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At least 15 English sewage plants use plastic beads spilled at Camber Sands

Exclusive: Experts urge water companies to update plants to avoid another catastrophe, as analysis reveals scale of useAt least 15 sewage plants on England’s south coast use the same contaminated plastic beads that were spilled in an environmental disaster in Camber Sands, Guardian analysis can reveal.Environmental experts have urged water companies to update these old treatment plants to avoid another catastrophic spill, which can lead to plastic beads being permanently embedded in the environment and killing marine wildlife. Continue reading...

At least 15 sewage plants on England’s south coast use the same contaminated plastic beads that were spilled in an environmental disaster in Camber Sands, Guardian analysis can reveal.Environmental experts have urged water companies to update these old treatment plants to avoid another catastrophic spill, which can lead to plastic beads being permanently embedded in the environment and killing marine wildlife.The sewage works in these areas, which include some of England’s most treasured beaches, use billions of floating plastic beads in tanks to purify water. Experts say this is a risky method of treating sewage because of the risk that the beads could spill into the sea if one of the mesh screens holding them fails.The government and regulators keep no record of which water companies use these beads, where the treatment works using them are located, or how many are in use, a government spokesperson confirmed, adding that it was a “matter for water companies”. This analysis reveals the scale of the problem for the first time.Campaigners have called for water companies to phase out the beads. Rob Abrams of Surfers Against Sewage said: “Once released, bio-beads behave like any other microplastic: they can be ingested by fish, seabirds and shellfish, enter the food chain, carry harmful pollutants on their surface, and pose risks to human health. And the risk is even greater as so many of these systems sit on the coast. Storms, sea levels rising, and increasingly extreme weather only heighten the chance of failures. Yet instead of investing in safe, modern infrastructure, water companies have siphoned money out to shareholders while letting environmental protections crumble.”The beads are used to create layers of biofilm, bacteria that purify water. Billions at a time are held in tanks, and all that separates them from the environment is a mesh screen. Most of the sewage works using these beads were built about 30 years ago.Beverley Coombes, of the plastic pollution nonprofit Strandliners, said: “A loss from a coastal plant is much more of a pollution risk. The discharge goes directly out to sea, where the bio-beads can be carried along the coast for many miles or even across the Channel. I think existing treatment centres should be exploring alternatives to bio-beads. Anything that can stop billions of these potentially toxic bio-beads from entering our rivers and seas has to be a step in the right direction.”The vast majority of the sewage works using beads are in small towns on England’s south and south-west coastlines, in Sussex, Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. Coastal areas affected include Exmouth, Porthleven, Lyme Regis and Peacehaven.The Guardian scrutinised water treatment centre applications and reports to build a picture of where they are used, as well as drawing on data from the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition, which has been tracking the issue in Cornwall.Camber Sands in East Sussex faced a spill of an estimated 650m of these beads this month. They have found their way along the coastline, contaminating beaches including Hastings and Dungeness, and buried themselves into the shingle and salt marshes around the area. They were spilled due to a failure of the screen on their tank. Southern Water has apologised and committed to paying for cleanup operations.These beads contain a high number of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which have been linked to cancer. They often contain toxins including lead, antimony and bromine. Once in the sea, they attract algae, making them smell like food to sea creatures, which then ingest them and can be poisoned.England’s coastal communities are some of its most deprived, and they have failed to gain investment over past decades, as tourism habits have changed and people fly abroad instead of visiting the coast.Helena Dollimore, the MP for Hastings and Rye, said: “Southern Water revealed at my public meeting last week that the use of plastic beads is outdated, and modern treatment works don’t use them. So why is our coastline being put at risk? Southern Water must urgently explain how they will ensure an incident like this never happens again. These beads are contaminating some of our most precious habitats, from the salt marsh at Rye Harbour to the sand dunes at Camber. Our area, and especially our wildlife, will be dealing with these beads for many months to come.”John Penicud, the managing director for wastewater at Southern Water, said: “In our new plant construction since the early 2000s we don’t use beads any more. We use something called membrane technology.” This uses fixed membranes rather than billions of floating plastic beads, so poses less of an environmental risk.Penicud blamed the government’s focus on sewage pollution for not retrofitting his sites: “Where we have put forward cases for how we can retrofit some of these sites instead, our focus from government has been to continue to improve the environment by reducing discharges, improving the quality of the sewage that we treat every day.” He added that retrofitting these sites was “always under review”.Cornish plastics campaigners have battled over this issue for years. Volunteers and beachcombers are still finding beads from a major 2010 spill from the Newham sewage treatment works near Truro. In 2017, vandals slashed some sacks holding beads at a treatment centre, causing a spill on to Tregantle Beach, Whitsand Bay.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition says it frequently finds beads from more low-level spills along the coast, where they have been handled incorrectly.South West Water, which owns the sewage treatment plants on that stretch of the coast, was initially planning to phase out beads. Instead, it has replaced the smaller beads with newer, larger ones, which should be less likely to escape.Claire Wallerstein, from the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition, said: “We are very concerned that South West Water is using new beads to extend the use of these old wastewater plants beyond the end of their planned 30-year lifespan – we fear this is a recipe for potential disaster.“A breach in the containment mesh was what caused the devastating Cornish spill back in 2010 and now, 15 years on, the infrastructure of these plants is surely at even greater risk of rupture.”A South West Water spokesperson said: “Only eight of our 655 wastewater treatment works use bio-beads, which are all fitted with two levels of robust containment measures and are inspected to ensure beads are kept within the treatment works. Decommissioning these plants is very costly as it requires the whole treatment process to be completely replaced. We are aiming to remove the bio-bead process at our remaining sites when they are required to be upgraded in the future.”Wessex Water has been contacted for comment.Where the beads are usedCoastal Gorran Haven (South West Water) Combe Martin (South West Water) Porthleven (South West Water) Slapton (South West Water) Exmouth (South West Water) Lyme Regis (South West Water) Plympton (South West Water) Eastbourne (Southern Water) Peacehaven (Southern Water) Sandown (Southern Water) Broomfield Bank (Southern Water) Beckley (Southern Water) Kingston Seymour (Wessex Water) Inland

