From making biofuels to eating up harmful plastics, fungi could help us build a greener planet. Fungi could not just help rid the planet of plastic by degrading it, but by making it obsolete it, too. Research in the Kew report suggests that naturally made materials using fungal mycelia are being used increasingly often instead of more harmful materials such as polystyrene and leather.

Humans looking back on this period of history in future will be astonished by the huge amount of plastic this generation left behind – because rubbish waste is now so prolific it will become fossilised, a scientist has said. Dr Dan Parsons, professor of sedimentology at Hull University, says that it is inevitable there will be a record of the thousands of tonnes of plastic waste we generate as microplastics are already seeping into the earth and into the food chain.

Since 2015, we've been following the story of Boyan Slat, a young inventor who set out to fight against the world's plastic pollution problem. At only 20 years old, he developed an invention aimed at tackling the world's largest patch of garbage, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This vortex of trash, located between California and Hawaii, covers 600,000 square miles of ocean and is responsible for countless animal deaths.

Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education’

Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person’s education.

Pope Francis on Saturday called for concrete action to combat the "emergency" of plastics littering seas and oceans, lamenting the lack of effective regulation to protect the world's waters. Building on his papacy's concern for the environment, Francis issued a message aimed at galvanizing Christians and others to commit to saving what he hails as the "impressive and marvelous," God-given gift of the "great waters and all they contain."

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster may have had a lasting impact upon even the smallest organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have found – amid warnings that the oceans around America are also under fresh assault as a result of environmental policies under Donald Trump. Lingering oil residues have altered the basic building blocks of life in the ocean by reducing biodiversity in sites closest to the spill, which occurred when a BP drilling rig exploded in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing about 4m barrels of oil into the Gulf.

For 12-year-old Anna Du a love of the ocean and marine animals inspired her to build a device that hunts for microplastics. These tiny plastic particles are barely visible to the naked eye, but they pollute aquatic ecosystems around the world, posing a serious threat to marine life.

New bioplastics are being made in laboratories from straw, wood chips and food waste, with researchers aiming to replace oil as the source of the world’s plastic. The new approaches include genetically modifying bacteria to eat wood and produce useful chemicals. But the bioplastics are currently significantly more expensive to make than fossil fuel-based plastics. Land and seas around the world, from high mountains to deep oceans, have become polluted with plastic, prompting major public concern. The world has produced 8bn tonnes of plastic since the 1950s and demand is still rising.

Starbucks plans to eliminate plastic straws globally by 2020. The coffee-shop giant announced Monday that it will use recyclable strawless lids and an alternative-material straw option in its more than 28,000 stores around the world. The move will eliminate more than one billion plastic straws per year from Starbucks stores, the company said.

Meat and dairy companies are on track to be the world’s biggest contributors to climate change, outpacing even the fossil fuel industry, according to a new report. To arrive at this conclusion, non-profit organisations the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and GRAIN conducted an analysis of the planet’s 35 largest meat and dairy companies. They found that broadly speaking the companies were being secretive about their emissions data and few had set hard targets intended to deal with their pollution.

A record number of people are dying of asthma, and experts have warned growing air pollution and a lack of basic care could be to blame. In England and Wales 1,320 people died of asthma last year, a sharp rise of more than 25% over a decade, according to data from the Office for National Statistics. The findings come amid growing concern about the air pollution crisis in the UK and mounting evidence of its impact on people’s health – particularly children and the elderly.

Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days. As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.

Penises are shrinking, and more boys are being born with genital defects, two Melbourne scientists claim. They think chemicals in plastics are to blame. Their controversial stance is based on studies of animals exposed to the chemicals, as well as human data they say shows rates of hypospadia – a penis birth defect causing a range of functionality problems – have doubled in Australia.

Every one of India’s 1.3 billion people uses an average 11kg of plastic each year. After being used, much of this plastic finds its way to the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, where it can maim and kill fish, birds and other marine wildlife. Fisherman in India’s southern state of Kerala are taking on the battle to cut the level of plastic waste in the oceans. When the trawlers drag their nets through the water, they end up scooping out huge amounts of plastic along with the fish. Until recently the fishermen would simply throw the plastic junk back into the water.

