Green groups defend ‘essential’ levy, but Heck sausages and Gü desserts among those who say shoppers will pick up tab
A packaging tax designed to end our throwaway society is under fire for inadvertently adding to food price inflation as it pushes up the cost of everything from sausages to soft drinks.
“It’s about 3p on a pack of sausages,” says Andrew Keeble, the co-founder of Heck, of the new extended producer responsibility (EPR) tax.
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10/22/2025 - 04:08
10/22/2025 - 04:00
Interviews with experts and key players across four countries reveal why efforts to stop the multibillion-euro trafficking industry have failed – and how to save the endangered fish
By 10am on the midsummer Day of the Ox, the city of Narita smells of charcoal and sugar. The cobbled road is thronged with visitors lining up to buy grilled eel, a traditional delicacy believed to cool the body and keep spirits up in the humid weather.
“We’ll be so sad if it becomes extinct and we can’t eat eel any more,” says a customer sitting on the tatami-mat floor in Kawatoyo, a popular restaurant specialising in grilled eel, which has been operating for more than 115 years.
Kabayaki-style eel, grilled with tare sauce, served at Kawatoyo restaurant in Narita. Photograph: Toru Hanai
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10/22/2025 - 00:52
Annual survey finds about 21% of 249 swimming sites across NSW received ratings of ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ for water quality
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Coogee beach and Shelly beach in Manly have ranked among the Sydney swimming sites most polluted with faecal matter in the city, a government report has found.
About 21% of 249 swimming sites across NSW received a rating of “poor” or “very poor” in the 2024-25 NSW State of the Beaches report, part of an annual survey by the NSW department of environment.
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10/22/2025 - 00:46
Common dolphins in the North Atlantic are living significantly shorter lives, with female longevity dropping seven years since the 1990s. Researchers found this decline by analyzing stranded dolphins, revealing a 2.4% drop in population growth linked to bycatch deaths and environmental pressures. The findings expose flaws in traditional counting methods and call for adaptive conservation measures, such as smarter fishing restrictions.
10/22/2025 - 00:37
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10/22/2025 - 00:00
Campaigners say figures reveal a lack of enforcement with just 24 fines issued by councils for rule violations
Not one prosecution for illegal wood burning has been made in the past year, despite 15,195 complaints across England, data shows.
Additionally, just 24 fines were issued by local authorities between September 2024 and August 2025, responses to freedom of information requests by the campaign group Mums for Lungs revealed.
This article was amended on 22 October 2025. The original version stated that there had been just one prosecution in the last year; in fact there have been none.
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10/21/2025 - 23:01
Bleak report finds greenhouse gas emissions are still rising despite ‘exponential’ growth of renewables
Coal use hit a record high around the world last year despite efforts to switch to clean energy, imperilling the world’s attempts to rein in global heating.
The share of coal in electricity generation dropped as renewable energy surged ahead. But the general increase in power demand meant that more coal was used overall, according to the annual State of Climate Action report, published on Wednesday.
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10/21/2025 - 23:00
Human-wildlife conflict has now overtaken poaching as a cause of fatalities – and is deadly for people too. Some villages are finding new ways to live alongside them
Photographs by Edwin Ndeke
At nearly 3.5-metres tall and weighing as much as a bus, you could be forgiven for assuming that Goshi – one of an estimated 30 “super-tusker” elephants left in Africa – would be easy to find. The radio tracker picking up his signal beeps encouragingly, indicating the giant bull is within 200 metres. But the dry season has turned the mass of arid acacia scrubland grey, and everything seems to resemble an elephant.
Even when they are invisible, the huge herbivores shape the landscape here. There are 17,000 elephants across the Tsavo region, Kenya’s largest protected area, which is divided in two. Each year, elephants wander huge distances between feeding grounds, following the seasonal rains as they have done for thousands of years.
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10/21/2025 - 20:26
Sydney’s Observatory Hill peaks at 37C on Wednesday – below the 39C forecast – as the mercury in other parts of the city neared 40C
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Two men have died after being pulled from the water at a Victorian beach amid wild weather in the state.
On Wednesday evening, Victoria police confirmed two men were found unresponsive in the water at Frankston beach, on the Mornington Peninsula, just after 5pm. The men, who are yet to be identified, could not be revived.
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10/21/2025 - 20:00
Dan Zafra captured a timelapse of something he could only dream of - red sprites, also known as red lightning, flashing above the Milky Way - while photographing from the Clay Cliffs in New Zealand's South Island on 11 October. Red sprites are brief, large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above thunderstorms, reaching altitudes of up to 90km. They are almost impossible to see with the naked eye and last just a few milliseconds
‘A perfect coincidence’: rare red lightning captured in New Zealand skies
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