Most single-serving coffee pods are not completely recyclable, but a growing number of coffee sellers are rolling out pods that can be tossed into the compostMillions of Americans get their morning cup of joe by dropping a small capsule, or pod, of ground coffee into a machine. It’s a fairly popular ritual – nearly 30% of US households own a coffee pod machine, according to a recent report from the National Coffee Association.But the convenience of these pods comes with an environmental cost: they are typically made from partly- or un-recyclable plastic, which ends up in landfills. It’s something that is starting to weigh on consumers’ conscience, according to Tensie Whelan, director of New York University’s Center for Sustainable Business, and former president of the Rainforest Alliance. Continue reading...

Peabody Energy’s decision seen as sign that fossil fuel is threatened by tightening environmental regulationPeabody Energy, the world’s largest privately owned coal producer, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US following a collapse in commodity prices.The move was blamed by financial analysts partly on a mistimed and debt-fuelled expansion into Australia, but others saw it as a sign that the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel was threatened by tightening environmental regulation. Continue reading...

Researchers warned American Petroleum Institute in 1968 that the release of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels could lead to ‘worldwide environmental changes’The oil industry’s knowledge of dangerous climate change stretches back to the 1960s, with unearthed documents showing that it was warned of “serious worldwide environmental changes” more than 45 years ago.

Applying the mathematical principle of studying models of conflict and cooperation between groups could help us rein in global warmingCan’t we all just get along. Play nicely? Share? Such laments could be applied to many economic, political and social problems today. Perhaps the thorniest of them all is, climate change. Despite the relative success of the Paris COP21 in November, we are still far from effectively controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Could game theory help us rein in our impacts on the climate?Game theory is the mathematical study of conflict and cooperation between actors or groups: animals, people, businesses, countries or even computer algorithms. It became a formal topic of study in the 1950s and has since made significant impact on economics, political science and evolutionary biology and ecology. Continue reading...

Coal’s decline continues as figures show homes and businesses got more power from the sun for an entire 24 hours last weekendThe sun provided British homes and businesses with more power than coal-fired power stations for 24 hours last weekend.While solar power has previously beaten coal for electricity generation over a few hours in the UK, Saturday was the first time this happened for a full day. Continue reading...

The spoon tastes like a cracker and its manufacturer hopes to expand into forks and chopsticks

Sale of 1.57kg lump of ambergris they found while walking along beach near Morecambe Bay could earn pair £50,000A couple in Lancashire are in negotiations with potential buyers after stumbling across a valuable piece of ambergris during a stroll on the beach.Ambergris, sometimes known as whale vomit, is used by perfumers to make scent last longer and can fetch very high prices because of its rarity. The 1.57kg lump of the substance found by the couple could be worth around £50,000. Continue reading...

Japan has called for hundreds of thousands tonnes of irradiated water from the nuclear plant to be released into the Pacific Ocean. Karl Mathiesen looks at the potential impactsMore than 1,000 tanks brimming with irradiated water stand inland from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Each day 300 tonnes of water are pumped through Fukushima’s ruined reactors to keep them cool. As the water washes through the plant it collects a slew of radioactive particles.The company that owns the plant – The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) - has deployed filtration devices that have stripped very dangerous isotopes of strontium and caesium from the flow. Continue reading...

Trip by Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge to Kaziranga national park reopens debate over shoot-to-kill policy enforced against rhino poachersThe royal visit by Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge to an Indian wildlife reserve on Wednesday has divided conservationists and human rights groups because of the park’s controversial policy of shooting suspected poachers on sight.

An octopus escaped from a New Zealand aquarium this week. Inky the octopus made a dash for freedom by apparently breaking out of his tank and slithering down a 50-metre drainpipe. But we should not be surprised – octopuses can squeeze through tiny spaces

Latin America only uses 5% of its natural heat resources, but it is still a small industry and lacks incentivesTapping into the energy that comes from the natural heat of Earth’s crust could be an efficient and affordable power source for Latin America, say experts. Technology is developing for exploring this source, which comes from the shallow ground, to hot water and hot rock found a few kilometres beneath the surface.Geothermal power involves drilling wells to extract natural heat often associated with volcanoes or fault lines. In most cases it is drawn using water and steam – as it is in Costa Rica and in Mexico. The geothermal fluids are pumped up from the deep wells to generate electricity. Continue reading...

