Around The Web

Reducing plastics when shopping for food, toiletries and travel products should be easy – so why is it so difficult?

A few months ago, my partner and I went snorkelling off the coast of Indonesia. We dove off tiny deserted islands and swam in the deep with giant manta rays, but what I remember most vividly about that trip was not the stunning coral or dazzling array of colourful, curious fish; it was the sheer amount of garbage in the water.

Shopping bags, plastic cups, toothpaste tubes, orange peel, all manner of human debris followed the currents; waves and waves of junk pooling in the shallow waters. In these parts of the reef, the water was cloudy and full of so much microscopic debris that it stung the skin. I remember watching a majestic giant turtle swim through the gloom as my head bumped against an old Coke bottle bobbing on the surface of the water.

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"I think we just became a real car company!" Elon Musk says Tesla has met 5,000/week Model 3 production target.

Proposed Tesla big battery in California will be more than 8 times bigger than the current world's biggest in South Australia. And there's more.

Keen gardeners and home cooks meet for a neighbourhood food swap; pizza's on the menu at a Victorian cheese factory; girl guides make shopping bags; and a rescue dog sniffs out truffles

If you live in a remote area of Victoria the government will subsidise your off-grid fuel needs ... and not if you power your off-grid home with solar.

City of Sydney adds 500kWh Tesla battery to new solar council depot, both to make the depot self sufficient and as part of Transgrid demand management trial.

A Grattan Institute report has found renewable energy investment could offer a path to lower rates, but they won't drop below 2015 prices. Lucy Percival, Associate, Grattan Institute Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

High brown fritillary population rises due to harsh winter and sunny spring

The combination of a harsh winter and sunny May and June has given the population of the UK’s most endangered butterfly, the high brown fritillary, a welcome boost.

Volunteers have been counting rare butterflies in a wooded valley on the Devon coast, which has been the focus of a project to encourage species such as the high brown fritillary.

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EU carbon allowances are expected to vault higher over the next few months, analysts said, after prices weathered a bearish event last month and consolidated at elevated levels within sight of their recent seven-year high.

Find orange Arcturus and blue-white Vega in the night sky and they will point the way

Track the constellation Hercules as it wheels highs across the summer sky. Although not bright, it has a distinctive shape and can be easily picked out with a little effort.

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How you prepare your coffee at home (and wash up the mugs) can have a big impact on its carbon footprint. So fill that kettle carefully, and only brew what you know you'll drink. Maartje Sevenster, Research Scientist Climate Smart Agriculture, CSIRO Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

The campaign to save our bees is something we can all get behind, so I decided to face my fears at an urban apiary

You know what really makes a summer? Being besieged by flying insectoid life forms with venomous stingers. As a child, I discovered a wasps’ nest in the shed while trying to retrieve a lawnmower and it didn’t end well. Now a grown man, I’m terrified of anything airborne. The list of things that have triggered freak-outs includes flies, butterflies, poplar fluff and falling leaves, as well as the hair on my own neck. So, I am uncomfortable to be at Black Bee Honey, an apiary in Woodford, east London. I’m here to face my fears by putting my face next to things I’m afraid of: insects with wings and stings.

The company’s co-founder, Chris Barnes, is swinging a smoker around like a Russian Orthodox priest, attempting to pacify the bees, or me. He explains that bees sting only to defend their hive, that stinging a human will kill them, that these bees have been bred to be docile. The thing is, he is wearing a full protective suit, as is everyone else around. “That sounds great,” I say. “But can I wear what you’re wearing? And you mentioned gloves. Where are they?”

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Many ostensibly rural creatures are thriving in our towns and cities, while adapting to survive

Last week, researchers revealed that bumblebees fare better in urban rather than agricultural environments. City colonies produced more males and reached a larger size, had more food stores and survived longer. They concluded that urban environments provide longer-lived, more varied flowers than intensively farmed agricultural areas.

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What goes in the blue bin, what goes in the yellow bin, and what do you do with pizza boxes?

Recycling should be straightforward: paper goes in the blue bin; plastics, glass and metal in the yellow bin; dead plants in the green bin and everything else in the red bin – right?

Except it’s not always quite that easy. What do you do with mixed packaging? How do you deal with neighbours doing the wrong thing? And what to do with pizza boxes?

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US communities near pellet mills complain of fumes while experts say burning wood is a ‘disaster’ for climate change

It is touted as a smart way for Europe to reach its renewable energy goals. But try telling Lisa Sanchez thousands of miles away in America that burning wood chips is a form of clean energy.

The bucolic charm of her rural home in the Piney Woods forest region of east Texas is undercut by the big German Pellets manufacturing plant just beyond the bottom of her garden. The German-owned plant is capable of producing 578,000 tons of wood pellets a year, which are destined to cross the Atlantic to satisfy a vibrant market for the product there.

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The last time a great white shark was spotted near Spain's Balearic Islands was in 1976.

Castlemartin, Pembroke: I thought about the brutal annihilation of its larger cousin the great auk. But I was worrying needlessly

Ten feet below the top of Mowing Word is a hollowed-out bedding-plane that stretches the whole length of this magnificent limestone cliff. Decades of nesting auks have whitewashed the rock, making their breeding site obvious even from a distance. Though it’s one of the best locations for sea-cliff ascents in Britain, voluntary bans negotiated years ago between naturalists and climbers have generally been scrupulously observed during the razorbill and guillemot breeding seasons. The critical period is during incubation, which generally takes place in June, is short, and concludes with the fledgling guillemot, accompanied by its father, flailing off the ledge to bounce and belly-flop its way to the water below.

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Do individual birds have consistent, unique personalities? Zoologist Dr Michelle Hall is trying to find out. This program has been selected from the Off Track archives for you listening pleasure.

It's often said that butterflies are dying out in the UK, but do the statistics back this up?

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