Category Archives: Pollution

Lobbyists send legal threats to councils over anti-wood burner campaigns

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At least eight councils receive legal threats alleging flyers criticising wood burners are in breach of advertising codes

Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry have threatened councils with legal action over public information campaigns warning of the harms of air pollution.

At least eight councils have received legal threats, according to research by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The Stove Industry Association (SIA), which represents the UK’s expanding industry around the burning of wood in domestic settings, wrote to the councils, all London boroughs, in late 2023 complaining that flyers stating wood burners were “careless, not cosy” were in breach of UK advertising codes.

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Ferries emit ‘more sulphur pollution than cars’ in several EU capitals

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Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn among port cities more choked by sulphur oxides from ferries, analysis shows

Fume-belching ferries spew more sulphur pollution than cars in several EU capitals, analysis has found.

Dublin, Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn are among 13 of Europe’s 15 biggest port cities choked more by sulphur oxides (SOx) from ferries than road vehicles, data shared exclusively with the Guardian shows.

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Channel 4’s Dirty Business is a clarion call to nationalise the water industry

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As the drama shows, private firms no longer able to pollute the coast of England of Wales just switched to rivers instead

There is a moment in Channel 4’s drama Dirty Business when Julie Maughan holds the body of her dead child and lets out an anguished cry. It is as brutal as it is compelling.

Her eight-year-old daughter Heather had just died in hospital, two weeks after playing in the sea on the beach at Dawlish Warren in Devon, where she contracted E coli O157, a bug which comes from raw sewage. She became ill with diarrhoea and blood loss. Transferred to Bristol children’s hospital, her parents agreed to switch off her life-support machine after she suffered kidney failure and brain damage.

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Get shucking: South Australians urged to eat oysters and donate shells for reef restoration project

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Shrimp soundtrack will be played under water to lure baby oysters in program aimed at fighting algal blooms

South Australians are being urged to feast on local oysters and then donate the shells to restore native reefs, which will filter ocean water and help fight harmful algal blooms.

The program will also involve lumps of limestone being sunk in the ocean, with a soundtrack of snapping shrimp playing on underwater speakers to lure baby oysters in.

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Plastic nurdles found at 84% of UK sites of special scientific interest

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Environmental charity Fidra says 168 of 195 SSSIs it surveyed are contaminated with tiny pellets

Plastic nurdles have been found in 84% of important nature sites surveyed in the UK.

Nurdles are tiny pellets that the plastics industry uses to make larger products. They were found in 168 of 195 sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), so named because of the rare wildlife they harbour. They are given extra protections in an effort to protect them from pollution.

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About 1m Ford diesel cars sold in UK with defective emissions controls, court told

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Ford denies having created ‘defeat devices’ in legal action on behalf of 1.6 million owners against five carmakers

About a million Ford diesel cars were sold in the UK with serious defects in components supposed to curb toxic exhaust emissions, the high court has been told.

The highly polluting vehicles were produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 after Ford’s engineers became aware of the issues, and many were never formally recalled or fixed, lawyers said.

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‘I can’t breathe in this city’: inaction over Delhi’s suffocating pollution sparks rare protest

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The failure by state governments to do anything about pollution means it has often been met with apathy. But at a rare protest anger and frustration were rife

As a familiar smoky evening haze gathered over Delhi, the crowd began to assemble in their hundreds. Mothers and children, students, retirees and environmentalists were all united by a basic but desperate demand: the right to breathe safely in India’s capital.

“Delhi is not a liveable city any more, it’s a death trap,” said Radhika Aggarwal, 33, an engineer who joined the protest on Sunday.

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Ofwat letting water firms charge twice to tackle sewage, court to hear

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River Action bringing legal action against water regulator over who should foot bill for firms’ past failures to invest

Ofwat is unlawfully allowing water companies to charge customers twice to fund more than £100bn of investment to reduce sewage pollution, campaigners will allege in court on Tuesday.

Lawyers for River Action say the bill increases being allowed by Ofwat – which amount to an average of £123 a year per household – mean customers will be paying again for improvements to achieve environmental compliance that should have been funded from their previous bills.

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Pakistani farmers to sue German polluters over climate-linked flood damage

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Claimants seek compensation from RWE and Heidelberg Materials after extreme flooding destroyed harvests

A group of Pakistani farmers whose livelihoods were devastated by floods three years ago has fired the starting shot in legal action against two of Germany’s most polluting companies.

Lawyers acting for 43 men and women from the Sindh region sent the energy firm RWE and the cement producer Heidelberg formal letters before action on Tuesday warning of their intention to sue later this year.