Who wants a selfie with a giant python? People’s eagerness to snap themselves with wild creatures is thoughtless, and often proves deadly for the animalI knew what to expect before I even clicked on it. I knew that “Python caught in Malaysia could be the longest ever recorded” would take me to a picture of a snake being held by a long queue of men, each straining to bear its weight. I knew to expect that photo because we love measuring animals in this way (see: snakes, oarfish, sturgeon); as if straining men is an international unit of measurement for long creatures. And so it was with the snake. In old money, the record-breaking serpent made famous this week was 15 men long. (That’s 8m long, and 250kg for the purists.)It was a reticulated python – a beautiful charismatic snake that was apparently making its way over a flyover being built on the tourist haven of Penang. It was immediately caught and brought down to the ground by emergency services who then posed for some photos and TV cameras. The most predictable bit, of course, is what happened next. It died. Something went wrong with its ability to be alive, somehow, and … the snake died mysteriously. There is a report that it was kicked and quite brutally handled, but that wasn’t what killed it. I believe that the endless posing for photos will have contributed to its death. What killed it was us. Welcome to a new age of animal cruelty: an age of death by camera phone. Continue reading...

Scientists ‘incredulous’ at abnormally high numbers for April, with melting across nearly 12% of ice sheet, reports Climate HomePolar researchers thought their models were broken when they first saw the results.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, M&S, Morrisons and Co-op join major seafood brands and WWF in campaign to stop Indian Ocean fish stocks collapsingMajor European seafood brands and the UK’s largest supermarkets – including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and the Co-op – are backing a call to cut yellowfin tuna catches in the Indian Ocean to stop stocks collapsing.The companies, along with WWF, are urging the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) to reduce catches by 20% and introduce harvest control rules to ensure the sustainability of all Indian Ocean tuna stocks, including skipjack. Continue reading...

People get involved with a cause without considering themselves a donor or activist – if charities stop categorising them, they can achieve much moreIt’s easy to put your charity’s supporters into boxes and label some people as donors or volunteers and others as activists, when in fact most people just want to support a cause they believe in. They sign petitions, join protests and donate funds.Charities can be guilty of categorising supporters and, in my mind, this can only make them less effective. At Greenpeace, we’ve found that we can further our aims by combining all elements and thinking of supporters as people, instead of volunteers, donors or campaigners. Continue reading...

Business claims to take drought seriously, but many have no idea how much water they use and where. This is why they should actUnder the new Sustainable Development Goals, 193 countries have pledged to deliver water for all by 2030. With the UN recently publishing a list of indicators to evaluate progress, now is the time for the business sector to step up and contribute. Continue reading...

The environment minister, Greg Hunt, announces six new directors who have been appointed for a two-year termThe government has appointed six new directors to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) board, to be headed by a new chairman, Martijn Wilder, an environmental markets lawyer.The appointments of Arena’s former board members expired in January, leaving it governed by the environment department secretary, Gordon de Brouwer. Continue reading...

Greenpeace poll finds 61% of women and 53% of men would follow US example and ban the use of plastic microbeads in exfoliant toiletriesAlmost two-thirds of the British public think plastic microbeads used in exfoliant toiletries should be banned, according to a poll for Greenpeace.The tiny beads are too small to be filtered effectively by water treatment and flow into the oceans, where they harm fish and other sea life. The US passed a ban at the end of 2015, with Canada set to follow suit and several EU nations - but not the UK - calling for a legal ban. Continue reading...

Slowing the Flow scheme, which saw 40,000 trees planted, reduced peak river flow by 20%, after 50mm of rain fell in 36 hoursTree planting and other natural approaches have prevented flooding at Pickering in North Yorkshire over Christmas, at a time when heavy rainfall caused devastating flooding across the region.An analysis of the Slowing the Flow scheme published on Wednesday concludes that the measures reduced peak river flow by 15-20% at a time when 50mm of rain fell on sodden ground in 36 hours. The scheme was set up in 2009 after the town had suffered four serious floods in 10 years, with the flooding in 2007 estimated to have caused about £7m of damage. Continue reading...

