カテゴリー: Waste
After his project got rejected in Sydney, a rubbish disposal magnate now hopes to build a $630m port and waste incinerator near a tourist gateway cityAn Australian billionaire’s plan to burn rubbish for energy in Fiji amounts to “waste colonialism” and…
Towering above Delhi’s skyline, emitting an inescapable stench of rotting flesh, are giant mountains of rubbish. Several miles wide and more than 200ft (60 metres) high, they are visible from across the city and stand as symbols of Delhi’s inability to…
Fast-fashion recycling: how ‘the castoff capital of the world’ is making Indian factory workers sick
Reports of lung disease, skin conditions and even cancer are rising in Panipat, which recycles 1 million tonnes of textile waste a yearThe air inside Panipat’s recycling factories is heavy with lint that glints in the light before settling over every s…
A cooperative in Pune, India, is diverting waste from the landfill while also alleviating povertyThree decades ago, Rajabai Sawant used to pick and sort waste on the streets of Pune with a sack on her back. The plastic she collected from a public waste…
Dmitry Kalmykov is a Ukrainian scientist who has dedicated his life to investigating environmental disasters, first at Chornobyl and now in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan – formerly the Soviet Union’s primary nuclear weapons testing site. He teaches schoolc…
Indore in Madhya Pradesh was once dotted with fetid waste dumps but after a huge campaign is now virtually spotlessThis is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start s…
Hundreds of millions of pilgrims flocked to the Ganges for this year’s festival, housed in a sprawling temporary metropolis stretching across 4,000 hectares of the floodplains of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh For 45 days the floodplains of Prayagraj, a ci…
The high street retailer may be shutting shops in the UK but its legacy lives on for a plastics company which continues to help improve the lives of India’s waste pickersSitting in a sultry corner of southern India, beside the rain trees and beaches o…
As vast solar plants multiply, so does the scrap, set to reach 19m tonnes by 2050. But disposing of the waste often falls to informal traders who risk injury when dismantling broken panelsUnder the scorching sun, a sea of solar panels gleams in the sem…
Leaking, ‘super emitter’ landfills of India’s capital are a global hotspot for the potent greenhouse gas, according to satellite dataRevealed: The 1,200 methane leaks from waste dumps trashing the planetThey tower above Delhi like monstrous mountains, …
UN-approved release to go ahead despite China’s ban on all Japanese sea imports following first batchJapan will begin releasing a second batch of wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant from next week, its operator has said, an exercise th…
In today’s newsletter: Japan’s decision to release radioactive water from the tsunami-hit power plant has divided groups – is it entirely safe or staggeringly stupid?• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning.Today’s newsletter …
Army of yellow garbage trucks blasting out classical jingles brings out a Pavlovian response to take out binsThe sound is inescapable. Wherever you are in Taiwan – be it three beers deep at a city bar, floating in the Taiwan Strait, or hauling yourself…
When a Romanian businessman returned to his hometown and found a city blighted by mining waste, he hatched a plan to restore it to its former glory. He became a local hero, but now prosecutors accuse of him a running a multimillion dollar fraud Continu…
Parts of a 23-tonne piece of rocket will come crashing down – somewhere – in the next few daysIn the next few days, a 23-tonne piece of rocket will plummet to Earth at about 15,000 miles an hour. Much of it may burn up on re-entry, but a significant am…