Water
Food
Health

The Congo basin may be the world’s most important rainforest – why is it the least researched?

It is the second-largest tropical forest on Earth, and one of the most vital carbon sinks, but is losing out when it comes to climate policy and fundingIn October 2023, leaders, scientists and policymakers from three of the world’s great rainforest regions – the Amazon, the Congo, and the Borneo-Mekong basins – assembled in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. They were there to discuss one urgent question: how to save the planet’s last great tropical forests from accelerating destruction.For those present, the question was existential. But to their dismay, almost no one noticed. “There was very little acknowledgment that this was happening, outside of the Congo basin region,” says Prof Simon Lewis, a lecturer at the University of Leeds and University College London, and co-chair of the Congo Basin Science Initiative (CBSI). Continue reading...

In October 2023, leaders, scientists and policymakers from three of the world’s great rainforest regions – the Amazon, the Congo, and the Borneo-Mekong basins – assembled in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. They were there to discuss one urgent question: how to save the planet’s last great tropical forests from accelerating destruction.For those present, the question was existential. But to their dismay, almost no one noticed. “There was very little acknowledgment that this was happening, outside of the Congo basin region,” says Prof Simon Lewis, a lecturer at the University of Leeds and University College London, and co-chair of the Congo Basin Science Initiative (CBSI).“It didn’t really fly as a conference or a set of policy proposals to better invest in that region of the world.”The people of the Congo basin have tightened their belts so that the world can breathe – and we receive no compensationDespite being the second-largest rainforest on Earth – and one of the most vital carbon sinks – the Congo basin remains the rainforest the world forgot, often overlooked when it comes to global climate policy and funding.Spanning six countries across central Africa and home to roughly 130 million people, the basin is often called the “lungs of Africa”. Its vast canopy shelters thousands of rare species.“It has about 10,000 plant species and 30% of these can only be found in the region,” says Dr Yadvinder Malhi, a leading ecologist at Oxford University. Unlike the Amazon, the Congo’s forests remain largely intact – home to endangered animals such as forest elephants, okapis, mountain gorillas and bonobos.Its significance extends far beyond its borders. The basin’s rainfall feeds main river systems across the continent, sustaining life as far away as the Sahel.A forest elephant in the Lekoli River, Republic of the Congo. Rainfall in the Congo basin feeds river systems across Africa. Photograph: Education Images/Universal Images/Getty“Africa is largely an arid continent,” says Malhi. “This fountain of water in the heart of the continent circulates and [also] ends up feeding into the Nile. That sustains the lives of millions of people.”Crucially, while encroachments of logging and mining are increasing, much of the forest remains untouched. As a result, the Congo basin is believed to be the last big rainforest to remain a strong carbon sink – with enough trees left to absorb more carbon than it emits.Logging is rising but much rainforest remains untouched. Photograph: Alamy“It’s what we believe,” says Lewis. “But we are lacking recent data to see if that is still the case. We know carbon-absorption rates have declined in the Amazon in the last decade or so, but we’re not sure what’s happening in the Congo now.”In a report released on Monday, as the Cop30 climate conference began in Belém, the Science Panel for the Congo Basin found that the Congo basin absorbs 600m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, but this number is falling due to accelerating deforestation. Prof Bonaventure Sonké, co-chair of the