Accorhotels, which includes Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis, will reduce number of main courses on offer and record all food thrown awayOne of the world’s biggest hotel chains has announced it will plant vegetable gardens at many of its hotels as part of a plan to cut food waste by a third.

Staff believe the common New Zealand octopus fled its enclosure when the lid was left ajar and headed to freedom down a pipe that leads to the seaAn octopus has made a brazen escape from the national aquarium in New Zealand by breaking out of its tank, slithering down a 50-metre drainpipe and disappearing into the sea.In scenes reminiscent of Finding Nemo, Inky – a common New Zealand octopus – made his dash for freedom after the lid of his tank was accidentally left slightly ajar. Continue reading...

James Hansen has crossed the classic divide between research and activism. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he responds to critics and explains why he believes the reality of climate change requires him to speak out

Red crabs, also known as tuna crabs or pleuroncodes planipes, swarm at the Hannibal Bank Seamount, off the Pacific coast of Panama. To see such huge numbers of crabs so far south is very unusual, according to biologists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have documented the phenomenon

Green party wants first minister to raise tax rates to prevent spending cuts if it gains seats in parliamentary pollThe Scottish Green party has promised leftwing voters it would put Nicola Sturgeon under friendly pressure to tax the rich if it wins a large number of Holyrood seats in May.Patrick Harvie, the party’s co-convenor, said raising tax rates to prevent spending cuts would be “agenda item one” if Sturgeon invited the Scottish Green party (SGP) into talks after the Scottish parliamentary election. Continue reading...

Supermarket’s TV campaign will use footage shot that day from its UK suppliers and comes after Tesco ‘fake farms’ rowA dairy cow wearing a small, lightweight camera will take centre stage in a series of Waitrose TV commercials that the supermarket hopes will help shoppers connect with the farms their food and drink comes from.In what it claims is an industry first, Waitrose is using “cow cam” to capture scenes from a Berkshire dairy farm. Other ads will focus on a farm producing free range eggs and fishermen that supply Waitrose fresh fish counters. Continue reading...

As shareholders gather for the AGM, the energy giant is still hunting for more hydrocarbons while pretending to care about the planetAs shareholders gather for BP’s AGM in London this week, they deserve to be made aware of just how at-risk their investments are — and what BP thinks about the future of the firm and the planet. Because the company their investments allow to operate is fourth in a list of the world’s top-emitting companies and was responsible for 2.47% of global emissions from 1751-2010.The company will be forever linked to the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico — but its the daily environmental toll that ultimately matters more — the constant, minute-by-minute flow of carbon into the atmosphere. Continue reading...

Researchers ‘have no idea’ why red crabs off Panama might be behaving in such a way, says a biologist: ‘Nothing like this has ever been seen’Descending in a submersible in waters off Panama, scientists noticed something strange happening near the seafloor. It was a drifting fog of sediment, disturbed by something below. Diving deeper, the scientists found the cause: crabs, thousands of them, swarming in a way never before recorded.“We just saw this cloud but had no idea what was causing it,” said Jesús Pineda, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the lead author of a paper on the crabs published on Tuesday. Continue reading...

In recent years, public contests have been used for everything from the New York ‘Dryline’ to a new Guggenheim. But do these competitions just encourage gimmicky ideas – or are they a better way to prepare cities for a changing world?Just as musicians can build their year around festival appearances, architects can now fill their calendar with deadlines for design competitions. The international contest is an increasingly fashionable way of generating new ideas, forging reputations and getting some interesting things built.

Climate Home: Climate change could aggravate water shortages in three-quarters of world’s small islands by 2050, researchers warnClimbing sea levels bedevil low-lying islands.But a hotter planet brings a less obvious menace: drought. Continue reading...

This series of images shows the extent of China’s pollution problems and the human toll of exponential growth on local communities in China’s vast and severely damaged northern region.All photographs by Souvid Datta, an Abigail Cohen Fellow, for ChinaFile. The fellowship is a joint initiative of ChinaFile and Magnum Foundation Continue reading...

This is our opportunity to fix the accounting rules and keep national emissions within UK carbon budgetsLast month the government made a landmark decision to reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to zero sometime this century. This makes Britain the first country to commit to one of the key pledges in the Paris climate agreement reached last December.