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Organised crime making millions from illegal waste dumping in UK, says committee

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Peers say ‘woeful’ record on prosecutions has led to a ‘low-risk, high-reward’ criminal culture

Organised crime groups in the UK are making millions every year from illegally dumping and burning rubbish, peers have told ministers, after an inquiry found a lack of enforcement made it a “low-risk, high-reward” criminal enterprise.

“Criminality is endemic in the waste sector,” a Lords committee told the government on Tuesday, after it found at least 38m tonnes of waste was illegally managed every year, “leading to serious environmental, economic and social consequences”.

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Delhi awakes to a toxic haze after Diwali as pollution season begins

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Air breathed by people in the city categorised as ‘severe’ in quality after fireworks contribute to thick smog

Delhi awoke to a thick haze on Tuesday, a day after millions of people celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali with fireworks, marking the beginning of the pollution season that has become an annual blight on India’s capital.

Those in the most polluted city in the world once again found themselves breathing dangerously toxic air that fell into the “severe” category on Tuesday morning.

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Dead fish found on River Thet where large stretch of white foam appeared

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Environment Agency says pollutant in Norfolk river is ‘an unknown substance’ and is investigating

Dead fish have been found on a river in Norfolk where a large stretch of white foam appeared, the Environment Agency has confirmed.

Images shared by the agency on Saturday showed the foam covering an area of the River Thet.

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Watchdog rules Red Tractor exaggerated its environmental standards

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The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with River Action that the food safety body’s 2023 advert misled the public

The UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.

The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain.

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Carmakers chose to cheat to sell cars rather than comply with emissions law, ‘dieselgate’ trial told

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Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Nissan and Peugeot/Citroën face group action in which damages could exceed £6bn

Car manufacturers decided they would rather cheat to prioritise “customer convenience” and sell cars than comply with the law on deadly pollutants, the first day of the largest group action trial in English legal history has been told.

More than a decade after the original “dieselgate” scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners in the UK argue that manufacturers deliberately installed software to rig emissions tests.

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Millions of households face jump in water bills after regulator backs more price rises

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Competition watchdog agrees requests from Anglian, Northumbrian, Southern, Wessex and South East to raise household bills

Water bills for millions of households in England will increase by even more than expected after the competition regulator gave the green light for five water suppliers to raise charges to customers – but rejected most of the companies’ demands.

An independent group of experts appointed by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally decided to allow the companies to collectively charge customers an extra £556m over the next five years, it said on Thursday. That was only 21% of the £2.7bn that the firms had requested.

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UK plastic waste exports to developing countries rose 84% in a year, data shows

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Campaigners say increase in exports mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia is ‘unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism’

Britain’s exports of plastic waste to developing countries have soared by 84% in the first half of this year compared with last year, according to an analysis of trade data carried out for the Guardian.

Campaigners described the rise in exports, mostly to Malaysia and Indonesia, as “unethical and irresponsible waste imperialism”.

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Disposable face masks used during Covid have left chemical timebomb, research suggests

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An estimated 129bn were being used every month around the world at height of pandemic, with no recycling stream

The surge in the use of disposable face masks during the Covid pandemic has left a chemical timebomb that could harm humans, animals and the environment, research suggests.

Billions of tonnes of plastic face masks created to protect people from the spread of the virus are now breaking down, releasing microplastics and chemical additives including endocrine disruptors, the research found.

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Increase in vapes found on Britain’s coastline by beach clean volunteers

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Marine Conservation Society calls for swift action as its litter surveys show some forms of plastic are on the rise

Volunteer beach cleaners are finding more vapes than ever before as plastic pollution chokes Britain’s coastline.

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) on Wednesday launches its annual beach clean, which last year involved more than 15,000 volunteers who completed more than 1,200 litter surveys.

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Water chiefs’ pay rises to average of £1.1m despite ban on bonuses and outrage over pollution

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Total remuneration at companies in England and Wales – many of them under scrutiny for sewage discharge – was £15m in 2024-25

The pay of water company chief executives in England and Wales rose by 5% in the last financial year to an average of £1.1m, despite a ban on bonuses for several companies and widespread outrage over the sector’s poor performance.

Total pay reported by water companies reached £15m in 2024-25, up 5% on £13.8m the previous year, according to Guardian analysis of 14 companies’ annual reports.

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Clearing Gaza rubble could yield 90,000 tonnes of planet-heating emissions

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Processing debris from Israel’s destruction of homes, schools and hospitals could take four decades

Millions of tonnes of rubble left by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza could generate more than 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – and take as long as four decades to remove and process, a study has found.

Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals in Gaza generated at least 39m tonnes of concrete debris between October 2023 and December 2024, which will require at least 2.1m dump trucks driving 18m miles (29.5m km) to transport to disposal sites, researchers said.

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