panel, said the researchers hoped it would bring international attention and support for “the Earth’s most important but least-studied tropical rain forest”.While scientists agree on the Congo basin’s critical importance, it continues to be funded at a far lower rate than its counterparts. A report published earlier this year by the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) revealed the scale of the financial imbalance. Between 2008 and 2022, the world’s three main rainforest regions received a combined total of $20bn (£15bn) in international funding. Of that, $9.3bn (47%) went to the Amazon basin, $7.4bn (37%) to south-east Asia, and only $3.2bn (16%) to the Congo basin.Germany was the leading donor for central Africa during this period, providing 24% of total funding, followed by the Global Environment Fund (12%), the World Bank (9.4%), and the US (8.8%). Most of the money (30%) went towards biodiversity protection, with another 27% supporting environmental policy. Yet funding for scientific research accounted for just 0.1%.“The basin countries don’t prioritise research,” says Dr Richard Sufo Kankeu, a lecturer at the University of Le Mans and one of the report’s authors.Loango national park in Gabon, which forms part of the Congo basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest. Photograph: Lee Dalton/AlamyThe result is a wide gap in scientific understanding. A 2023 study examining relative levels of climate and biodiversity research on different rainforests found about 2,000 published academic papers for the Congo basin, compared with 10,611 for the Amazon.“You’ve got this critical ecosystem, but there just aren’t enough local scientists working to understand it,” says Lee White, an honorary professor at the University of Stirling and former environment minister in Gabon.White and Lewis have recommended that Congo basin countries aim to train at least 1,000 PhD-level scientists over the next decade to strengthen regional expertise. But better funding is also needed now.“We don’t want to wait 10 years,” says Raphael Tshimanga, a professor of hydrology and water at the University of Kinshasa, and a member of CBSI. “It needs to start happening now. How does this happen? By mobilising human resources and attracting funding. We don’t just want nice speeches at summits.”Part of the reason for the lack of resources lies in an enduring perception of the region as Joseph Conrad’s “‘heart of darkness’”, says White. “Central Africa has this reputation as a place of corruption and instability.”The canopy in Republic of the Congo’s Odzala-Kokoua park. Photograph: Danita Delimont/AlamyCorruption is a significant concern in the region, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – however, it can also be wielded as an easy excuse for lack of investment.The Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, describes that view as “the tree that hides the forest”, adding: “It’s very easy and lazy to say that Africans are corrupt.”Beyond reputation, there are obstacles such as security, infrastructure and capacity. The DRC, which contains about 60% of the basin’s rainforest, has endured intermittent conflict for more than three decades.“It’s not just an issue of instability,” Soudan-Nonault says. “We need to look at ways of creating sustainable economic growth.”While the Congo basin is often seen as humanity’s last line of defence against human-made climate breakdown, deforestation in the region has begun to rise. “It is the last frontier of climate change,” the minister says. “Supporting the Congo basin is not charity. It’s about recognising its role in protecting the Earth through its carbon sink.“The people of the Congo basin have tightened their belts so that the world can breathe – and we receive no compensation.”Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage

Forests
Climate
Science

Brazil creates new Indigenous territories after COP30 protests

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government recognises 10 new Indigenous lands during climate summit.

