Environment

Don't throw out that slightly dated banana.

Alternative fuels - including from forestry residue and waste - will come up with answers to help replace fossil fuel petroleum, writes Jim Childerstone.

Nutrient loads are expected to increase in Otago water, as land use intensifies, which will lead to worsening water quality, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment warns.

Out in the oceans, climate change is pushing marine chemistry towards a critical trigger point, reports Tom McKinlay.

Simone Pflaum is helping create her own dream city.

We're killing off the world and it has to stop, the World Wildlife Fund says. Geoff Cumming, of The New Zealand Herald, reports.

The value of 80 million tonnes of high quality export coal is about to weighed up against nationally endangered and vulnerable animals and other rare flora and fauna - all residing in and around the Denniston Plateau looming above Westport, on the West Coast.

Dunedin City Council staff will conduct a fact-finding mission at Te Rauone Beach, on Otago Peninsula, after claims urgent action is needed to address erosion in the area.

Otago Daily Times reporter Marjorie Cook travels South Westland with a team cleaning plastic debris from remote beaches.

Otago regional councillors deny suggestions their proposed enforcement process for those who continue to burn coal is too lax.

The Otago Regional Council is warning thousands of farmers with consent to take irrigation water from rivers to conserve as much water as possible to reduce the pressure on rapidly dwindling rivers.

Large colourful crops of oil-seed rape may become a more common sight on Otago farms in the future as the biofuel revolution gathers momentum.

Cellphone cameras could soon be used to gather evidence of environmentally damaging deeds in back-country Otago.

Although the popular eDay computer waste programmes will not go ahead this year, permanent electronic waste depots have been set up around the country, including three in Otago, and they will also take televisions - for a fee.

Having a green thumb and a passion for recycling has paid off for a pupil at Logan Park High School, in Dunedin.