Better Planet
Education’s Blog

The world's political leaders are meeting in Madrid for the next two weeks in an attempt to agree plans to tackle the climate crisis.

The European Parliament has today declared a "global climate and environmental emergency' and has urged all member states to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is in line with the UK government's current ambitions for reducing emissions.

The environment is very much in the news today. First, new research from Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has shown that the amount of plastic packaging used in supermarkets actually increased from 2017 to 2018, going from 886,000 tonnes to 903,000 tonnes. A lot of the additional weight comes from 10p 'bags for life', which are made of thicker plastic than the flimsier and 'throwaway' 5p bags used previously. The report has found that each household buys an average of 54 'bags for life' a year, making them more 'bag a week' than 'bag for life', with sales up 26% to 1.5 billion bags in 2018.

Following on from yesterday's news that the world's greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high in 2018 at 55 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent, the UN has said that significant cuts need to take place across the planet if we are to have any hope of limiting global average temperature increases by the year 2100 to 1.5C.

The United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released a new report showing that all key greenhouses gases measured in 2018 increased at above average rates for the last decade.

The newly-published Production Gap Report 2019, the first of its kind, aims to assess the difference between current government plans for fossil fuel production and the levels that would be necessary to achieve the 1.5C and 2C limits on global temperature increases proposed by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) have declared states of emergency because of the threat of bushfires, which are burning out of control. There are more than 120 bushfires burning across the two states. Nine homes have been destroyed in Queensland, whilst 150 have been razed to the ground in NSW.

Climate strike' has been named the Word of the Year for 2019 by the Collins Dictionary. It topped a shortlist of new and notable words that reflected the events of the last 12 months. Interestingly, it is the second year in a row that en environmentally themed word has been chosen. The Word of the Year for 2018 was 'single-use', marking a massive increase in public awareness of plastic pollution.

US President Donald Trump began the process of formally withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement on 4 November 2019. The US will be the only country in the world not to be participating in the pact.

A new statement, published today in BioScience, a publication from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, has declared today "clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency". And the statement has the backing of more than 11,000 scientists from 153 nations around the world.

The government has halted fracking in England with immediate effect. Â It has also warned that it would not support future shale gas projects. The decision was taken after a scientific report produced by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) concluded that it was impossible to rule out the possibility that people living near fracking sites might suffer 'unacceptable' consequences.

A lot has been going on during the last week on the topic of climate change. The Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has warned that companies and industries that are not heading towards a zero carbon future will be affected by investor pull-outs and risk going bankrupt.

Millions of people in at least 150 countries around the world are taking part in climate crisis protests today to urge their governments to take action to combat climate change.

We are really excited to launch our new suite of lesson plans on climate change, for use by KS2 and KS3. The suite includes a set of lessons and presentations covering the following topics:

Since the start of 2019, the number of wildfires burning in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has increased by 84%. There were around 40,000 fires in the Brazilian Amazon between 1 January and 21 August 2018. In the same period this year, that number has increased to around 75,000. The smoke from the fires can be seen from space.

Young British adventurer Ash Dykes, aged 28, has finished his 4,000 mile trek along the length of the Yangtze River in China.

The ten hottest years have all happened since 2002, with 2016 the hottest ever according to a new report from the Met Office. Meanwhile, none of our coldest years has occurred after 1963.

A new survey, commissioned by Christian Aid, has found that 71% of the UK public believed that climate change was a more important issue than Brexit. Two thirds of those asked beleieved that Bexit should be at the top of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's political agenda, while 60% felt that the government was not doing enough to tackle climate change.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government's own advisory panel, has said that it is shocked by the lack of proper plans to protect people from the impacts of climate change - like heatwaves and flash floods.

The National Grid has predicted that 2019 will be the first full year that clean electricity generation will produce more energy than that generated by fossil fuels.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government's panel of official advisers on climate change stated yesterday that the UK government needs to set a legally binding target to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. ‘Net zero' recognises that we will still be burning some fossil fuels, for example for flying, whilst emissions arise from farming too, but that these emissions would be counteracted by the planting of trees or by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from power stations and factories, which could then be buried underground.

One million homes in the UK are now being supplied with biomethane - 'green gas' - for their heating, hot water and cooking.

