Waste Management

The Guardian view on the Nepal-Tibet floods: a spur to action on climate | Editorial

New research links last month’s disaster to fossil fuel pollution. Supporting disaster-hit countries must be at the centre of climate politics Following a familiar pattern, coverage of the glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border three weeks ago has subside…

Fire, ice and family: Australia’s 2026 Bowness photography prize – in pictures

Here are 26 images by the shortlisted artists who submitted works for the 21st William and Winifred Bowness photography prize. Tamara Dean has been named the winner. The judges says her photograph is ‘operatic and poetic: an opus that is the culmination of a …

British people understand the climate crisis threat. Today I’m empowering them to tackle it | Andy Burnham

With nearly £30m of funding, I’m giving communities power over local energy. They know the gravity of global heating, and they want to be part of the solution Andy Burnham: UK must fully commit to reaching net zero by 2050 On the day I became prime minister, …

Fifty billion trees by 2030: how Ethiopia is recruiting citizens across the country to plant, plant, plant

After losing much of its forests in recent decades, the country’s people have led the way in planting saplings across the country as part of the government’s Green Legacy Initiative When Halima Kedir first began planting trees, she was met with scepticism and…

Do whales grieve? Rare footage of humpback alongside stillborn calf suggests they might | Olaf Meynecke for the Conversation

The behaviours we observed could represent grief, but they could also reflect maternal attachment, confusion or instinctive caregiving It was a tragic sight. One day last July, a newborn humpback whale calf lay motionless on the seafloor, just a kilometre off…

Deep ocean, familiar trash: Plastic waste found alongside possible new species

It's no secret that plastic and other human trash are a problem for marine life, but our understanding has long focused on the ocean's surface. As described in a study published in PLOS One, a more complete picture is coming into focus, revealing that even so…

Record-breaking levels of plastic found in seabirds, with almost 900 pieces found in one bird alone

For more than a decade, it was thought that the world's most plastic-polluted birds couldn't get any more contaminated by the man-made material. But then, from 2023–2026, the record was broken every single year.

Satellite data reveal ESG scores track public image more than actual forest loss

Environmental sustainability researchers at NUS found that widely used environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings often fail to reflect companies' actual exposure to deforestation, highlighting the need to integrate satellite-based environmental data …

Indonesian wildfires threaten leading orangutan research site in Borneo

Critically endangered Bornean orangutans flee forests as staff at Rangkong research station work round the clock to stave off blaze Wildfires in Indonesia are sweeping through a critical research site for Bornean orangutans and are now threatening a celebrate…

Thousands of sea turtles reach Mexico in yearly migration threatened by climate crisis – video

More than 330,000 sea turtles arrived in southern Mexico in a mass nesting phenomenon known as an ‘arribada’. The sixth arribada of the season, which began in March, brought thousands of turtles to the beach in less than 48 hours to lay their eggs, according …

Gray whales are starving as the Arctic warms. Will the US protect them?

Several hundred scientists, government officials, and environmentalists gathered for an unusual two-day conference in Newport, Oregon, last week, entirely focused on a single species: gray whales. It was an urgent meeting. The number of gray whales along the …

They’re the sopranos of the forest, so what’s silencing the gibbons’ morning chorus?

As human development and roads increasingly fragment their habitats, a study suggests traffic noise could be altering the animals’ wake-up call Dawn has broken, and the air is cool and still. It’s at about this time that gibbons usually erupt into song, wa-oo…

Anger, hope and compassion do little to spur more climate donations

Emotional mechanisms are frequently used to inspire good environmental behavior. But how effective are they at inspiring actual sustainable change? Perhaps not as much as previously believed, according to a new study that challenged participants to put their …

Unused natural gas behind NYC's $300 million waste of a potent greenhouse gas

Methane emissions from the New York City metropolitan area are largely driven by natural gas use, according to a new study published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics by researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Columbia Climat…

The bird that changed Ecuador: how a chance discovery of a rare species helped to save many more

Thirty years after a US ornithologist first sighted a jocotoco antpitta, the foundation he set up to restore biodiversity is a model for conservation globally I have to confess that I rarely enjoy birding in montane cloud forests. The birds that live in these…

Iceland to submit bill that could ban whaling in its waters

The country is one of just three that still permits commercial whaling, while its government has faced mounting pressure to ban the practice Iceland will submit a bill in February 2027 which could permanently ban whaling in its waters, a move that would leave…

Can an entire Arctic ecosystem evolve to adapt to the climate crisis?

In the first project of its kind, scientists are trying to answer if the future of Alaska’s streams and tundra may depend not on survival of the fittest but on how species adapt together On Alaska’s North Slope, scientists tread carefully across clumps of tus…

‘We have really cool sharks’: three-year project to lift lid on Britain’s little-understood species

Anglers will help scientists investigate the porbeagle, tope and blue shark to boost knowledge and conservation ‘We have really cool sharks,” says Dr Lucy Hawkes. She is not referring to animals in the rich coastal waters of South Africa or Mexico, but instea…

The place that never freezes: the Arctic habitat where global heating threatens more ice, not less

The race to study the North Water between Canada and Greenland before it changes has led to a bold plan for an Inuit-run protected area Electric-blue meltwater sprays up under Terry Noah’s snowmobile as he races across sea ice extending out from Canada’s nort…

Could humans ever communicate with whales? - podcast

Ever since the earliest known recording of whale song was made in 1949 , researchers have been captivated by the wails, rumbles, clicks, grunts and squeals of their communication. As technology improves, scientists are decoding the intricate patterns that mak…