The government of Brazil has created 10 new Indigenous territories, after protesters urged action at the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.The designation means the areas, including one in part of the Amazon, will have their culture and environment protected under Brazilian law - though this is not always enforced.The move follows similar actions from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose government recognised Indigenous possession of 11 territories last year. The latest measure formalised through a presidential decree.It comes as thousands have protested at the UN's annual climate conference, with some carrying signs reading "demarcation now".Earlier last week, demonstrators - some of whom were from Indigenous groups - carrying signs that read "our forests are not for sale" broke into the summit and tussled with security.Past recognition of Indigenous reserves banned mining and logging, as well as restricting commercial farming, in the areas they covered to prevent deforestation. Expanding the total area considered Indigenous territory could prevent up to 20% of additional deforestation and reduce carbon emissions by 26% by 2030, according to a study by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and the Indigenous Climate Change Committee.The new protected areas span hundreds of thousands of hectares and are inhabited by thousands of people from the Mura, Tupinambá de Olivença, Pataxó, Guarani-Kaiowá, Munduruku, Pankará, and Guarani-Mbya indigenous peoples.One area overlaps more than 78% with the Amazon National Park, part of the bio-diverse rainforest which plays a crucial role in regulating the global climate and storing carbon.The Brazilian government's announcement came on Indigenous Peoples' Day at COP30 on Monday.Until the left-wing Lula re-entered office, no new Indigenous lands had been declared since 2018, it said.Under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who promoted mining on Indigenous lands, the protections afforded to them were frequently not enforced.Lula's government has previously taken action to drive out illegal miners from indigenous lands.Currently, Indigenous lands encompass 117.4 million hectares - roughly equivalent to the size of Colombia, or around 13.8% of Brazil's territory. Hundreds of Indigenous groups live in Brazil, according to the country's census.The Amazon rainforest is already at risk of a renewed surge in deforestation as efforts grow to overturn a key ban to protect it. Thick and healthy forestry helps pull carbon out of the atmosphere.Carbon released through the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to climate change.Countries are gathering at COP30 in an effort to reach agreements on how to try to limit global average temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels and keep them "well below" 2C.The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says a large body of scientific evidence shows that warming of 2C or more would bring serious consequences, including extreme heat, higher sea levels and threats to food security.

Indigenous
Climate
Government

The conservative parties can change their leaders – but it won’t stop the NSW Coalition’s death spiral | Anne Davies

The Nationals have a new leader in Gurmesh Singh and Kellie Sloane could soon replace Liberal leader Mark Speakman. But the Coalition is fractured on net zeroThe NSW Nationals have a new leader, Gurmesh Singh, and the Liberals will almost certainly follow suit by early next week.It’s desperation politics. Changing leaders will likely do nothing to stop the apparent death spiral the conservative side of politics has inflicted upon itself – in Canberra and now the states. Continue reading...

