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Advocates warn plants like the latest addition to the Texas complex generate hazardous pollutants and provide cover for oil giants to produce new plastic products

ExxonMobil just launched one of the largest chemical recycling plants in North America – but environmental advocates say the technology is a dangerous distraction from the need to reduce plastic production.

On the surface, the latest addition to ExxonMobil’s giant petrochemical refinery complex in Baytown, Texas, sounds like it could be a good thing: An “advanced recycling” facility capable of breaking down 36,000 metric tons of hard-to-recycle plastic each year. But plastic waste advocates warn that plants like it do little actual recycling, and instead generate hazardous pollutants while providing cover for oil giants to keep producing millions of tons of new plastic products each year.

The 900 residents of the Manitoba town have learned to share their streets on the edge of the Arctic with the huge animals and the eager tourists who come to see them

Words and photographs by Zed Nelson

Perched on the southern edge of the Arctic on the shores of Hudson Bay, residents of the Canadian town of Churchill share their streets with the world’s largest land carnivore. Their regular encounters with polar bears have earned Churchill the nickname “Polar bear capital of the world”.

Sparring polar bears on the Hudson Bay shore near Churchill, Manitoba. The bears congregate here every year while waiting for the sea to freeze over so they can resume hunting seals. Photographs by Zed Nelson / Copyright © not to be reproduced without permission

Dozens of storage sites found across Australia but estimated amount of plastic reportedly falls from 12,350 tonnes to 11,000

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New stockpiles of soft plastics from the failed REDcycle recycling scheme have been uncovered as the work to develop an alternative program continues.

The program was wound up in November 2022 after it emerged that plastics consumers had returned to supermarkets to be recycled were instead put into storage.

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Bathing waters in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will be monitored for water quality regularly

Wild swimming fans will be able to enjoy access to four new sites in the UK that are being designated as bathing waters ahead of summer, the government has announced.

The sites in Rutland, Devon and Suffolk will receive bathing water status from next month, meaning they will soon benefit from regular water-quality monitoring.

Large numbers of cetaceans are dying from lethal collisions with vessels, even in protected areas. Now science may provide the means to protect them

Janie Wray could tell there was something horribly wrong from the way her colleague gasped. They were on a research station off the coast of British Columbia and Wray’s colleague was watching live drone footage through a pair of goggles. “She just went, oh my God,” says Wray.

She had spotted a humpback whale on its migration south, swimming without the use of its tail. Wray and her colleagues at BC Whales crowded around a computer screen to watch the footage. “Immediately, we all knew that we had a whale that most likely had a broken back,” she says. It was almost certainly the result of a ship strike. Later, they discovered it was a whale they knew: Moon.

Exclusive: National Energy Action says progress on energy efficiency is too slow and not well targeted at fuel-poor households

The government’s home insulation scheme would take 190 years to upgrade the energy efficiency of the UK’s draughty housing stock, and 300 years to meet the government’s own targets to reduce fuel poverty, according to industry calculations.

Critics of the Great British Insulation Scheme, which aims to insulate 300,000 homes a year over the next three years, have raised concerns that the plan does not go far enough to reach the 19m UK homes that need better insulation.

Councillors and residents hope to limit the number of daytrippers arriving by boat to preserve the city’s streets and character

The ships, at times dwarfing the average apartment building, begin lumbering into Barcelona while much of the city is still asleep. Stretching as long as five buses, some come to embark or disembark passengers, while others disgorge thousands of daytrippers keen to glimpse the city’s modernist architecture and stroll the narrow streets of the gothic quarter.

It’s a scene that plays out daily in Barcelona – much to the chagrin of some local officials. Last Monday, five cruise ships were slated to arrive; this Friday, on 14 April, eight are expected.

The national park is open again but intense storms mean the specter of climate crisis is more evident than ever

It’s been a winter few in Yosemite valley will ever forget.

After wildfires left the national park’s dramatic views shrouded in smoke over the summer, winter brought a series of historic storms that left the region inundated with snow. The deluge buried homes, cars and fire hydrants, chewed into stretches of winding mountain roads and downed trees along the park’s slopes.

Understanding why some animals are more susceptible to the disease could lead to improved screening for humans

Scientists are homing in on one of medicine’s most baffling mysteries: why some species avoid getting cancers while others are plagued by tumours that shorten their lives.

Whales tend to have low rates of cancer but it is the leading cause of death for dogs and cats. Foxes and leopards are susceptible while sheep and antelopes are not. Bats are also relatively well protected against cancer but not mice or rats. In humans, cancer is a leading cause of death that kills around 10 million people a year.

