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      Environmental groups urge regulator to act over record sewage discharge

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 16:49

    Activists call for reform of ‘failing’ industry to tackle waste dumping in England, asking government to put ‘people and planet before profits’

    Regulators faced pressure to act on Wednesday after new evidence of potentially illegal activity by water companies was revealed.

    Analysis of the latest data shows that more than 2000 overflows owned by a number of companies are discharging raw sewage into rivers and seas at a scale that should spark an immediate investigation into illegal breaches of permit conditions.

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      England’s sewage crisis: how polluted is your local river and which regions are worst hit?

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 14:35

    Rivers in north of England among most polluted, shows new data. Search your postcode to see how sewage spills into your local river

    Rivers in the north of England are bearing the brunt of the sewage pollution crisis, analysis by the Guardian reveals, with the region’s waters experiencing the highest rates of waste discharge in the country.

    Storm overflows around the Irwell valley, where the rivers Croal and Irwell run through to Manchester, discharged raw sewage 12,000 times in 2023 — the highest rate of all English rivers when accounting for length, at 95 spills per mile.

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      Water companies in England face outrage over record sewage discharges

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 11:37

    Call for environmental emergency to be declared after data reveals 105% rise in raw sewage discharges over past 12 months

    Water companies in England have faced a barrage of criticism as data revealed raw sewage was discharged for more than 3.6m hours into rivers and seas last year in a 105% increase on the previous 12 months.

    The scale of the discharges of untreated waste made 2023 the worst year for storm water pollution. Early data seen by the Guardian put the scale of discharges at more than 4m hours, but officials said the figures were an early estimate.

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      Cars before people: how chaotic, polluted Dhaka is failing its elderly citizens

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 2 days ago - 05:00

    Pollution, traffic, noise – the busy streets of the Bangladeshi capital prohibit many who are ill or have limited mobility from leaving their homes, posing further risks to their health

    The door of Rehana Khan’s sixth-floor flat is as far as she ventures during the day. On most days, she barely leaves her bed. The city outside is too chaotic and overwhelming for her.

    Khan, 57, moved to Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, a year ago, after her husband died. She lives with her only son and his wife, who were worried about her being alone in a village in the north-eastern district of Sylhet.

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      Geologists reject declaration of Anthropocene epoch

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 6 days ago - 13:58

    Critics say it is a missed chance to recognise that the planet irrevocably left its natural state in the mid-20th century

    The guardians of the world’s official geological timescale have firmly rejected a proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch, after an epic academic row.

    The proposal would have designated the period from 1952 as the Anthropocene to reflect the planet-changing impact of humanity. It would have ended the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable climate since the last ice age and during which human civilisation arose.

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      England won’t adopt EU river pollution rules for pharma and cosmetics firms

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 6 days ago - 11:55

    Campaigners say government is failing to match major step forward as EU prepares to introduce ‘polluter pays’ principle

    New EU rules which introduce “polluter pays” principles to get pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies to pay for the pollution they cause in rivers will not be adopted by the government in England, as campaigners say the country is falling behind.

    Lawmakers in Europe have signed off on an update to the urban waste water treatment (UWWT) directive, which is to further tighten restrictions on pollution. More nutrients from agricultural waste and sewage will have to be removed from waterways under the new rules. It also for the first time applies standards to micropollutants such as chemicals from pharmaceutical waste.

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      How one German village exemplifies the cancer risk from wood burning

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 6 days ago - 06:00

    Residential heating with wood or coal can lead to significant air pollution, even in rural communities, researchers say

    In autumn 2018, a shipping container full of air pollution measurement equipment arrived in the centre of the small German village of Melpitz.

    Dr Dominik van Pinxteren of the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research explained the reason for their investigation: “We were concerned that wood burning could be an important source of particle pollution in small villages, but these areas are not adequately covered by official air quality monitoring networks.”

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      Campaigners warn over failure to curb Europe’s ‘runaway’ transport emissions

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 20 March - 05:00

    Greenhouse gases from sector could make up 44% of continent’s total output by 2030, says transport group

    The failure to tackle Europe’s “runaway” transport emissions could lead to the sector pumping out nearly half of the continent’s planet-heating pollution by 2030, a report has found.

    Driven by polluting cars and pushed higher by the growing thirst for flights, transport emissions in Europe have grown 26% since 1990 – even as efforts to clean up other areas of the economy have led to an overall emissions fall.

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