Over 400 people have now been arrested at the Extinction Rebellion protests being held in London. For four days now, protesters have been blocking key roads and landmarks in the capital, including Waterloo Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge, Parliament Square, Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England has warned that the world's financial systems are threatened by climate change and are at risk if they don't reform. Mr Carney, together with François Villeroy de Galhau, the Governor of the Banque de France wrote an open letter yesterday outlining the dangers they feel climate change poses to the global economy.

A new report on behalf of Energy Innovation, a US-based company producing research on energy and environmental policy has found that renewable energy like wind and solar power could already be cheaper for US consumers than 74% of coal-based energy, and this will increase to 86% by 2025.

Tens of thousands of young people walked out of school last Friday to express their alarm at the apparent inaction of politicians across the globe in the face of mounting evidence for climate change and how it is going to affect our planet in the near future.

School strikes have been held today by tens of thousands of young people in over 100 countries. The world's young people are uniting to demand that political leaders take greater action to prevent climate change.

Across the UK, thousands of schoolchildren have walked out of school today in a mass protest to show their concern about the threat of climate change.

Yesterday, the UK government rejected requests by fracking firms to review the strict rules in place to control seismic activity caused by their operations. Both Cuadrilla and Ineos had appealed for a relaxation of the limits, which state that fracking operations must stop if a tremor greater than 0.5 magnitude is detected.

The Met Office has warned that at some point between now and 2023, the lowest target for global average temperature increases set by the Paris agreement could be reached, at least temporarily.  In a five year forecast released yesterday, the organisation's meteorologists said that there was a 10% chance that global warming (currently running at an increase in average global temperatures of 0.2C per decade) could combine with an El Niňo event to produce a year in which global annual temperatures were raised to 1.5C above pre-Industrial levels.

More than two weeks of climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland that ended on 15 December 2018 have resulted in clarity for the ‘rulebook' that will dictate how the Paris agreement of 2015 is actually put into force.  But the ambition expressed before the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP 24) - that of increasing government targets around the global for cutting carbon emissions - has not been successful. Â

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the United Nations' body of climate experts, has stated in its provisional report ‘State of the Climate in 2018' that the last four years have been the hottest on record, whilst the top 20 hottest years have all occurred in the last 22 years. If current trends continue, global average temperatures look set to rise between 3C and 5C by 2100.

The US National Climate Report, published last week, combines submissions from 13 separate federal agencies. It states that climate change is already harming the lives of some Americans, with ‘substantial damages' likely to be caused if temperatures continue to rise in an uncontrolled way.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the body for the United Nations' meteorology experts confirms that levels of the main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane - are now all at record levels.

The CCC recommends doubling tree planting by reducing meat and dairy production, and protecting peatland. Critics, including the National Farmers' Union, seek higher reforestation targets.

The lexicographers from Collins Dictionary have examined 4.5 billion words of text in order to name 'single-use' as their word of the year for 2018. The word, which refers to items that are made to be used once then thrown away has seen a four-fold increase in its usage since 2013.

The European Parliament yesterday backed a proposed directive to ban single use plastics by 571 votes to 53. The proposal suggests banning single use items like plastic straws, cotton buds, straws, drink stirrers, disposable plates and cutlery by 2021, while enforcing the recycling of 90% of plastic bottles by 2025.

On Tuesday 23 October, Cuadrilla Resources paused its fracking operations at its Preston New Road site after detecting a 0.4 magnitude seismic event.

In the same week that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a key report giving the world 12 years to drastically reduce its carbon emissions, permission has been granted for fracking to go ahead in England for the first time since 2011.

On Monday, a report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the findings of more than 6,000 scientific studies has stated that we have just 12 years left in which to ensure that global temperature changes are limited to 1.5C above pre-Industrial levels.

British adventurer and extreme athlete Ash Dykes, from North Wales, has just arrived at his first major milestone during Mission Yangtze, his third world-first record attempt to walk the entire 4,000 mile length of the Yangtze river in China - one the world's genuine and last remaining world-firsts.

A new report has pointed to a bleak future for many of the world's killer whales (orcas). In fact, it says that at least half of the world's population are likely to become extinct because polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are still leaking into the world's oceans, despite having been banned by the US in 1978 and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.

