Category: News

The City of Edinburgh Council has brought in new measures to prevent schoolchildren from taking more than one day out of lessons per academic year for climate strikes.

A spokesperson for the council said the move would widely be regarded as a “reasonable compromise”

Earlier today (16 August), the local authority’s education committee met to discuss plans to limit the number of authorised absences which children at primary schools and secondary schools could take per academic year, for the purpose of joining the #Fridays4Future movement.

Started by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg last year, the movement has grown from a one-person protest to an international movement. The biggest school climate strike to date, on 15 March 2019,  garnered the support of 1.4 million

Tech start-up Faraday Grid has entered administration after the firm drained its research budget and failed to secure further funding.

UK Power Networks has confirmed that Faraday Grid’s proposed pilot project is no longer going ahead

Grant Thornton has announced it was appointed as the administrator of the company on 8 August.

Faraday Grid was formed in 2016 to develop its Faraday Exchanger technology for use by electricity networks.

The company claimed the hardware could combine the functions of multiple existing devices – converters, inverters, rectifiers and transformers – and autonomously maintain a target voltage, frequency and power factor when combined with its namesake software platform.

UK Power Networks announced plans in October to trial the technology across London starting in spring 2019.

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Oohos, the edible, plastic-free packaging capsules trialled by companies such as Lucozade Ribena Suntory, have received more than £300,000 in Government funding that will help boost daily manufacturing outputs.

More than 36,000 Lucozade Sport Oohos were sampled at the 2019 Virgin Media London Marathon

The sachets, created by packaging firm Skipping Rocks Lab and made by manufacturing firm Notpla, is a seaweed extract that is used as edible packaging for drinks under 100ml. The plastic-free packaging can be eaten, composted or disposed of in normal household bins. Once discarded, they take around six weeks to decompose.

The Oohos capsules have already been trialled by Lucozade Ribena Suntory, the Vita Mojo restaurant and Just Eat, and have now received more than £300,000 in Innovate UK

German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp has had its new emissions goals approved by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), shortly after pledging to become climate-neutral by 2050

Thyssenkrupp is one of just four German firms to achieve SBTi approval

While ‘climate-neutrality’ by 2050 is, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), what is necessary to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C, the SBTi approval is for the company’s medium-term targets, which are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 2C trajectory.  

These include a target of reducing direct (Scope 1) and power-related (Scope 2) carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, against a 2018 baseline, and of cutting indirect (Scope 3) emissions by 16% by 2030, against a 2017 baseline. Thyssenkrupp believes its largest

Every week, numerous eye-catching and potentially transformational innovations are being developed to help businesses and nations turn their green ambitions into actions. Here, we round up six of the best.

This week’s innovations could drive significant change in the transport, fashion and food sectors 

Here in the UK, our MPs are on summer recess and our schools are closed for summer – but by no means does that mean that sustainability trailblazers are resting on their laurels. 

The past seven days have seen big business set bold new carbon reduction and renewables targets, rework their packaging portfolios and make sizeable investments into the next generation of innovative products and systems. 

In this series, edie’s editorial team rounds up some of these innovations,

A host of major UK water companies, local authorities and NGOs have today (15 August) teamed on a new tree-planting initiative that will assist the delivery of a carbon-neutral water industry by 2030.

Tree planting above Gorpley reservoir in Calderdale where up to 200,000 trees will be planted Image: Yorkshire Water

The UK’s nine major water and sewerage providers, including Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water and United Utilities have committed to planting 11 million trees in order to improve the natural environment across 6,000 hectares of English land.

Original woodland will be restored alongside new projects on land owned by the water companies. Local authorities, The National Trust, The Wildlife Trusts and The RSPB are also part of the initiative and will provide

Europe’s sustainable finance market experienced “rapid” growth during the first half of 2019, despite a challenging end to 2018, new analyses have concluded this week.

H2 of 2018 was widely regarded as a difficult period for green finance, but the market is showing signs of resurgence 

The first of these analyses comes from Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) Sustainable Finance Market Outlook for the second half of 2019. According to this report, Europe accounted for almost half (48%) of global sustainable debt insurance between January and July this year, with growth driven by both the corporate and government sectors.

Indeed, BNEF is predicting that at least $380bn of sustainable debt finance will be provided during 2019, after a record H1.

“The sustainable debt finance

A coalition of 130 MPs, including 35 from the Conservative Party, has called on Boris Johnson to alter the UK’s planning and energy policies to better support the growth of onshore wind.

Pictured: The Scout Moor Wind Farm is England’s second-largest onshore wind array

In a letter sent to the Prime Minister this week, the MPs state that “onshore wind energy is vital to our aim of achieving our climate targets at least cost and the inspiring vision of a before-2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target”.

The document highlights the decision taken by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in 2015 to exclude onshore wind assets from the Government’s Contracts for Difference (CfD) process – a move which industry

The Coca-Cola Company has unveiled a string of updates to the packaging used across its Dasani water brand, in a bid to minimise its plastic footprint.

The new packaging formats include recyclable aluminium cans, bottles made using bioplastics and recycled PET, and a packaging-free dispenser option

The updates, which Dasani has described as the “largest sustainability initiatives in the history of the brand”, include a pledge to switch all 20-oz bottles sold within the US for those made with a mix of 50% plant-based bioplastic and recycled PET plastic. This shift is expected to be completed by mid-2020.

Elsewhere, Dasani will also launch its first water in aluminium cans in some North-eastern states this autumn, and its first water in larger-format aluminium

Apple has revealed that it sourced 1,000 ounces of gold from miners working to restore natural habitats this year, up from just 25 ounces last year.

For the gold to be verified, miners have to pledge to use low-impact techniques and restore the local habitat when they are finished at their sites. Image: Apple

The tech giant claims this puts it on track to begin upscaling its ‘Salmon Gold’ project for sustainable supply chains significantly in the coming years.

‘Salmon Gold’ was first launched by Apple in 2017, in response to concerns that mining operations in Alaska were degrading creeks and streams to the point that Pacific salmon had been listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA).

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