4ocean cleans up record-breaking 30 million pounds of ocean plastic
4ocean has set the world record for most trash collected from our oceans by a single organisation – a whopping 30 million pounds and counting. To celebrate this achievement, let’s take a detailed look at the organisation's journey. You’d be hard pressed to find a beach that doesn’t have...
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Exclusive – How Tap Social is helping prison rehabilitation
Tap Social is a unique and thriving social enterprise in the heart of Oxford, combining craft beer with prison rehabilitation. Walking into the Market Tap, you would not have guessed that this warm and lively venue opened just two months earlier. Located in the centre of Oxford’s Covered Market, Tap’s newest...
Is the vertical farming bubble popping already?
Vertical farming had been touted by numerous experts as the future of food production in a warming world. In 2023, however, such companies are withering and key players have called it a day. If farming conditions become untenable due to climate change, we’ll just take our crops indoors, right? In theory,...
Study finds milk or egg present in one third of vegan products
New analysis conducted by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute has found that one in three meat substitutes labelled as a vegan product contains animal-derived ingredients, more specifically, milk and egg. With so many plant-based brands popping up in grocery stores globally, it has never been easier to adopt a...
Shell makes U-turn on oil phase-down pledge to ‘reward shareholders’
Shell is the latest fossil fuel giant to scale back its climate pledges in favour of increasing pay outs to shareholders. The company claims it has already reached its green target after selling interest in a Texan oilfield during 2021. Despite making record profits in 2022, Shell believes its shareholders...
Glastonbury Festival is getting a pink and purple wind turbine
Octopus Energy and Glastonbury Festival have teamed up to install a pink and purple 28-metre wind turbine in order to make this year’s Glastonbury the greenest yet. Glastonbury Festival’s ‘biggest fan’ will be in attendance this year, and no, we’re not talking about Lilly Allen or Stormzy. Thanks to a collaboration...
Afri-Plastics Challenge grants £4.1 million to innovative winners
Nine winners of the Afri-Plastic Challenge have shared a prize pot of £4.1 million for their innovations aimed at reducing plastic waste and pollution in sub-Saharan Africa. Our global plastic problem shows no signs of stopping. Scientists have estimated that by 2050, humans will generate a massive 34 billion tons of plastic waste annually if we do not slow our current rate of production. More than half of this waste will...
Plantd is creating carbon absorbing building materials from grass
Plantd is a burgeoning startup using grass fibres to create building materials instead of wood. Could this become a popular alternative in the future? The drive for constant economic growth comes at a cost to natural resources, particularly wood. The volume of wood used for lumber in a single year would circle the Earth’s equator 880 times if stacked in a straight line, or stretch between the Earth and the...
Is football betting becoming too normalised in the UK?
Around 700 gambling ads are visible in every Premier League match and live odds are constantly touted online. Here’s why banning front-shirt sponsors for bookies isn’t sufficient. Football has become synonymous with gambling in the UK, and that is indubitably a problem. As someone obsessed with the beautiful game, my mind is usually preoccupied with the sporting permutations of each weekend; who is looking likely for a title run, who’s in...
Greenpeace criminalised and forced to disband within Russia
Greenpeace has been forcibly liquidated within Russia, meaning the continuation of its activities would be illegal and put staff at risk of prosecution. The term ‘foreign agent’, once synonymous with the Soviet era, is returning with worrying regularity within Russia, leaving many to believe civil freedoms are being systematically bulldozed. The latest to be branded an ‘undesirable organisation’ by Moscow authorities is Greenpeace, effectively forcing the ecological outfit to disband or...
