Environment news

• Plastics industry pushed ‘advanced recycling’ despite knowing problems – report

  06-05-2025 17:48
  
  Producers promoted chemical recycling – processes used to break plastics into tiny molecules – but knew of limitationsPlastic producers have pushed “advanced recycling” as a salve to the plastic waste crisis despite knowing for years that it is not a technically or economically feasible solution, a new report argues.Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, refers to a variety of processes used to break plastics into tiny molecules. The industry has increasing
  
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• Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world first

  29-12-2025 15:00
  Planet’s oldest bee species and primary pollinators were under threat from deforestation and competition from ‘killer bees’Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the
  
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• ‘It’s like you’re sitting in front of an oven’: surviving the summer in one of Australia’s hottest towns

  29-12-2025 15:00
  When the hot winds hit Roebourne, as many as 16 people pile into Yindjibarndi elder Lyn Cheedy’s home – one of the few with air conditioningFew places are more exposed to extreme weather than Roebourne, a tiny cyclone-prone town on the Western Australian coast, where public housing residents endure 50C heat without air conditioning.Lyn Cheedy, a Yindjibarndi elder, takes her grandson to the pool most afternoons. Continue reading...
  
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• From ‘global cooling’ to ‘beautiful coal’: Trump’s startling climate claims of 2025

  29-12-2025 13:30
  Trump ratcheted up his questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to itIn the past decade at the forefront of US politics, Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a “hoax”.This year has seen Trump ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it. In a year littered with lies and w
  
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• ‘Cities need nature to be happy’: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife

  29-12-2025 13:00
  Attenborough, 99, enthuses about tube-riding pigeons, foxes, parakeets and others in Wild London for the BBCFilming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusu
  
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• Weather tracker: Polar wind set to end warmth in US south and midwest

  29-12-2025 10:47
  Spring-like weather experienced by many Americans to end, while heavy snow in Japan brings deadly conditionsA week of extremes in the US as Arctic air plunges southwards across many states, sweeping away record-breaking warmth from last weekend. With low pressure in the west drawing up warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico, much of the south and midwest basked in spring-like weather this weekend with temperatures widely an extraordinary 15-20C above normal for late December.This week, however,
  
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• The hill I will die on: Pigeons are working-class heroes and deserve some respect | Toussaint Douglass

  29-12-2025 09:00
  These unfairly maligned animals were nuggets for our ancestors and served for the UK during the second world warIs there something I would figuratively die on a hill for? Yes, there is – and as it happens, I’m sitting on a literal hill right now, feeding them. Pigeons. Why pigeons? Because it’s about time they get the respect they deserve.I like pigeons. Because they’re like me, working class. You can tell pigeons are working class because every pigeon looks knackered. It
  
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• Country diary: A rare giant in the quiet of the wood | Sarah Lambert

  29-12-2025 06:30
  Old Sulehay Forest, Northamptonshire: Distant church bells are about all I can hear as I stand below a 500-year-old small-leaved lime – a tree that may be making an unlikely comebackOn a bright winter’s day, I stand at the centre of a ring of multi‑stemmed small-leaved limes. Their gnarled bases are furred with moss and feathered with sprays of epicormic growth. Lime trees are notoriously hard to age, but this one is probably more than 500 years old, shaped and reshaped by cent
  
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• What happened next: Maggots, rats and growing despair – a year of the Birmingham bin strike

  29-12-2025 06:00
  Action began in January, before an all-out strike in March. For locals, the flytipping, vermin, maggots and mess are taking a huge environmental and emotional tollIt’s an icy cold winter morning, and 80-year-old Mohammed Bashir is armed with a broom, tackling the large pile of rubbish that has accumulated outside his terraced house in Small Heath, Birmingham.This has become an almost daily activity for Bashir since the city’s bin strike started 50 weeks ago and, like many in the city
  
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• The mystery of flight MH370: will a new search find the missing airliner after more than a decade?

  29-12-2025 06:00
  In 2014 the Malaysian Airlines jet vanished over the Indian Ocean. Now the team that located Shackleton’s Endurance is looking again with the latest undersea robotsMore than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing after veering thousands of miles off course, its location remains unknown.The Malaysian government has promised to pay a private company, Ocean Infinity, $70m (£56m) to search for the plane on a “no find, no fee” basis. Continue reading...
  
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• Heat, drought and fire: how extreme weather pushed nature to its limits in 2025

  29-12-2025 06:00
  National Trust says these are ‘alarm signals we cannot ignore’ as climate breakdown puts pressure on wildlifeExtremes of weather have pushed nature to its limits in 2025, putting wildlife, plants and landscapes under severe pressure, an annual audit of flora and fauna has concluded.Bookended by storms Éowyn and Bram, the UK experienced a sun-soaked spring and summer, resulting in fierce heath and moorland fires, followed by autumn floods. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘It would drive some people crazy’: Victoria’s French Island remains remote, and that’s how most like it

  28-12-2025 15:00
  Just 70km from Melbourne yet only accessible by ferry, the island’s isolation is the source of its appeal and its biggest drawbackRead more summer essentialsApproaching French Island on the ferry at dawn, if you’re lucky you might be greeted by the sight of hundreds of ibis in flight. From far away, they look like starlings in murmuration, the flock constantly swelling and shifting like the sea far beneath them.Just 70km from Melbourne in the middle of Western Port Bay, French Island
  
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• ‘When you plant something, it dies’: Brazil’s first arid zone is a stark warning for the whole country

  28-12-2025 13:00
  The Caatinga in the north-east has been transformed by the heating climate in just a generation and could become the country’s first desertEvery Tuesday at dawn, Raildon Suplício Maia goes to the market in Macururé, in Brazil’s Bahia state, to sell goats. He haggles with buyers to get a good price for the animals, which are reared in the open and roam freely.Goats are the main – and sometimes only – source of income for the people of Macururé, a small
  
