Microplastics sample collected in a plankton net trawl in the North Pacific subtropical gyre from the SSV Robert C Seamans.
Giora Proskurowski/Sea Education Association
Many of us are concerned about just want to get through it. But the consumer madness of late December is the perfect time to ponder the consequences of our habits and excesses.
Children in Ethiopia wash their hands outside a school latrine.
Unicef Ethiopia
More than two billion people lack access to decent sanitation. Innovative sanitation technologies can bring toilets into the 21st century with benefits for the developing and developed world.
Apples bob around in ‘red sludge’ after an accident in Hungary.
Bernadett Szabo / Reuters
The ‘linear economy’ that drove 20th-century leaps in wealth is no longer sustainable, and our standard of living will not survive without a dramatic redesign.
A dumpster is fair game for scavenging.
Russ Allison Loar/Flickr
How can we live within the means of our planet? Almost all environmental literature grossly underestimates what is needed for our civilisation to become sustainable.
Using fruit waste in a sustainable manner can have economic benefits for industries.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
Dead whales can cost beachside ratepayers a lot to clean up. The alternative is to tow them away before they wash up - but the legal question of who does the job is far more complex than it sounds.
In most states, the issue of container deposit legislation has festered for decades.
Brian Finestone/Shutterstock.com
Four decades after South Australia’s container deposit scheme began, New South Wales has finally overcome industry resistance and launched its own. Could the rest of the country now follow suit?
Plastic waste washed up on a beach in Haiti.
Timothy Townsend
You might have heard the oceans are full of plastic, but how full exactly? Around 8 million metric tonnes go into the oceans each year, according to the first rigorous global estimate published in Science…
The Western Treatment Plant in Werribee, Victoria, largely powers itself using biogas – a by-product of sewage treatment.
Jason Patrick Ross/Shutterstock
Could what we flush down the toilet be used to power our homes? Thanks to biogas technology, Australia’s relationship with organic waste – human and animal excreta, plant scraps and food-processing waste…
Protests against a proposed waste incinerator power plant involving thousands of residents took place in southern China over two weekends in mid-September. The demonstrations, in Boluo county, Guangdong…
This calls for a Private Finance Initiative.
Owen Humphreys/PA
More than £200m has been spent on failed waste management projects, according to a scathing report by a cross-party group of MPs. The Public Accounts Committee blamed “lax” and “poorly drafted” public-private…
It’s been suggested that a recent fall in recycling rates is due to green fatigue, caused by the confusing number of recycling bins presented to householders for different materials. Recycling rates would…
A male Onthophagus vacca, the species of dung beetle being released this week in Western Australia.
CSIRO
The average cow drops between 10 and 12 dung pads (also known as “pats”) every day and just one of those cow pads can produce up to 3,000 flies in a fortnight. With more than 28 million cattle in Australia…
When you outputs become your inputs, that’s a circular economy.
WRAP
The concept of the circular economy has left the realm of academic theory and entered the world of business. The price of natural resources and materials is soaring, and in response to volatile markets…