Scientists warn of more marine heatwaves, leading to increased risk of extreme weather

The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data.

Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016.

Distressed mammal was reported at lunchtime on Friday, but marine rescue service arrived too late to save it

A sperm whale is feared to have died after it washed up on the Lincolnshire coast.

British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) was called at about 12.15pm on Good Friday to help with a “large stranded whale” on the beach at Cleethorpes. The charity said the whale had been spotted “upright in the water” at about midday, but by the time it reached the beach, it was stranded on its side.

Reservoirs whose water levels had plummeted during punishing drought have recovered – but officials warn of ‘weather whiplash’

Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California’s drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the center of what should have been Folsom Lake.

Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end – mostly – to the state’s three-year drought.

New law – condemned as ‘illegitimate giveaway to the oil and gas industry’ – requires state parks to be leased to interested parties

Environmental groups have launched a last-minute effort to halt an extraordinary new law in Ohio that requires government agencies to lease state parks and other public state lands to the oil and gas industry.

A temporary injunction filed on Thursday seeks to put the brakes on legislation that requires state parks to be leased for fracking and which redefines the potent greenhouse gas methane as “green energy”. The law was due to go into effect on 7 April, but the court has not yet responded to the injunction.

Critics say a proposal to dispose of salt from waste brine by burying it in lined landfill is ‘not a long-term solution’

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Local landholders and advocacy groups in southern Queensland have criticised the state government’s plans to store millions of tonnes of coal seam gas waste in lined landfills, saying it risks contaminating the Murray-Darlin Basin.

They have also questioned the integrity of the government’s long-awaited waste management action plan for coal seam gas brine, saying it relies on research from oil and gas lobby group the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (Appea) and the University of Queensland Centre for Natural Gas, whose donors include Arrow Energy, Australia Pacific LNGand Santos.

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Research found that ‘forever chemicals’ had ‘no practical benefit’ in repelling water and stains as compared with untreated fabric

A new peer-reviewed study calls into question how well PFAS-based products repel water and stains in furniture, shoes, clothing, carpeting, outdoor gear and other consumer goods made of fabric.

Most water and stain repellents applied to fabrics worldwide use toxic PFAS as a main ingredient, and though the controversial chemicals are in thousands of products, water and stain repellency are two of their main consumer functions.

Leaks were contained and posed no danger, official reports say, but past disasters continue to cause fears of power source

In December, Janica Jammes started a microgreens business in the basement of her home in Big Lake, Minnesota, just across the river from Xcel Energy’s nuclear plant in Monticello.

At least once each day, she uses water from her well to nourish the plant trays. She delivers her product to customers within a 10-mile radius and says the business has been a success.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs, including a rare leopard, very deep-swimming fish and baby ducks

Having already discovered the presumed extinct great fox-spider, Mike Waite goes hunting on MoD land armed with a pair of his wife’s tights, an old medicine syringe and plastic cups

As a spider-hunting specialist, Mike Waite’s artillery of choice is a pooter. It’s a homemade sucking contraption made from his daughter’s old Calpol syringe and a pair of his wife’s tights (“I like to think they were old ones”), which he uses as a filter so he doesn’t inhale any spiders.

I’m with Waite, from Surrey Wildlife Trust, on Brentmoor Heath, which is partly owned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and managed by the trust. It sounds like New Year’s Eve, with continuous bangs from the shooting range. We’re in the buffer zone, on lowland heathland, where the public are allowed and spiders are just waking up from their winter slumber. We see a wolf spider, a gorilla jumping spider, and a raft spider (which recently featured on David Attenborough’s Wild Isles) all in a single morning.

Revenue from mining key metal used in EV batteries to triple by 2027-28 while thermal coal exports set to fall by more than 70%

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Exports of Australian lithium – a key metal used in batteries – are expected to earn as much as sales of thermal coal within five years, as the world increasingly embraces clean energy and the market value of fossil fuels falls.

New data released by the Australian government forecasts local lithium production will double and the industry’s revenue will triple by 2027-28 compared with last financial year.

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Swedish prosecutor casts doubt over theories that independent group was responsible for pipeline blasts

The Swedish prosecutor investigating the Nord Stream sabotage attack has said the “clear main scenario” was that a state-sponsored group had been involved, seemingly casting doubt over theories that posited an independent group was responsible for the pipeline blasts.

Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters on Thursday that though a non-state-backed plot was still theoretically possible, the type of explosive used in the bombings ruled out a “large portion of actors”.