The NSW Nationals have a new leader, Gurmesh Singh, and the Liberals will almost certainly follow suit by early next week.It’s desperation politics. Changing leaders will likely do nothing to stop the apparent death spiral the conservative side of politics has inflicted upon itself – in Canberra and now the states.If they needed evidence of what the electorate was thinking, it was shouting at them from internal YouGov research presented to the NSW Liberal party room on Tuesday. The party’s MPs and MLCs were considering whether to dump net zero as their federal counterparts did on the weekend.YouGov found only one-third of Australians would now seriously consider voting for the Coalition, the party room was told.It found 26% of Australians who are former Coalition voters won’t seriously consider the Coalition in the future. That’s approximately 5 million voters the Coalition needs to persuade to consider them again, the pollsters said.“Only one in five (21%) of former Coalition voters see the Coalition as being in touch with modern Australia. Only one in four (25%) see them as aligned with their values,” the YouGov report stated.One in two (52%) of former Coalition voters said they would only consider a party ready to govern if it had credible policies to address climate change and its impacts.Without a coherent position on the most pressing problem of our generation – how to slow climate change – voters, in particular younger cohorts, have fled in droves. They are unable to take seriously a political party that ignores the overwhelming scientific consensus and the economics of renewables.The federal Liberals have chosen to dump any semblance of a coherent plan.The NSW Liberals, however, voted on Tuesday to retain a net zero emissions by 2050 target. They are sticking with the bipartisan energy transition roadmap devised by the state Coalition when in government.But how does that work when their federal counterparts are talking up new coal-fired power stations and their junior state partner has abandoned the net zero target?Singh, the NSW National’s newly minted leader, hopes a compromise might be reached – though it takes a vivid imagination to see it working.As the first Indian-Australian to leader a major party, he’s a break from the white male graziers that the NSW National party usually chooses.Singh has a degree in industrial design, has worked in advertising and was previously a big wheel in the blueberry and macadamia industries. He formerly chaired Oz Group Co-op – the major marketing co-operative in the Coffs region.His family is still a major player in the Coffs Harbour blueberry industry, an industry that has divided the local community over rapid rapid expansion, use of pesticides, environmental standards and use of contract labour.Singh is acutely aware that on the north coast, his own and other seats face an existential political threat from the progressive side of politics, in the form of the Greens and teals, who have made action on climate change central to their platforms.The Greens already hold the state seat of Ballina, just north of Singh’s seat. In the 2025 federal election, teal candidate Caz Heize slashed the National’s margin in the seat of Cowper (which includes Coffs Harbour) to 0.14% on a two-party preferred basis.Singh is no Barnaby Joyce or Matt Canavan, dinosaurs of the National party whose mission includes returning Australia to a coal-fired past. But he is of the same party.Asked at his first press conference how he would reconcile the Nationals’ position with that of the Liberals in NSW, Singh highlighted the cost of power, the plight of pensioners in the regions who can’t afford hot showers, and suggested a better-managed rollout was required. He didn’t diss renewables per se.Meanwhile, the Liberals’ leadership drama is still to unfold, probably on Thursday, or possibly early next week.Moderate Kellie Sloane, a former journalist who has been an MP for less than three years, appears to be the frontrunner to replace Mark Speakman.However, Alister Heskens, from the right faction and the manager of opposition business, is also canvassing the numbers.The difficulty for Sloane will be her lack of history in the party and her inexperience in government. Heskens’ challenge is his low profile and convincing colleagues he offers an improvement on Speakman. He is likely to relish attacking Labor more than Speakman does.The NSW Liberals have, at least, heeded the YouGov polling on attitudes to climate change and have not been infected by the nonsense pedalled by Advance and other climate-denying figures on the right.The party issued a statement on Tuesday that it remained “committed to a target of net zero by 2050”.“It’s been our target since 2016. It’s a target to be achieved alongside a focus on energy reliability, affordability, and industrial competitiveness.”

Business
Climate
Energy

UN Climate Conference Host Brazil Urges Nations to Negotiate and Find Solutions to Global Warming

Host country Brazil’s tactful guidance as host of the U.N. climate conference is raising hopes for ambitious action on fighting global warming as speeches continue from the high-level ministers in town

With a direct letter sent to nations, host country Brazil is shifting the U.N. climate conference into a higher gear. The letter sent late Monday comes during the final week of what has been billed as a historic climate summit, the first ever in the Amazon rainforest, a key regulator of climate because trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet. The letter comes ahead of speeches of high-level ministers Tuesday. Headliners include representatives from influential European countries like Ed Miliband, energy secretary of the United Kingdom, and Deputy Prime Minister Sophie Hermans of the Netherlands. More leaders will also speak from small island states and developing countries like Barbados and Bangladesh, both facing loss of land as seas rise because of climate change. The letter asks leaders to hash out many aspects of a potential agreement by Tuesday night so that much is out of the way before the final set decisions Friday, when the conference is scheduled to end. Climate summits routinely go past their last day, as all nations come to the negotiating table trying to balance domestic concerns with major shifts needed around the world to protect the environment and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil’s guidance for the summit, called COP30, is raising hopes for significant measures to fight global warming, which could range from a road map to move away from fossil fuels like oil and coal, or more money to help nations build out clean energies like wind and solar. For negotiators, Brazil's letter will mean later nights as they seek to strike political bargains across a host of contentious issues.“There are important concessions we expect from all sides,” said André Corrêa do Lago, COP30 president. "It is said you have to give to receive.”That Wednesday timeline is “pretty ambitious" and the stakes are high, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G.“Whether it’s dealing with the impacts of climate change, dealing with increased energy bills and energy insecurity, improving health, creating jobs. Those are the things that people care about. They don’t care about some sub-paragraph in a legal decision adopted here in Belem,” Meyer said. “Brazil, the presidency, has made that very clear since the beginning, that that’s going to be the litmus test.”He added that the optimistic spirit of the host country “is starting to get a little infectious” and that that is part of building trust and goodwill amongst nations.“I sense ambition here. I sense a determination,” former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said Monday morning. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Climate
CO2
Forests

Bigger datasets aren’t always better

MIT researchers developed a way to identify the smallest dataset that guarantees optimal solutions to complex problems.