Nearly 50 streets in London will be reclaimed for play and for encouraging stronger communities on World Car Free Day tomorrow. Air pollution is now a major problem in the world's cities. In the UK alone, poor air quality is a factor in over 40,000 premature deaths each year.

British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday proposed doubling the 5p charge on plastic bags to 10p. She also suggested that the charge should be extended to all shops, rather than just the larger stores (companies that have 250 or more employees) that currently have to charge for bags. Several of the large supermarket chains have already moved over to only offering 10p ‘bags for life', rather than 5p single use bags.

British Adventurer Ash Dykes is now underway in attempting one of the greatest world-first expeditions of the decade in traversing the length of China's Yangtze River.

We are delighted to announce that Ceallach Spellman has become the newest President of the Young People's Trust for the Environment.

The first ever systematic analysis of the impacts of humans on our oceans has discovered that a maximum of just 13% can still truly be called ‘wilderness' areas. The report from the University of Queensland, Australia and the Wildlife Conservation Society has found that almost all of the areas that are still free from the damaging impacts of human beings are at the Poles and in the most remote parts of the Pacific Ocean.

There's no doubt about it, it's hot out there! We are likely to see the hottest temperature of 2018 so far somewhere in the UK later this week. There is even talk of the hottest ever UK temperature being recorded in the coming weeks, beating Faversham, Kent's 2003 record of 38.5℃ (101.3℉). June 2018 was among the top five hottest and driest ever seen in the UK, with provisional data showing that some counties may have had their driest June ever recorded: Dorset 2.0mm (4% of average), Essex 1.7mm (4% of average) and Middlesex just 0.7mm (2% of average). Our normally green countryside is turning to shades of yellow and brown as we roast in the summer heatwave.

Whilst young people are the most likely group to want to own and drive an electric car in the next ten years, many are now choosing not to drive at all.

Recent research in which over 10,000 drivers were polled by UK motoring organisation the AA has found that half of 25-34 year-olds would like to own an electric car. 40% of those aged 18-24 and 35-44 agree with them. This figure dropped to just 25% among the over 65s. Overall, 31% of those questioned said they would like to own an electric vehicle.

A recently published report from the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment (NSEE) has shown that Americans' views on climate change are themselves changing. A record 73% now think that there is real evidence for global warming. 60% of Americans also believe that humans are responsible for climate change, either primarily (34%) or partly 26%).

There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year, whilst an international football pitch measures 0.82 hectares, so EXACTLY a football pitch per second would amount to 25,859,520 hectares.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is an independent body launched by George Osborne in 2015 to look into the UK's future energy infrastructure needs. It has today recommended in its newly-published National Infrastructure Assessment that the UK government reconsider its plans on building more nuclear power stations to meet future carbon emission reduction targets. Instead, the Commission has suggested that renewable energy is where the government should be looking to meet the UK's future energy needs.

Trichlorofluoromethane, otherwise known as CFC-11, is a chemical which has been banned under the Montreal Protocol of 1987, because it destroys ozone and is a powerful greenhouse gas too.

Ice in the Antarctic is melting faster than ever, with around 200 billion tonnes a year returning to the ocean. Meltwater from the Antarctic alone is pushing global sea levels up by about 0.6mm per year - three times as much as in 2012.

They're really useful when you've got sticky, messy fingers and faces to get clean and some of us use them to clean other areas as well particularly when changing nappies! But wet wipes are responsible for 93% of blockages in sewers, helping to create huge 'fatbergs' that stop the waste water (and other things) from flowing freely.

Prime Minister Theresa May will today announce the UK government's plans for a consultation later this year on a ban for single-use plastics like drinking straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds. If successful, the ban could come into force as soon as next year.

An international team of scientists, led by Prof John McGeehan from the University of Portsmouth, has inadvertently improved an enzyme that helps to break down plastic. Their research was based around a bacterium that was discovered in a rubbish tip in Japan in 2016. The bacterium had naturally evolved an enzyme which enabled it to eat plastic.

Waitrose and Iceland make new pledges to reduce their environmental impacts.

