milked 3,000 snails a day!’: the dying art of milking molluscs

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  For 1,500 years, Mexico’s Mixtec people have extracted ink from the rare purpura snail to dye yarn. But they fear the species – and their rich tradition – may soon be lost for everPhotographs by Mauricio PalosThe site for the camp is well chosen. Mangrove trees provide shade from the sun; from their hammocks, the two men can look out over the yellow sand of Chachacual Bay. Rocks rise at both ends of the beach, breakers crashing against them. Next to the camp, turtles have left
  
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• Poor building standards add £1,000 to energy bills of new homes, analysis finds

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  About £5bn more spent than if rules for low-carbon new-builds had not been scrapped in 2016, ECIU thinktank findsPeople living in newly built homes are being hit with energy bills that are nearly £1,000 a year higher than need be because of the poor standards to which they have been constructed.Occupants of homes built in the past seven years have paid about £5bn more in energy bills than they would have if regulations requiring new homes to be low-carbon had not been scrapped
  
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• Experience: I fought off a polar bear with a saucepan

  16-05-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I pulled back the tent flap and there it was, an arm’s length away. So I reached for the closest weapon to hand – my mother’s old porridge-encrusted potI’ve had 35 close encounters with polar bears during my time as an explorer and campaigner for the Arctic Ocean. There’s always that surge of adrenaline when you see one – that sense of: “Oh God, it’s happening.”I’ve learned how to deal with bears over the years. Although I tak
  
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• Delay farmer inheritance tax changes ‘to allow for better formulation’, say MPs

  16-05-2025 01:01 via theguardian.com
  Report says proposals ‘threaten to affect most vulnerable’, who would be helped by more time to seek adviceA group of influential MPs has urged the government to delay controversial planned changes to inheritance tax for farmers to “allow for better formulation of tax policy” and to protect vulnerable farmers by giving them more time to seek advice.The environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee has called on the government to hold off announcing its overhaul of
  
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