Breaking Waves: Ocean News

In this week’s newsletter: a Guardian investigation reveals that the UK exported 139,000 tonnes of rubbish to poor districts in Adana, where farmers are left to cope with microplastics, toxic smoke, and debris • Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here A year ago this month, when global talks to end our spiralling plastic crisis collapsed, Emma Hardy, Britain’s then marine minister and the UK’s head of delegation, said she was “hugely disappointed”. The UK is committed to working, at home and abroad, to “protect the environment and pave the way to a circular economy”, she pledged. But Britain, one of the world’s largest exporters of plastic waste, remains part of a global trade that enables us to send mountains of plastic rubbish to other, mostly poorer countries, fuelling pollution, health impacts and waste crime. ‘Danger no longer only comes from the hitmen, but from the state’: the Honduran farmers labelled terrorists for protecting their land El Niño could push 50 million people into acute hunger before end of next year ‘We stared into an abyss’: the men and women battling France’s megafire Continue reading...

Slovakia reaches new high of 42C as authorities in Poland forced to shut down Kozienice and Połaniec power plants Europe’s dry riverbeds and scorched earth – in pictures Temperature records have been broken in several countries across central and eastern Europe as the extreme weather that has caused wildfires and droughts across the continent continues. Countries including Slovakia, Austria and Hungary registered record temperatures. On Thursday, the Slovakian hydrometeorological agency said a new high of 42C (108F) had been reached in Dolné Plachtince. Continue reading...

When temperatures get to 40C inside, and French building regulations won’t even allow shutters, these tenants’ listed homes are simply unlivable The population of Firminy, south-east France, has been dwindling for decades. Its recent history is one of factory closures in a region built by steel, and locals tell me that many people leave for better opportunities in neighbouring Saint-Étienne, or to live in the Haute-Loire’s countryside. On the top of a hill, however, stands Firminy’s pride: l’Unité d’Habitation, an imposing tower of concrete designed by Le Corbusier. The architect’s final project is an oddity – a building for people, where two-thirds of the apartments are dedicated to habitations à loyer modéré (or HLM – social housing); but also a piece of history, whose facade and roof were listed as monuments historiques in 1993. Continue reading...

This year’s finalists for the National Architecture awards’ sustainability category include a compact Canberra housing development and the largest commercial use of hempcrete in the country. Architecture ‘holds a mirror up to who we are as a society – what we value, what we’re willing to invest in, what we want to leave behind,’ says Adam Haddow, the chair of the jury for the awards. ‘The architects on this list … [have] designed buildings built to last, not just physically, but in the way they’ll continue to serve people long after the ribbon is cut’ Australia’s best apartment designs for 2026 – in pictures Continue reading...