Ministry’s samples from 2,103 wells in eastern flatlands show none were considered pristine and half were unfit for human consumption of any typeMore than 80% of China’s underground water drawn from relatively shallow wells used by farms, factories and mostly rural households is unsafe for drinking because of pollution, a government report says.The Water Resources Ministry study posted to its website on Tuesday analysed samples drawn in January from 2,103 wells used for monitoring in the country’s major eastern flatland watersheds. Continue reading...

Designed for Stalin as the world’s first completely planned city, Magnitogorsk has yet to confront its controversial past – from the forced labour that helped build it in record time, to the severe pollution that has plagued its residentsIn July 1931, Ibragim Akhmetzyanov arrived in Magnitogorsk in a wooden boxcar with his wife and eight children. The sight that greeted them was bleak.In the middle of the frigid, windswept steppe, a cluster of tents and ramshackle barracks stood at the foot of the ominous “Magnetic Mountain”, a landform so full of iron ore that compasses could not function near it and birds avoided flying over it. Continue reading...

Villagers in Zambia’s Copperbelt region claim water was contaminated by a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, but the firm claims case should be heard in Zambia, not the UK

Snake expert rejects suggestion that the 7.5m python might have killed itselfA python caught in Malaysia and first thought to be the longest snake in captivity has lost both its run at the title and its life.

Ebernoe Common, West Sussex These flowers are in a race against time to propagate before the trees burst into lifeThe trees are still bare but spring flowers are emerging through the leaf litter of the woodland floor. White, star-like wood anemones, yellow lesser celandines and the green blades of bluebell plants are scattered in the pools of morning sunshine. A few native bluebell flower heads are beginning to unfurl, raising their blue-mauve trumpets as the light streams down through the skeletal canopy above.These early spring flowers are in a race against time to propagate before the trees burst into life again and the wood below returns to relative darkness. A bold wren announces my presence from a log with a panicked series of rapid-fire “chicks”, its tail flicking up and down. Continue reading...

Farmers in the occupied West Bank struggle daily against a broken supply chain that restricts access to agricultural equipment, technology and waterHow produce from the West Bank should be labelled – be it from Israeli-occupied or Palestinian territories – has become a highly controversial issue. Yet the daily obstacles facing Palestinian farmers in the West Bank is probably less well known.

Tami Wilson, a zookeeper at Symbio Wildlife Park in New South Wales, has developed such a strong bond with little Harry, an orphaned koala joey, that at the sight of her he will climb down from the trees for a belly rub and cuddle. Video of Harry has gone viral since the sanctuary posted it on Saturday, with millions of views worldwide Continue reading...

If Jayden Burleigh, 22, did die as a result of the redback bite, it will be the first such fatality in more than 60 years thanks to the introduction of antivenomA 22-year-old Australian has died after being bitten by a redback spider in what may turn out to be the first such death since the antivenom was introduced 60 years ago.Jayden Burleigh, from Sydney’s northern beaches, was reportedly bitten while walking on the north coast of New South Wales last week. Continue reading...

Friends of the Earth joins union and business groups to call on state premier to adopt an ambitious targetWith the Victorian Labor government’s announcement on a renewable energy target imminent, environment, union and business groups are urging the premier, Daniel Andrews, to be ambitious, saying it would send a national message on clean energy.Related: Australia's 'future' fund should not consider financing the energy projects of the past | Stephen Bygraves Continue reading...

Cranswick’s purchase of East Anglian poultry producer, with £83.8m revenues, follows acquisition of Benson Park in 2014The family behind East Anglian poultry business Crown Chicken is set for a multimillion-pound windfall after it was sold to UK pork producer Cranswick in a £40m deal.Crown Chicken was set up in 1951 and is currently chaired by David Thacker – son of the founder, Fred Thacker – who owns a majority of the shares. Thacker will step down once the deal is completed, but his fellow directors Nigel Armes and Matthew Ward, who own stakes in the business, will stay on. Continue reading...

From counting petals to developing deployable structures, nature’s blooms can help teachers explore a variety of topics in the classroomWe use flowers to mark all kinds of moments – celebration, remembrance, romance (or, for the more suspicious among us, a hint that the flower-giver has done something wrong). But at this time of year, they signify one thing above all else: the fact that spring is here and winter is finally on its way out.