In Malaysia huge mounds of plastic waste, dumped in the open, piled up as recyclers struggled to cope with the influx of packaging from everyday goods, such as foods and laundry detergents, from as far afield as Germany, America, and Brazil From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to […]
Investment in oil and gas exploration is set to soar 85 percent over the next decade, reaching $1 trillion annually by 2029 Plans by oil and gas majors to spend $4.9 trillion on fuel exploration are “poles apart” from the goal of the Paris climate deal to limit the global […]
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio arrives at a press conference about the city’s strategy to respond to climate change on April 22, 2019 Mayor Bill de Blasio marked Earth Day by outlining measures to make New York greener Monday, including dramatically cutting the carbon footprint of the city’s signature […]
JIE ZHAO/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES Most plastics have a chemical history that makes starting a new life a challenge. The dyes and flame retardants that make them perfect for say, a couch cushion or a bottle of detergent, make them tough to transform into a desirable end product—one of the […]
Threatened: Lemurs in Madagascar’s Vohibola forest are in danger of being wiped out by poaching and logging Under a leaden sky, six rangers walk silently in single file through Vohibola, one of the last primary forests in eastern Madagascar. Alert to the slightest movement and sound, Michael Tovolahy’s patrol is […]
Millions of tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans every, affecting marine wildlife all along the food chain Knee-deep in water on a picture-postcard Lesbos island beach, a team of Greek university students gently deposits a wall-sized PVC frame on the surface before divers moor it at sea. Holding […]
Increasing representation of important terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biodiversity sites for global 2030 milestones. (A) Terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity sites. (B) Marine biodiversity sites. The pie charts on the right of each figure represent sites that are currently not protected. Credit: Dinerstein et al., Sci. Adv. 2019; 5:eaaw2869 ENLARGE There […]
A sonar anomaly in the North Sea ended up being a 16th-century Dutch shipwreck. Credit: Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency Salvagers looking for steel shipping containers at the bottom of the North Sea have discovered a 500-year-old Dutch shipwreck holding a cargo of tons of copper. The searchers were using ship-borne sonar to […]
Tandem solar cells with two layers of perovskites aim to replace conventional silicon solar cells. ISTOCK.COM/DIYANADIMITROVA Silicon dominates the world of solar power. Even the newest solar cell designs, tandem devices that have a silicon solar cell below a cell made of a crystalline material called a perovskite, rely on […]
Credit: Ikhlasul Amal ‘ve moved around quite a lot, and one thing that’s always really difficult to get my head round when I move to a new place is what I can and can’t put in my recycling bin. In one place, plastic had to be put out separately; in […]