South Africa’s Environmental Management Inspectors, the Green Scorpions, launched a “Clean Cement” campaign this week with a series of compliance inspections at cement manufacturing facilities across the country, says the department of environmental affairs and tourism. “The cement industry has been prioritised in this new environmental compliance campaign because of the growing demand for its [...]

The United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, which was set up as a way to fund carbon emission reduction projects in developing countries, has been criticised by Stanford University academics who found that a large number of the projects applying for credits should not qualify for assistance, the Guardian reports. “They would be built anyway,” says [...]

The United Nations is considering a new type of bond to help developing countries finance renewable energy projects, Bloomberg reports. Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, said yesterday that the idea was that “climate bonds” would be sold to investors by developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They would simplify [...]

The City of Cape Town plans to sell green electricity from July, according to the city’s website. The electricity will be supplied by the Darling Wind Farm, which was officially switched on last Friday by the minerals and energy minister, Bulyewa Sonjica. It is South Africa’s first commercial wind farm, situated in the town of [...]

Need a good reason to convince you to buy organic milk? It’s just plain healthier, according a study by Newcastle University. Cows on organic farms that are allowed to graze as nature intended are producing better quality milk that contains significantly higher beneficial fatty acids, antioxidants and vitamins than their conventional “high input” counterparts, says [...]

I’d like to share this interesting little factoid from Friends of the Earth UK. A half-hour commute by bike will burn eight calories a minute, or 11kg of fat a year. And for every 8km trip you cycle rather than drive you’re saving 1.6kg of carbon dioxide (based on a 200 g/km by car). Wouldn’t [...]