Interesting Ideas

Number fell 23% year on year in 2025 but waste companies say recycling systems still under strain from sheer volume

More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.

According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.

Pony.ai is not the first robotaxi company that comes to mind for most of us, but it’s up there on the list of companies that have been around for a while, progressing consistently, and showing promise. A series of announcements this month really up its profile, though. Also, let’s keep ... [continued]

The post Pony.ai on a Roll — Uber Collab, Breakeven in Shenzhen, 3,000 Robotaxi Target appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Australia’s world-first national legislation to restrict access to social media accounts for children under 16 years old has been in force for about three months. New data from a survey of 1,070 Australian adults provides tantalising evidence of some positive effects. The YouGov survey found many parents had noticed several positive behavioural ... [continued]

The post Early Wins for the Social Media Ban, New Survey Claims. But the Full Picture Is Far More Complicated. appeared first on CleanTechnica.

While exploring the exhibits at the New York Build Expo, I came across the Armstrong booth. Initially, nothing particularly interesting stood out. It just looked like traditional acoustic ceiling tiles. However, I asked if they had anything new and relevant to clean technology, and they pointed me to their new ... [continued]

The post Armstrong Templok Shows Potential For Thermal Energy Storage With Phase Change Materials appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Oʻahu was the test case, but it was never the whole question. The real question for Hawaiʻi was always whether the same logic that makes decarbonization viable on the most populous island would also hold across the rest of the inhabited archipelago. If Oʻahu could get to a clean, resilient, ... [continued]

The post Beyond Oʻahu: How The Other Hawaiian Islands Will Decarbonize appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Driving fast is in ‘the German DNA’, say lovers of the speed-limit free Autobahn, but support in the country for a restriction is growing

Death-defying thrills are not what draws Lutz Leif Linden to zip down the Autobahn faster than a plane taking off. Instead, the feeling of freedom and an appreciation of technological mastery play a part in his “almost loving relationship” with driving cars faster than most people can imagine.

The top speed he has reached on the road in Germany, the world’s only democracy without a blanket speed limit on motorways, is 400km/h (249mph). “It’s like an airplane,” said Linden, the president of the Automobile Club of Germany (AvD). “You are faster than an Airbus at start.”

Naturally, just when Hawaiʻi’s decarbonization pathway starts to look complete, another chapter occurs to me. After the generation mix, the island-by-island resource story, the transport implications, and the logic of electrification, what remains is the part of the energy transition that fossil systems used to provide almost by accident. Hawaiʻi ... [continued]

The post Beyond Generation: The Grid Innovations Hawaiʻi Needs Next appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke

Black rain fell in Iran earlier this month, a grim phenomenon seen previously in other war zones.

Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel. Unlike the clean controlled combustion inside an engine, uncontrolled burning leaves many particles of unburned fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke over affected areas.

The newly commissioned EnergyX demonstration facility in Texas is producing a domestic supply of lithium for EV batteries, energy storage, and other devices, loosening China's grip on the global lithium refining industry. 

The post Here Comes More Lithium For EV Batteries, Made In The USA appeared first on CleanTechnica.

National Trust says one year after reintroduction they are enriching habitats and may be having kits this summer

They were released this time last year with fanfare, much hope and also, perhaps, a little trepidation.

Twelve months on, there have been ups and downs for the first beavers to be (officially) reintroduced into the wild in England since the semiaquatic mammals were hunted to extinction 400 years ago.

The UK Future Homes Program will require rooftop solar and heat pumps in new homes beginning in April of 2028.

The post UK Mandates Rooftop Solar & Heat Pumps For New Homes Beginning In 2028 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate

When in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says.

The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads.

This labor-intensive way of eating isn’t for everyone – and I’m not sure it’s for me. It requires planning and flexibility

When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”

I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

‘God Squad’ federal panel to meet next week to address exemption request. WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump Administration has invoked “national security concerns” to justify exempting all oil and gas exploration and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to a legal filing. The declaration, ... [continued]

The post Hegseth Invokes National Security in Seeking to Exempt Gulf Oil & Gas Activities from Endangered Species Act appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are not abstractions for Hawaiʻi. They are a reminder that the state still buys its energy from global fuel markets it does not control. The International Energy Agency described 2022 as the first truly global energy crisis, and recent reporting on the Gulf shock ... [continued]

The post From Fuel Shock to Financial Stability in Hawaiʻi appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Rena Effendi’s film Searching for Satyrus began with a quest for the endangered insect that bears her family name. Before long, she was reckoning with secrets, lies and the mysterious life of her wayward dad

High in the Caucasus mountains, the photojournalist Rena Effendi is searching for the butterfly that bears the name of the father she hardly knew. It is rocky, bleak, beautiful – and impossible. The grass is fried yellow by the increasingly fierce summer sun, the butterfly’s food has been grazed by sheep and, if it exists at all, Satyrus effendi usually flies only as a single insect across a square kilometre of rock, scree and slope.

A butterfly hunt makes an unlikely subject for a prize-winning documentary, but Searching for Satyrus is a gripping quest that reveals a remarkable part of the world little known to western audiences while examining issues from war and nationalism to global heating and extinction. Ultimately, however, Effendi’s search for her father’s butterfly becomes a moving reckoning with the secrets and lies in her family and the life of her wayward father.

West Virginians Are On the Hook to Pay DOE for Short-Sighted Projects with Big Health Impacts CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Following two postponements, the West Virginia Department of Commerce has informed Sierra Club’s West Virginia Chapter that there are “no non-exempt records” responsive to the Club’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ... [continued]

The post West Virginia Agencies Shielding Details on $1.44B DOE Coal Bail-out Loan from Public appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Lots of us aren’t very keen on bats. But the more we find out about them, the more amazing they turn out to be

Bats have a bad rep: in a recent survey by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT), 46% of people expressed negative feelings about bats. But just look at them! Bat carer Liz Vinson, a volunteer with the BCT, calls them “little furry humans with huge jazz hands. They have individual characters: some are divas; some are bone idle.”

Shirley Thompson, BCT’s honorary education officer, has been championing bats since the 1980s. “I still think they’re magic,” she says. “The more you find out about them, the more you realise what amazing creatures they are.”

Deerness Valley, County Durham: Rushes were matches before matches were invented, vital to the rural poor for a little light in the dark. Time to give them a try myself

From a distance, with a little imagination, they look like a prickle of porcupines. Closer, they are spiky clumps of soft-rush Juncus effusus: prolific seed-setters, invaders with relentlessly spreading rhizomes, which seem to creep further across this pasture with every passing year. A native plant revelling in our new climate, after another mild, wet winter tips the struggle for domination of waterlogged grazing land even further in its favour.

Superficially, this is one of the least charismatic members of our native flora, with its bundles of long, olive green, quill-like leaves, but splitting these open reveals hidden beauty. Inside lies pith packed with tiny silver star-shaped cells, with their rays joined at their tips, forming a three-dimensional lattice: Stellate parenchyma in botanical parlance.