The government has today announced that people in England will soon have to pay a deposit when they buy drinks in bottles and cans. The new charge will be made on single use plastic and glass bottles, along with steel and aluminium cans, as part of an effort to reduce waste and increase recycling. A consultation is being carried out to decide how the deposit scheme will work and the date for its implementation is yet to be announced.

Sudan, the last surviving male northern white rhino died on Monday 19 March 2018, aged 45.

A new study of 259 bottles of drinking water from 19 locations in a total of nine countries has revealed that more than 93% of them contained microplastic - tiny pieces of plastic. Just 17 of the bottles sampled were free from microplastic, while one bottle of mineral water was discovered to contain 10,000 pieces of plastic per litre. An average of 325 pieces of microplastic were found for every litre of water tested.

The grey squirrel is a great example of how introducing a species from another part of the world can have unintended consequences. Originally from America, grey squirrels were released in parklands in the UK during the 1870s. It was hoped that they would add interest and be a decorative addition to the landscape.

Whilst here in the UK we are struggling with the biting cold caused by the 'Beast from the East', the cold weather front crossing to our shores from Siberia, it's a different story in the Arctic.

Do you dream of becoming an award-winning chef? Create a Sustainable Business Premier Dish is an exciting opportunity for young people in the UK, France and Belgium who have an interest in environmental issues and cooking. It's a unique competition which challenges young people to develop a main course to be served on board Eurostar's most prestigious class of service.

The UK's Prime Minister Theresa May has unveiled a new 25-year green plan.

The French Parliament has passed a new law banning fossil fuel extraction.

From today, the East of England Co-op is to start selling tinned food along with dried foods like crisps, pasta and rice after they reach their 'best before' date.

A 100 megawatt lithium ion battery, built by Tesla was officially activated on 1 December 2017 in South Australia. According to Tesla's boss, Elon Musk, the battery is three times larger than the next most powerful battery in the world.

Awards ceremony for Eurostar's 'Create a Sustainable Business Premier Dish' competition held in Paris.

Delegates at the United Nations' global climate talks, which are being held for the next two weeks in Bonn, Germany, have seen new data published by the World Meteorological Organisation, showing that 2017 looks set to be in the top three warmest years on record for our planet.

Electric cars are the transport of the future, but they're here already!

We want young people aged 5-17 to tell us about what they're doing to help the environment and in return, they have the chance to win a £30 Go Ape voucher!

On Monday 2 October, Environment Secretary Michael Gove announced a four-week call for views on how a deposit return scheme (DRS) for plastic drinks bottles might work in England. The government's working group on the issue will also consider similar schemes for glass and metal containers.

The Scottish government confirmed a ban on fracking yesterday. The move followed a consultation, which revealed overwhelming public opposition along with limited economic benefits to the industry for Scotland.

UK based low-cost airline EasyJet has announced that it could be flying electric planes within the next ten years.

According to analysis carried out by National Grid, a combination of solar, wind and nuclear energy generated 52% of our energy in the summer of 2017. That compares with just 35% of energy coming from low-carbon sources in the summer of 2013.

YPTE would really like to hear about what young people around the UK are doing to help look after our world. Your actions could inspire other young people (and adults!) to think about what they can do to help protect our environment.

New offshore windfarms are set to be built for a record low price in the UK early in the 2020s.

Tests on tap water from around the world have shown that much of the water we drink is contaminated with microplastic fibres.

Young people aged 15 to 19 have until 8 September 2017 to create a sustainable dish!

With around 250 species of bee living here in the UK, these key pollinators make a huge impact on our lives - even if we don't always realise it!

The UK government has unveiled its plans for cleaner air.

A five year research project by UK scientists, funded by the National Environment Research Council (Nerc), is investigating how increased algal growth on the Greenland ice sheet could increasing the speed with which the ice is melting.

The UK's Met Office has released the results of a study which used a supercomputer to model the increased risk of unusually heavy rainfall for the UK.

For the first time, evidence for molten fuel found inside Unit 3.

It's everywhere! Plastic is a big part of our lives, but it's fast becoming a major environmental headache too. Here are some of the reasons why:

Data collected from around the world suggests that June 2017 was the third hottest since records began, only beaten by 2015 and 2016.

Widespread adoption of electric cars to lead to increased electricity demands, while gas will remain important to the UK until 2050.

Award-winning children's author joins YPTE's Presidents.