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Could intercity cycle highways revolutionise the daily commute?

Germany is building the world’s biggest ‘bicycle autobahn’ to connect 10 cities and remove 50,000 cars from the road every day. With the popularity of e-bikes growing too, is Europe about to see a new era of long-distance cycle commuting?

In 2010, when the motorway between the German cities of Duisburg and Dortmund was closed as part of a cultural project, three million people walked, skated or cycled along the road. For one day only it had been transformed into a gigantic city boulevard.

Spatial planner Martin Tönnes took the opportunity to cycle from Essen to Dortmund. “There were so many people that, for the first time in my life, I experienced a bicycle traffic jam!” he recalls. “But that was when we started thinking about building a highway for bikes through the Ruhr Area. When we saw this mass of people cycling down the motorway, we understood there was a real demand.’’

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Strawberry moon is solstice first for Rutland Water

Egleton, Rutland The lightest night of the year couldn’t be any lighter, the tree-line stark against a fading stripe in the sky

The weather report said clear skies and a 9.30 sunset, so I drove to the lake. The western sky was wild, the sun brilliantly diffuse behind flings of cloud and fat vapour trails.

Related: Tonight’s strawberry moon solstice: last seen during 1967’s summer of love

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Scotch egg company claims to have cracked problem of eggshell waste

An egg mayonnaise supplier has partnered with scientists at Leicester University to turns leftover eggshells into a filler for plastics

Leicester-based egg processing plant Just Egg hard boils and peels 1.5m eggs a week for snacks such as egg mayonnaise and Scotch eggs, creating mountains of shells to dispose of. It’s a dilemma the company’s owner, Pankaj Pancholi, has been keen to crack since he launched the business 14 years ago.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Battle for Wentworth: activists rub salt in Turnbull’s climate change-induced wounds

As election day approaches, green groups are making one last push in the prime minister’s wealthy electorate, hoping to find leverage among the ‘small l liberals’

Malcolm Turnbull’s failure to get his party to adopt a strong policy on climate change is something he now appears to wear as a mark of pride – like a battle scar, showing how he’s fought for the cause.

“I am absolutely committed to achieving a global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to ward off unsafe global warming,” he reminded thousands of millennials and others during his Facebook-broadcast debate with Bill Shorten on 17 June.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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UN committee may again consider listing Great Barrier Reef as 'in danger'

Exclusive: Lawyers, scientists and NGOs urge the UN to force Australia to do more to protect the world heritage site

The Great Barrier Reef could be considered again for an “in danger” listing by the United Nations World Heritage Committee following the devastating bleaching this year, the Guardian can reveal.

The news came as a group of prominent lawyers, scientists and NGOs wrote to the committee, urging it to ask Australia to do more to protect the reef.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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What do Apple and Patagonia have in common? Making money from solar

Businesses typically put solar panels on their roofs to support clean energy and cut emissions, but a small group of them are branching out to earn profits from selling solar electricity

What does it mean when the solar panels on your roof were purchased by a clothing company? Maybe that you are part of a significant shift in the economics of solar.

Many businesses put solar panels on their roofs to show support for a cleaner source of electricity, cut carbon emissions and perhaps even lower their energy bills. They don’t typically treat solar as a profit maker.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Climate change is disrupting seasonal behaviour of Britain's wildlife

Global warming is causing breeding and migration cycles of related plants and animals to fall out of sync with potential impacts on entire ecosystems, research shows

Climate change is disrupting the seasonal behaviour of Britain’s plants and animals, with rising temperatures having an impact on species at different levels of the food chain, new research shows.

The result could be widespread “desynchronisation” between species and their phenological events – seasonal biological cycles such as breeding and migration – that could affect the functioning of entire ecosystems, according to the large-scale study published this week in the journal Nature.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Brian Moss obituary

Environmental scientist who worked on lake restoration globally as well as in the UK, most notably on the Norfolk Broads

Lakes are the jewels in the landscape of Britain, yet have also been the dumping grounds for wastes and pollutants. The environmental scientist Brian Moss, who has died aged 72, knew this well and spent his life achieving the ecological understanding that has underpinned the management and restoration of freshwater environments in the UK and around the world. But it was his passionate and successful communication of this science to land managers and policymakers that made him stand out. Most notable was his work with the Broads Authority to return the Norfolk Broads, a much-valued system of inter-connected lakes and rivers, to a cleaner, more naturally functioning landscape for future generations to enjoy.

When Brian started working at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich in 1972, he was deeply disappointed with the Broads’ murky greenish-brown water, lack of plants, and their eroded, featureless banks. He realised that, rather than the mecca for wildlife he had thought the Broads would be, they had borne the brunt of what he called “environmental abuse”. Over the following 17 years at UEA he built a solid understanding of the functioning of these shallow lakes and, through careful experimentation, he proposed innovative solutions for their restoration.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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UK coal power station in breach of EU air pollution law

Defra and the Welsh government are likely to have to pay European commission’s legal costs for breaching air pollution rules at Aberthaw power station, reports ENDS

The UK breached EU law by allowing a coal-fired power station to emit too much air pollution, the court of justice (CJEU) has said.

In a reasoned opinion, published on 28 June, the CJEU said the UK’s defence of how it regulated Aberthaw power station did not stack up and it should be forced to pay legal costs.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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Tackling illegal fishing in western Africa could create 300,000 jobs

Overseas Development Institute report says crackdown on illegal fishing, and building up national fleets, could generate billions of dollars for the region

If governments in western Africa could end illegal fishing by foreign commercial vessels and build up national fleets and processing industries, they could generate billions of dollars in extra wealth and create around 300,000 jobs, according to a new report (pdf).

The devastating, social, economic and human consequences of overfishing in western Africa’s coastal waters have been well documented but the report, Western Africa’s Missing Fish, by the Overseas Development Institute and Spanish investigative journalists porCausa, lays bare the extent of lost opportunities across countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone.

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Source: Guardian Environment

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