Determining the least expensive path for a new subway line underneath a metropolis like New York City is a colossal planning challenge — involving thousands of potential routes through hundreds of city blocks, each with uncertain construction costs. Conventional wisdom suggests extensive field studies across many locations would be needed to determine the costs associated with digging below certain city blocks.Because these studies are costly to conduct, a city planner would want to perform as few as possible while still gathering the most useful data for making an optimal decision.With almost countless possibilities, how would they know where to start?A new algorithmic method developed by MIT researchers could help. Their mathematical framework provably identifies the smallest dataset that guarantees finding the optimal solution to a problem, often requiring fewer measurements than traditional approaches suggest.In the case of the subway route, this method considers the structure of the problem (the network of city blocks, construction constraints, and budget limits) and the uncertainty surrounding costs. The algorithm then identifies the minimum set of locations where field studies would guarantee finding the least expensive route. The method also identifies how to use this strategically collected data to find the optimal decision.This framework applies to a broad class of structured decision-making problems under uncertainty, such as supply chain management or electricity network optimization.“Data are one of the most important aspects of the AI economy. Models are trained on more and more data, consuming enormous computational resources. But most real-world problems have structure that can be exploited. We’ve shown that with careful selection, you can guarantee optimal solutions with a small dataset, and we provide a method to identify exactly which data you need,” says Asu Ozdaglar, Mathworks Professor and head of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and a principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).Ozdaglar, co-senior author of a paper on this research, is joined by co-lead authors Omar Bennouna, an EECS graduate student, and his brother Amine Bennouna, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Northwestern University; and co-senior author Saurabh Amin, co-director of Operations Research Center, a professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a principal investigator in LIDS. The research will be presented at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.An optimality guaranteeMuch of the recent work in operations research focuses on how to best use data to make decisions, but this assumes these data already exist.The MIT researchers started by asking a different question — what are the minimum data needed to optimally solve a problem? With this knowledge, one could collect far fewer data to find the best solution, spending less time, money, and energy conducting experiments and training AI models.The researchers first developed a precise geometric and mathematical characterization of what it means for a dataset to be sufficient. Every possible set of costs (travel times, construction expenses, energy prices) makes some particular decision optimal. These “optimality regions” partition the decision space. A dataset is sufficient if it can determine which region contains the true cost.This characterization offers the foundation of the practical algorithm they developed that identifies datasets that guarantee finding the optimal solution.Their theoretical exploration revealed that a small, carefully selected dataset is often all one needs.“When we say a dataset is sufficient, we mean that it contains exactly the information needed to solve the problem. You don’t need to estimate all the parameters accurately; you just need data that can discriminate between competing optimal solutions,” says Amine Bennouna.Building on these mathematical foundations, the researchers developed an algorithm that finds the smallest sufficient dataset.Capturing the right dataTo use this tool, one inputs the structure of the task, such as the objective and constraints, along with the information they know about the problem.For instance, in supply chain management, the task might be to reduce operational costs across a network of dozens of potential routes. The company may already know that some shipment routes are especially costly, but lack complete information on others.The researchers’ iterative algorithm works by repeatedly asking, “Is there any scenario that would change the optimal decision in a way my current data can't detect?” If yes, it adds a measurement that captures that difference. If no, the dataset is provably sufficient.This algorithm pinpoints the subset of locations that need to be explored to guarantee finding the minimum-cost solution.Then, after collecting those data, the user can feed them to another algorithm the researchers developed which finds that optimal solution. In this case, that would be the shipment routes to include in a cost-optimal supply chain.“The algorithm guarantees that, for whatever scenario could occur within your uncertainty, you’ll identify the best decision,” Omar Bennouna says.The researchers’ evaluations revealed that, using this method, it is possible to guarantee an optimal decision with a much smaller dataset than would typically be collected.“We challenge this misconception that small data means approximate solutions. These are exact sufficiency results with mathematical proofs. We’ve identified when you’re guaranteed to get the optimal solution with very little data — not probably, but with certainty,” Amin says.In the future, the researchers want to extend their framework to other types of problems and more complex situations. They also want to study how noisy observations could affect dataset optimality.“I was impressed by the work’s originality, clarity, and elegant geometric characterization. Their framework offers a fresh optimization perspective on data efficiency in decision-making,” says Yao Xie, the Coca-Cola Foundation Chair and Professor at Georgia Tech, who was not involved with this work.