No. On top of all the other bad things we can attribute to plastics pollution (the damage to marine life, the leaching of toxic chemicals into the environment, the making gross and unsightly of beaches, etc.) a team at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s Center for Microbial Oceanography has found one more: Plastics are releasing potent greenhouse gases, including methane and ethylene, into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. (Is there any of the kind of rate?)

On Sept. 8, an ungainly, 2,000-foot-long contraption will steam under the Golden Gate Bridge in what’s either a brilliant quest or a fool's errand. Dubbed the Ocean Cleanup Project, this giant sea sieve consists of pipes that float at the surface of the water with netting below, corralling trash in the center of a U-shaped design.

During a research cruise to the Sargasso Sea in fall 1971 marine biologist Ed Carpenter first noticed peculiar, white specks floating amidst the mats of brown sargassum seaweed. After some investigating he discovered they were tiny bits of plastic. He was stunned. If thousands of the broken down particles were showing up in in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 550 miles from any mainland, he says, “I figured it’s all over the place.”

There is high public support for using the tax system to reduce waste from single-use plastics, the Treasury says. A consultation on how taxes could tackle the rising problem and promote recycling attracted 162,000 responses. Treasury Minister Robert Jenrick said the government was looking at "smart, intelligent incentives" to get plastic producers to take responsibility.

July signifies the beginning of environmental campaigns heavily focused on the issues of plastic output. Devised as a mechanism to shed much-needed light on the direness of plastic pollution, #NoPlasticJuly engages social media users and pushes the issue in front of the unaware. A key driver for #NoPlasticJuly is prompting people to share their own plastic reductions. But, this has transgressed the intended direction of the month and become a show in greenwashing and a PR move.

Air quality conditions in parts of British Columbia are currently among the worst in the world.

Tourists from mainland China take photos in front of a large outdoor banner showing what Hong Kong looks like on a clean air day, in Hong Kong in 2014.

A new study shows a significant decrease in mercury levels for Atlantic bluefish -- and indication that restrictions on coal emissions are working.

The Environmental Protection Agency has a new tool called EJSCREEN, which lets you overlay the agency’s environmental data on a geographic map, along with layers of information showing poverty. The result is as depressing as you’d probably expect.

Water At Some Olympic Venues In Rio de Janeiro Reportedly Contain Virus Levels On Par With Raw Sewage

Air pollution is killing about 4,000 people in China a day, accounting for 1 in 6 premature deaths in the world's most populous country, a new study finds.

The images of Colorado’s Animas River over the past week have been jarring: An abandoned gold mine was breached, causing it to spew tainted water that has dyed the river yellow-orange all the way into Utah. The issue of abandoned mines and their legacy of water pollution is not unique to Colorado.

When was the last time you really could see for miles on a clear day, undisturbed by smog-like pollution? If it's been a while, you might want to visit a wilderness area.

Wildfires in the area made for smoky conditions near Table Rock on Tuesday night in Boise. Video by Anna Webb.

Fishermen pull tonnes of dead fish from Mexico's Lake Cajititlan with authorities investigating whether wastewater treatment plants are to blame.

The report found that when you took the externalized costs into effect, essentially NONE of the industries was actually making a profit. The huge profit margins being made by the world’s most profitable industries (oil, meat, tobacco, mining, electronics) is being paid for against the future: we are trading long term sustainability for the benefit of shareholders. Sometimes the environmental costs vastly outweighed revenue, meaning that these industries would be constantly losing money...

The country's environmental crisis is worse than what has resulted from ''normal'' capitalist development everywhere else.

One of the world's most loved natural wonders is getting its fill of pollution.

Late Thursday, a North Dakota federal judge issued a temporary injunction just hours before an Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rule to protect small streams and wetlands went into effect.

One Iowa utility is sick of sky-high nitrate levels in tap water—so it's taking action.