Charity Travel has just arrived in Australia to show us that independent travelers can be far more than just consumers. Can you change the world by traveling? Beyond dedicated and discrete ecologically and socially responsible travel experiences, few people think their travels can have a positive impact without compromising the [...]

The Australian Conservation Foundation has welcomed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s plan to accelerate the retrofitting of existing commercial buildings to improve their energy efficiency as an important step to cut waste and pollution. However, ACF Executive Director Don Henry says putting “a price tag on pollution” would lead to “a more rapid uptake [...]

A plan being proposed by the Australian Greens would see the nation drawing all its power from renewable energy sources by 2050. Solar power is key to the plan, as is a national gross feed-in tariff.

The Victorian Government guarantee that 5% of the state’s electricity will come from large-scale solar power by 2020 provides a model that parties contesting this year’s federal election should match or beat, the Australian Conservation Foundation said today.

Five days after the Chinese pipeline explosion at the north-east port of Dalian, oil has reportedly spread over an area of 430 square kilometres.  Authorities say the leak was stopped with 24 hours of the explosion, but have not revealed how much oil has been discharged.

18 million dollars will be used to fight an upcoming locust plague, New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally has announced. The plague is expected to be the worst in 30 years, and will require five times more pesticides than last year’s crop protection.

New York Congressman Jerry Nadler has voiced concerns that the clean up from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean-up is further damaging the environment through the use of chemical dispersants.  90 million gallons of oil were released into the ocean in the leak. “Nobody has ever dumped 1.8 million gallons of a dispersant into an [...]

Social justice, environment and international development organisations from Indonesia and Australia are petitioning Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to fulfill the Government’s 2007 election promise to ban imports of illegal timber. The groups say the ban will help to stamp out illegal logging in Indonesia, which has lost, and continues to lose, significant forest cover [...]

Google has secured a clean and renewable energy supply for several of its data centers for the next two decades. The Internet search giant just agreed a deal to source power from a wind farm in Iowa operated by renewable energy company NextEra.

Numerous pesticides still used on Australian farms have been banned overseas because of the risks they pose to human health and the environment, according to a list released yesterday by WWF and the National Toxics Network. More than 20 of the 80 or so chemicals flagged have been classified as either extremely or highly [...]