Energy
Science

Trump Administration Moves to Weaken Federal Protections for Waterways and Wetlands

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army on Monday announced a proposal to further define, and scale back, the number of waterways and wetlands protected by the federal government under the Clean Water Act, a bedrock environmental law. Flanked by supporters, including Republican members of Congress and West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, […]

Environmental groups warn the proposal to change the definition of “waters of the United States” would eliminate crucial safeguards for “countless” bodies of water.By Aidan HughesThe Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army on Monday announced a proposal to further define, and scale back, the number of waterways and wetlands protected by the federal government under the Clean Water Act, a bedrock environmental law.

Water
Government

Pope Leo XIV Calls for Urgent Climate Action and Says God’s Creation Is 'Crying Out'

Pope Leo XIV is urging countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.”In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.”“One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes,” Leo said. “To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity.”His message came as the talks were moving into their second week, with high-level ministers from governments around the world arriving at the edge of the Brazilian Amazon to join negotiations. Monday was dominated by speeches, with several leaders from Global South nations giving emotional testimony on devastating costs of recent extreme weather and natural disasters.Vulnerable nations have pressed for more ambition at these talks as world leaders have begun to acknowledge that Earth will almost surely go past a hoped-for limit — 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in Earth's warming since pre-industrial times. That was the target set at these talks in 2015 in the landmark Paris agreement.Scientists say in addition to deadly heat, a warming atmosphere leads to more frequent and deadly extreme weather such as flooding, droughts, violent downpours and more powerful hurricanes.Leo said there's still time to stay within the Paris Agreement, but not much.“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift He entrusted to us,” he said. And he added: “But we must be honest: it is not the Agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response. What is failing is the political will of some.”U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said Leo's words “challenge us to keep choosing hope and action."Leo "reminds us that the Paris Agreement is delivering progress and remains our strongest tool — but we must work together for more, and that bolder climate action is an investment in stronger and fairer economies, and more stable world," Stiell said.David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University in New York, said Leo is becoming the world’s most prominent moral leader against climate change.“This message does stake Leo out as a voice for the rest of the world, especially the Southern Hemisphere where climate change is wreaking havoc with the vulnerable in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” said Gibson.And he said it shows that Leo, who spent decades working as a missionary in Peru and is a naturalized Peruvian citizen, “has a Latin American heart and voice.”The Laudato Si' Movement, a Catholic climate movement that takes its name from a 2015 encyclical in which Pope Francis called for climate action, called Leo's message “a profound moral intervention.""He reminds the world that creation is crying out and that vulnerable communities cannot be pushed aside. “His voice cuts through the noise of negotiations and calls leaders back to what truly matters: our shared humanity and the urgent duty to act with courage, compassion, and justice,” the group's executive director, Lorna Gold, said.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

Climate
Culture
Government

How little plastic does it take to kill marine animals? Scientists have answers

Ocean plastic kills sea creatures. For the first time, researchers set out to find out how much it takes. The answer: Surprisingly little.

