Drinks firm Heineken UK, food producer Filippo Berio and utility company Anglian Water Services are among six businesses that have agreed to six-figure charity payments after breaching environmental laws.
A major environmental initiative has been announced to make Croke Park a carbon-free stadium. The Dublin-based stadium currently emits 4,500 tonnes of CO2 a year The new joint project between the Gaelic Athletics Association (GAA) and the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), entitled Cul Green, aims to dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of Ireland's most popular sporting venue over the next six years. Croke Park has an annual output of 4,500 tonnes of carbon emissions and Cul Green aims to cut this by more than two-thirds.
Defra has appointed a new radioactive waste management committee to cover the administration of waste across the UK and Northern Ireland. It will play a key role in the storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and be involved with the devolved administration in Northern Ireland on the implementation of geological disposal of higher activity waste. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) has appointed Dr Rebecca Lunn and Professor Andrew Sloan to play a key role in scrutinising both Government's and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's plans.
The number of people working in the environmental sector is expected to top one million within the next twenty years - more than double today's figure of 400,000. British Minister for Europe Jim Murphy gave the environmental industries a pep talk as he and his French counterpart Jean-Pierre Jouyet hosted a meeting this week to look at how an sustainable future could go hand-in-hand with economic growth.
Soaring concentrations of hazardous fine particles in Central Europe have been traced back to parched farmland left to gather dust to the east in the Ukraine. In spring 2007 levels of particulate matter (known as PM10) reached almost 30 times the European average in parts of Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. Air quality specialists looking into the event now believe the dust originated from fallow land on Ukrainian farms and was carried west by unfavourable winds.
Nearly $13bn will be invested over the next ten years in securing water supplies in the face of climate change, the Australian government has announced. The investment includes $1.5bn in new urban water investment to help secure water supplies for homes and businesses in the face of climate change. Announcing the government's plans, Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong said most Australian towns and cities can no longer rely on rainfall to supply drinking water.
The world's poorest and most vulnerable children are being hit hardest by the impact of climate change, according to a new report from UNICEF UK. Published exactly 10 years after the UK signed the Kyoto Protocol, Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility called for immediate action from Government to make children a priority in the climate change agenda. It described how children, especially in Africa and Asia, face increased violence and disease, and scarcer food and clean water, causing up to an extra 160,000 deaths a year.
Compost Awareness Week, which started on Sunday, aims to encourage more people to home compost kitchen and garden waste and use peat-free composts containing recycled materials on their gardens. The campaign, run by The Composting Association and WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Partnership), also helps to forge more links between compost producers and their local communities. As part of the campaign, homeowners are being encouraged to do their bit and can win
A website is allowing people across Ireland to calculate their carbon footprint. Speaking at the launch, Environment Minister John Gormley said that everybody had a role to play in tackling climate change. Mr Gormley said: "Finding your carbon count number is only the first step. "The big commitment that we want people to make is to reduce and to manage their carbon emissions so that together we can reduce Ireland's carbon emissions and tackle climate change."
A moratorium on grain and oilseed-based biofuels could slash food prices by up to 20% within the next two years, according to leading agricultural researchers. Agricultural experts called for a moratorium on the production of biofuels from corn Figures from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggest that suspension of production this year would reduce corn prices by about 20% and wheat by about 10% in 2009-10.
Several species of Asian vulture are being wiped out faster than the dodo because they are eating carcasses of livestock that have been treated with a veterinary drug which to them is highly toxic. According to conservationists, the birds can only be saved by banning the use of anti-inflammatory diclofenac and setting up a network of captive breeding centres. While the demise of vultures may not tug on the heart strings in the same way as the decline of a host of cuter creatures, they play a vital role in the Asian eco-system.
