Hugely popular elsewhere in Europe, briquettes are beginning to take off in the UK – and they’re good for your fireplace or stove, your pocket and the environment

They burn hotter and cleaner, are cheaper to buy, and much easier to store and handle – so why do so few people with open fires and wood-burning stoves use recycled wood briquettes to heat their home?

Big in Europe, but still largely untried by many fire users in the UK – particularly in the south – those selling them claim that once you have tried briquettes, you’ll never go back to hauling piles of logs off your drive.

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Source: Guardian Environment

Norwegian camera operator Harald Albrigtsen captures the moment when humpback whales swim beneath the northern lights. Also known as the aurora borealis, the phenomenon is caused by electrically charged particles from the sun colliding with the Earth’s atmosphere

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Source: Guardian Environment

The salt industry could provide local people with a climate resilient alternative income to agriculture – but much needs to be improved, reports El Pais

In Senegal’s central Kaffrine region, stretches of the national highway cut through vast salt ponds. Yet the salt industry – which could help local people earn more and cope with worsening climate pressures – is little developed, experts say.

“At the artisanal level, you have men harvesting with no gloves, no boots,” said Cheikh Tidiane Sall of Innovations Environnement Développement (IED) Afrique, a group working on sustainable development. “Inadequate storage bags are used and the salt contaminates the soil.”

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Source: Guardian Environment

Prospects for fracking boom in Poland look remote as companies including state-owned gas firm ditch shale gas concessions in face of challenging geology

Poland’s shale gas industry appears to be collapsing, just four years after the US government predicted that its reserves were abundant enough to fuel the country for the next three centuries.

Concessions for exploratory shale drilling have nearly halved in the last year from 58 to just 32, according to a new Polish government manifest published to little fanfare on the environment ministry’s website this week.

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Source: Guardian Environment

John McDonnell adds support to letter sent to Crown Prosecution Service, while all five mayoral candidates plan third runway protest outside Parliament

The shadow chancellor John McDonnell, lawyers and environmentalists campaigning to prevent a new runway at Heathrow have written to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), asking them to drop charges of aggravated trespass against 13 activists for a protest at the airport.

The actions of the protesters, which prevented a number of planes taking off, were “reasonable, justifiable and honourable”, according to the letter. “We should be congratulating them for defending the planet, not prosecuting them,” it says.

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Source: Guardian Environment

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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Source: Guardian Environment

The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic, and it’s our fault – but we can find the solution

From the sea’s shore, it can be hard to believe that something as vast and deep as the ocean can be harmed by a human being. But individuals are parts of communities, and our global community has exploded to over 7 billion people. The multiplier effect of growing populations, increasing demand for food and 200 years of carbon-intensive industrial production have put a tremendous burden on the ocean.

The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic from increased carbon emissions absorbed from the air. If things continue as they are, experts estimate that by 2025 there will be a ton of plastic in the ocean for every three tons of fish.

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Source: Guardian Environment

In Los Angeles, even sketch comedy groups are trying to save water. While the members of Dehydrated Comedy have some pretty extreme ideas, here are a few more practical ways you can save water too

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Source: Guardian Environment

The scientific community has helped to generate the momentum behind the sustainable development goals. By linking evidence to policy in timely, thoughtful and sensitive ways, scientists can now contribute to the task of implementation.

A flurry of commitments are being made this year that will shape the world over the next fifteen years, including the agreement of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the UN conference of parties (COP) on climate change in Paris, and the leaders’ declaration from the last G7 Summit on phasing out fossil fuels by the end of the century.

Throughout 2015, the sustainable development agenda is high on international and national agendas, creating a window of opportunity. Central to this are the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which were formally endorsed at the United Nations last month. The SDGs provide a positive and inspiring roadmap towards a just and sustainable society. They aim to tackle a wide range of social issues (including poverty, health, education, gender, and inequality) as well as environment and resource issues (such as water, food and energy security, climate change, oceans and biodiversity) in an integrated way. However, more work is required to identify how such ambitious goals can be realised.

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Source: Guardian Environment