Two Victoria University of Wellington-led projects are using dust and lake sediment to track past and present changes in the Earth’s climate and environment.

The Productivity Commission's final report reflects Local Government New Zealand's submission that good quality compact urban form, combined with good public transport, can contribute to the reduction of emissions.

The Productivity Commission's final report reflects Local Government New Zealand's submission that good quality compact urban form, combined with good public transport, can contribute to the reduction of emissions.

Britain has pledged to champion Climate Risk and Resilience at next year’s UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit, and has confirmed that its three missions in Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu will all be free of avoidable single-use plastics.

“The time for talking is now over and it is now time to take action” Brian Cox, Executive Officer for the Bioenergy Association says in a review of the report from the Productivity Commission into a low- emissions economy. “The Productivity Commission has set out in a very clear manner the main opportunity areas for taking action to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It has also identified key policy areas which should be addressed. We now need to act on these and many are low cost and easy to achieve.”

Mark Field, Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will travel to Nauru for the three-day (3-6 September) Pacific Islands Forum where climate change is top of the agenda.

On the eve of New Zealand’s first circular economy conference, Australian fashion technology company BlockTexx announces a working partnership with New Zealand textile research company The Formary to develop strategies and workflow models for recycling and repurposing the world’s tsunami of textile waste.

A Macquarie PhD student believes he’s come up with a way to turn coffee waste into biodegradable plastic coffee cups.

Single-use plastic shopping bags will be phased out over the next year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage announced today.

The long-awaited upgrade of a tiny West Coast town’s damaged sewage treatment ponds has a time extension – but the district council’s still being investigated for possible environmental rule breaches. David Williams reports for Newsroom.

LGNZ President Dave Cull has backed a WasteMINZ report calling for investigation into the broadening and progressive increase of New Zealand’s Waste Levy at this morning’s LGNZ Quarterly Media Briefing, and says that recent conversation around waste management has been hijacked by speculation on the rate of increase.