Breaking Waves: Ocean News

Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk reject criticism of how they abandoned resort and fled to Guatemala A Danish couple who fled their “forest resort” in Sweden for Guatemala and left behind a large tax debt and 158 barrels of human waste have hit back at criticism and claimed that their handling of the compost toilets was “very normal”. Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, both chefs, abandoned their purportedly eco-friendly retreat, Stedsans, in Halland, southern Sweden, last year. They owed large sums to Swedish and Danish tax authorities. They have since set up a business in Guatemala. Continue reading...

Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystems Explore the series – Last chance: the extinction crisis being ignored this election Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email A rare “bum-breathing” turtle found in a single river system in Queensland has suffered one of its worst breeding seasons on record due to flooding last December. It has prompted volunteers to question how many more “bad years” the species can survive. A freshwater species that breathes by absorbing oxygen through gill-like structures in its tail, the Mary River turtle is endemic to south-east Queensland. Its population has fallen by more than 80% since the 1960s and its conservation status was upgraded from endangered to critically endangered last year. Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Global research reveals most of 400m tonnes produced using fossil fuels, predominantly coal or oil Less than 10% of the plastic produced around the world is made from recycled material, according to the first detailed global analysis of its life cycle. The research reveals that most plastic is made from fossil fuels, predominantly coal and oil, despite rhetoric by producers, supermarkets and drinks companies about plastic being recycled. Continue reading...

John Todd’s eco-machine stunned experts by using natural organisms to remove toxic waste from a Cape Cod lagoon. Forty years on, he wants to build a fleet of them to clean up the oceans John Todd remembers the moment he knew he was really on to something: “There was no question that it was at the Harwich dump in 1986,” he recalls. This was in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, close to where Todd still lives. Hidden away from the picturesque beaches was the town landfill, including lagoons of toxic waste from septic tanks, which was being left to seep into the groundwater below. So Todd, then a 45-year-old biologist, decided to design a solution. What he was “on to”, he came to realise, was not just a natural way of removing pollution from water, it was a holistic approach to environmental restoration that was way ahead of its time, and possibly still is. An early eco-machine purifying toxic waste on Cape Cod in 1986. Photograph: John Todd Continue reading...