Pollution | The Guardian

Sewage plume reached seven bathing waters and significantly affected water quality in June 2023 United Utilities has been fined nearly £1m after illegally discharging raw sewage along the Lancashire coastline and polluting seaside holiday locations including Blackpool. The water company pleaded guilty to five environmental permit offences relating to a pollution incident along the Fylde coast in …

From rare bacteria to ‘forever chemicals’, a series of cases of violations or alleged pollution has prompted alarm When officials in Wyoming conducted a routine test on the water that was being discharged from a massive under-construction Meta datacenter, it was a shock to find it contained a rare and potentially hazardous bacterium. While the wastewater flushed into sewers in Cheyenne, Wyoming, …

Scientists say ultrafine particles in cruise ship emissions associated with reduced ability to resist common viruses More than 2.5 million cruise passengers travelled through Southampton in 2025. It is also the UK’s leading vehicle and deep-sea trading port . You can see the ships and port machinery from miles around. All of this is downwind of a city of 260,000 people . A team of 32 researchers …

Each year, people from across the world gather in a grove sacred to the Yoruba goddess Osun to be healed, conceive or realise their deepest wishes. But toxic lead, mercury and cyanide is leaching into the river 7Devotees in white clothing line the riverbank, praying as they carry offerings of fruit, kola nut and sacrificial animals in supplication to Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility, beauty …

From New York to Quebec, photographer Bryan Anselm spent months capturing spaces overrun with plastic and the actions individuals and groups are taking to reduce waste In New York City, the plastic we discard has a way of remaining in plain sight. There are few alleys to hide residents’ refuse, and the clear recycling bags leave their contents on full display. In a city built on a dense grid, lig…

I will calmly read all the threatening letters and await the court case against me. But I will take a stand even if our government won’t I can’t even remember when I decided to stop paying the sewage element of my Thames Water bill. It might have been after reading this headline from the Guardian in July 2025: “ Serious pollution incidents by English water companies rose 60% last year ,” with the…

The chicken liver sponge has sailed through a test of its ability to filter pollutants in a harbour in Spain’s Costa Brava In the polluted waters of Marina Palamós on Spain’s Costa Brava, Manuel Maldonado, a sponge biologist, noticed something unusual last month: red starfish had started settling in the area. Nearly two years earlier, the Spanish National Research Council scientist and his collea…

Exclusive: 7,280 suspected illegal spills in rivers and sea recorded in first five months of 2026 The number of suspected illegal discharges of raw sewage into rivers and seas by water companies during dry weather increased significantly during the first five months of 2026. Dumping raw sewage into waterways during dry spells via overflows amounts to pollution. It is considered a breach of the pe…

Report calls for legally binding targets to cut microplastic pollution as soil ‘is a complex living ecosystem’ The accumulation of microplastics in soil presents an emerging threat to the UK’s food security, according to scientists, MPs and campaigners who have called for legally binding targets to cut microplastic pollution. UK agricultural soils have been identified as among the most contaminat…

Mark R Shaw says airborne pollutants have caused a massive decline in insect numbers, in response to a Country Diary Nigel Brown’s understandable joy in finding a rosy footman in his moth trap ( Country diary, 25 August ) ends with “an important ecological message” that the substantial elimination of airborne sulphur dioxide pollution, which was devastating to the lichens and algae on which cater…

Scientists say system to treat contaminated wastewater offers a model for ensuring food security in a fast-warming climate All it took to turn the murky, heavily polluted waters of South Africa’s Stiebeuel River into a resource clean enough for irrigating a community’s vegetable plots was a collection of stones, heat-treated wood and sand. Without chemicals and using renewable energy, researchers…

Checking for sewage spills has become as normal as checking the weather forecast, say swimmers on East Sussex beaches South West Water has worst environmental record in England, analysis shows “I’m furious,” says Jo Armstrong, 75, sitting on Brighton beach with her daughter and granddaughter. Armstrong lives in Lewes, a town 8 miles from Brighton, and usually goes swimming in nearby Seaford in Ea…

Exclusive: Friends of the Earth finds greatest sewage discharge in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset ‘Tiny bit of rain and the sewage comes’: Brighton swimmers vent fury at sea pollution South West Water is doing more harm to the environment than any other water company in England, according to new analysis, with more sewage discharged in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset than anywhere else…

Whitley Bay, North Tyneside: A huge community effort is under way to clear up a spill of these disastrously resilient beads. We take a family trip to the beach to do our bit My son spots the first one. It’s about the size of a lentil, and half-buried in the dry sand. We’re on the beach at the seaside town of Whitley Bay. We’ve just walked past a clean-up crew of about 40 volunteers in hi-vis clot…

As well as being quieter, cheaper to run and easier to clean, induction cookers can cut kitchen temperatures by up to 10C Leaping flames, searing heat, copious sweat and scorchingly inventive swearing – restaurant kitchens are never a place for the faint-hearted, but this summer they have been sweltering in successive heatwaves to a dangerous degree. Some restaurants, cafes and bakeries in the UK…

Thermal drone footage shows a Microsoft-backed AI datacenter powering its operations with dozens of unpermitted generators The largest planned AI datacenter in New Jersey is being accused of violating federal law after a visual investigation found the site running dozens of unpermitted gas-powered generators. Thermal drone footage captured by the non-profit newsroom Floodlight last week showed th…

Exclusive: utility company wants to draw off tens of millions of litres of water a day from Thames and replace it with treated effluent Levels of a toxic “forever chemical” rose to 13 times the legal limit during Thames Water pilots for a controversial multimillion pound water recycling scheme that will pump millions of litres of treated sewage into the River Thames during drought. The data from …

Ocean Conservancy says last year’s cleanup collected 13.9m pieces of rubbish from beaches and rivers worldwide More than 1.3m plastic bottles were collected from beaches, rivers and waterways last year during the world’s largest single-day volunteer ocean cleanup. About 630,000 people took part in the International Coastal Cleanup in 2025, removing almost 13.9m pieces of rubbish from more than 15…

Although mobiles blared in public are nothing new, this crop of headphone-dodging irritants are truly maddening. It’s time to take them on ‘Interesting cities can’t be quiet”, runs one of grime DJ and music industry thinker Elijah’s epigrams – and in its essential spirit, he is right. Silent, tidy, prim cities should be treated with suspicion. Any such atmosphere denotes that something has gone w…

Hélène Duguy is taking on companies accused of failing to stop Pfas pollution in the area of France she calls home The factories were just part of the landscape for Hélène Duguy growing up in the heart of an area known as France’s “Chemical Valley”. “Those factories are visible from my mother’s apartment,” says Duguy, 34, whose mother still lives in St-Genis-Laval, south of Lyon. Continue reading…