Ocean plastic kills sea creatures. It can obstruct, perforate or twist their airways and gastrointestinal tracts.Now new research shows it takes just 6 pieces of ingested rubber the size of a pencil eraser to kill most sea birds. For marine mammals, 29 pieces of any kind of plastic — hard, soft, rubber or fishing equipment — is often lethal.It’s the first time researchers have quantified how much and what kind of plastic — soft, hard, rubber or fishing debris — is needed to kill a bird, marine mammal or a turtle. “I think the lethal doses that we saw were smaller than I expected,” said Erin Murphy, a researcher with the Ocean Conservancy and the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Toronto.“Seeing the particularly small thresholds for rubber and seabirds, for example, that just six pieces of rubber, each smaller on average than the size of a pea was enough to kill 90% of sea birds that ingested it ... That was particularly surprising to me,” she said.The sea birds were less sensitive to hard plastic: It’d take 25 pieces of the pea-sized hard plastic pieces to ensure a 90% chance of dying. Murphy and her colleagues from the University of Tasmania, in Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, also from Australia, and the Universidade Federal de Alagoas, in Brazil, published their study Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.For decades, researchers have been documenting death by plastic in marine animals. They have reported it in the gastrointestinal tracts of nearly 1,300 marine species — including every species of sea turtle, and in every family of seabird and marine mammal family.The team analyzed data from 10,412 published necropsies, or animal autopsy reports. Of the animals studied, 1,306 were sea turtles representing all seven species of sea turtles; 1,537 were seabirds representing 57 species; and 7,569 were marine mammals across 31 species. They found that 35% of the dead seabirds, 12% of marine mammals and 47% of sea turtles examined had ingested plastic. Seabirds seemed to be particularly sensitive to rubber. For marine mammals, soft plastics — such as plastic bags — and fishing debris was most harmful. For sea turtles, their kryptonite was hard and soft plastics.“This was severe trauma or damage to the GI tract, or blockage of the stomach or intestines from plastic... and so these were physical harms that you could see, that you could see in the gut of these animals, and that were reported by scientists,” said Murphy describing the reports. The paper did not look at other ways plastic can kill marine animals — strangulation, entanglement and drowning. Nor did it look at malnutrition or toxicity caused by eating plastic.“So, this is likely an underestimate of the impacts of ingestion, and it’s definitely an underestimate of the lethality of plastics more broadly,” said Murphy.Nearly half the animals in their analysis were threatened or endangered species. More than 11 million metric tonnes — or more than 24 billion pounds — of plastic enters the world’s oceans every year, according to several environmental and industry reports. That’s a garbage truck’s worth dumped every minute.According to the United Nations, that number is expected to triple in the next twenty years. “I find this piece a brilliant contribution to the field,” said Greg Merrill, a researcher with the Duke University Marine Lab, who did not participate in the study.“We have thousands of examples of marine animals ingesting plastic debris. But for a number of reasons, eg. lack of data, difficulty of conducting laboratory-based experiments, and ethical considerations, risk assessments are really challenging to conduct,” he said in an email. Such assessments are crucial for actually linking plastic ingestion to mortality, because “once we know some of those thresholds, they can help policy makers make informed decisions,” said Merrill.And that’s what Murphy said she and her co-authors are hoping for: That lawmakers and others can use this information to reduce plastic, by crafting regulations to ban or reduce plastics, such as plastic bag or balloon bans, and encouraging small, local events such as beach clean ups.“The science is clear: We need to reduce the amount of plastic that we’re producing and we need to improve collection and recycling to clean up what’s already out there,” said Murphy. Earlier this year, in internationals talks on limiting plastic pollution, oil and gas producing countries succeeded in preventing language that would reduce the amount of plastics produced.

Animals
Pollution
Science

Trump proposes to narrow where Clean Water Act applies

The Trump administration is proposing to narrow which bodies of water qualify for Clean Water Act protections. The administration proposed a new definition Monday for what counts as a “water of the United States” and is therefore subject to federal pollution regulations under the Clean Water Act. The issue is a controversial one, with developers,...

The Trump administration is proposing to narrow which bodies of water qualify for Clean Water Act protections.  The administration on Monday proposed a new definition for what counts as a “water of the United States” and is therefore subject to federal pollution regulations under the Clean Water Act. The issue is a controversial one, with developers, farmers and others calling for including fewer bodies of water to make it easier for them to operate. Environmental activists, however, argue that more bodies of water deserve protection in order to prevent pollution that can flow to important waters. “There will be less that will be regulated by the federal government,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters. Waters of the U.S. require permits for pollution, as well as activities such as filling and dredging. Those that are not so classified may not require permits.  In general, large, permanent bodies of water such as oceans and lakes are considered waters of the U.S., but wetlands and streams have been more contentious. DEVELOPING… Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Water
Pollution
Government

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