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• ‘It brings you closer to the natural world’: the rise of the Merlin birdsong identifying app

  27-12-2025 13:00
  Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 bird species around the worldWhen Natasha Walter first became curious about the birds around her, she recorded their songs on her phone and arduously tried to match each song with online recordings. After a friend recommended Merlin Bird ID, a free app, she tried it in her London garden and was delighted to discover the birds she assumed were female blackbirds – “this is how bad a birder I was” – were actual
  
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• Young country diary: Other kids love birds and insects – I love moss | Arjun

  27-12-2025 12:00
  Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire: I couldn’t believe how much moss there was covering the rocks, the trees, the ground – everythingLiving in a city, I don’t have much contact with nature, but when I do, I always savour it. Most people go to the woods in search of flowers, birds, insects or fungi, but I was looking for moss. Why moss? What is so special about this irksome plant you find hidden in plain sight?The Forest of Dean could be synonymous with moss. When I went, I was imm
  
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• A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way | George Monbiot

  27-12-2025 09:00
  From merrily dismissing climate science, to promoting irresponsible health claims, the podcast was an unintentional warning for our times Looking back on this crazy year, one event, right at the start, seems to me to encapsulate the whole. In January, recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, the host, Joe Rogan, and the actor Mel Gibson merrily dissed climate science. At the same time, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson’s $14m home was being incinerated in the Palisade
  
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• ‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps?

  27-12-2025 07:48
  With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens moreWhen Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bot
  
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• Cyclones, floods and wildfires among 2025’s costliest climate-related disasters

  27-12-2025 01:01
  Christian Aid annual report’s top 10 disasters amounted to more than $120bn in insured lossesCyclones and floods in south-east Asia this autumn killed more than 1,750 people and caused more than $25bn (£19bn) in damage, while the death toll from California wildfires topped 400 people, with $60bn in damage, according to research on the costliest climate-related disasters of the year.China’s devastating floods, in which thousands of people were displaced, were the third most expe
  
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• The Guardian view on adapting to the climate crisis: it demands political honesty about extreme weather | Editorial

  26-12-2025 18:30
  Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we look at how the struggle to adapt to a dangerously warming world has become a test of global justiceThe record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather in Spain and Portugal during the summer was made 40 times more likely, while June’s heatwave in Engl
  
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• Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

  26-12-2025 18:00
  These fungi boost plant growth and restore depleted ecosystems, but federal funding for a library housing them has been cut – and it may be forced to closeInside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fung
  
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• Four species, 160 days, 50,000 images: meet the photographer dedicated to showing the lovable side of flying foxes

  26-12-2025 15:00
  Doug Gimesy’s extreme close-ups of ‘sky puppies’ are designed to trigger an emotional response that endears people to the ‘wrongly vilified’ mammalsMore summer essentialsAfter standing chest-deep in the middle of the river for hours, the perfect belly dip was over in the bat of an eye.It was the moment photographer Doug Gimesy had been waiting for, standing in his sweaty waders on a stinking hot day, as he steadied kilos of camera equipment mere inches above the wat
  
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• From gifts that last to sustainable swaps, how we’re encouraging more thoughtful spending

  26-12-2025 14:00
  In this week’s newsletter: as we head into 2026, we’ll be testing products to help you cut waste and lighten your load on the planet• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereChristmas Day is almost a relief when it arrives, isn’t it? The season of consumption – from overindulging to buying far too many presents – can leave you, your wallet and your conscience feeling rather bloated. Most of us accept that the run-up to Christmas is wh
  
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• ‘Cocaine, gold and meat’: how Colombia’s Amazon became big business for crime networks

  26-12-2025 14:00
  Armed groups have moved in to the space left by the Farc after the civil war, cutting down rainforest to control land and build thousands of kilometres of smuggling routesHigh above the Colombian Amazon, Rodrigo Botero peers out of a small aircraft as the rainforest canopy unfolds below – an endless sea of green interrupted by stark, widening patches of brown. As director of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), he has spent years mapping the transformation of
  
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• Living on the edge: what young people in England told us about life on the coast

  26-12-2025 11:00
  As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leaveMegan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back. Continue reading...
  
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• Year in wildlife – in pictures

  26-12-2025 09:00
  We look back over the year’s wildlife photographs, and hand out some much-deserved gongs to brilliant and beautiful creatures around the world Continue reading...
  
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• First of nine new river walks in England announced for north-west

  26-12-2025 08:00
  Mersey Valley Way takes in Manchester and Stockport on its 13-mile route with other walks to be identified in 2026A new river walk has been announced by the government as ministers try to improve access to nature in England.The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged. Continue reading...
  
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• Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests

  26-12-2025 07:00
  Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flightsThe take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulf
  
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• Staying at home could leave you exposed to indoor air pollution, study reveals

  26-12-2025 07:00
  Secondhand tobacco smoke and routine tasks such as operating the stove shown to be biggest emitters of indoor pollution in UK homesChristmas and New Year is a time when many people will be at home. Being indoors can give us a degree of protection from outdoor air pollution, but it can also trap pollution we produce inside our homes.Risks from secondhand tobacco smoke are well known and the effect is perhaps best seen by comparison of health data before and after indoor smoking bans. A study of 4
  
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• Country diary: Little rituals to help sparrows and wrens | Paul Evans

  26-12-2025 06:30
  The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live inThe sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in
  
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• Feeling burnt out? A bush blessing for the end of the year | Jess Harwood

  26-12-2025 02:00
  Now is the time to think of new beginnings Continue reading...
  
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