People take part in the Clean Water march in central London, to demand tougher action on keeping the UK’s rivers and seas clean, November 3, 2024
THE River Action campaign has hired a top litigator as it intensifies efforts to hold polluters account and restore Britain’s waterways.
Emma Dearnaley, previously legal director at the Good Law Project, will join the group as its new head of legal in January.
She fought several cases in her former job, including a successful challenge against the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs that led to the government expanding the scope of its Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan to include coastal waters.
River Action chief executive James Wallace said: “This is a shot across the bow for polluters and the government alike.
“The law is one of our strongest tools, not only to compel polluters to repair and update their infrastructure but also to compel the government to adequately fund environmental regulators.
“After 14 years of budget cuts, it’s time for the Environment Agency to have the resources to enforce the law against agricultural, sewage and chemical polluters and for Ofwat to stop water companies polluting for profit.”
New research from the Badvertising campaign highlights an alarming trend.
As an insurgent sport among the sweat and strain of more traditional exertions, esports — short for electronic sports and synonymous with gaming — had a chance to chart a new course. Free from the sponsorship links with polluting industries that tarnish many established sports, and with an overwhelmingly young and growing player and fanbase, esports could have created a blueprint for sport in the 21st century and the critical climate issues it faces.
Unfortunately, esports have fallen into the same trap as football, cricket, and many other popular but easily exploited sports: It has become a playground for some of the world’s biggest polluters to promote themselves and mislead fans. Competitive gaming has made the leap from dimly lit bedrooms to the world stage, but, in the process, has slipped on an oil slick.
New research from the Badvertising campaign highlights the alarming trend of esportswashing. Taking a cue from the old tobacco industry playbook, major polluters are trying to co-opt a new generation and normalise climate polluting products and lifestyles. Since just 2017, at least 33 polluting sponsorship deals have been struck between the global esports industry and high-carbon polluters. Of these, 27 have been deals with car manufacturers, five with major fossil fuel companies, and two with the armed forces of the United States — the planet’s thirstiest consumer of oil.
Petrostates too, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have sensed the opportunity and spent hugely into the esports sector, sponsoring teams of young gamers and even hosting tournaments in energy-hungry, air-conditioned arenas. In fact, the inaugural Esports World Cup is culminating in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where over 1,500 professional gamers have competed across 21 games, with over a million fans following online.
Despite its relative novelty, esports presents a huge opportunity for polluting companies feeling the heat on climate. It is a booming industry. There are already an estimated 500 million esports fans around the world. While this is just a fraction of the three billion active gamers, there is serious room for expansion — and polluters can see the opportunity to groom the next generation.
Shrewd Move
Alongside the massive growth of the industry is the esports loyal fanbase. It’s international, overwhelmingly young, and male. In the UK, over 50 percent of esports fans are aged between 18 and 34, and overwhelmingly male. Globally, in 2021, more than six in every 10 internet users watching esports were aged between 16 and 35 years old. To put this youthfulness in perspective, only one-in-four ‘die hard’ football fans globally are between 25 and 34 years old.
Built around this fanbase is a vibrant digital culture and community, buoyed by the proliferation of streaming platforms and threaded together through memes which are indecipherable to outsiders. Like with all great sports, it is the community that brings esports to life and makes it such a spectacle. Tapping into this community, and leveraging its global digital networks, is a shrewd move for companies clinging to a dwindling social license of public acceptance.
High-carbon industries targeting younger audiences is not new and comes in many forms, but esports presents an opportunity to communicate with hundreds of millions of young and loyal fans. It is an added irony that these young audiences will be the worst hit by climate breakdown — a crisis that the latest sponsor of their beloved esports is disproportionately responsible for.
Once again, regulators are asleep at the controls. The rise of esportswashing and its potential impact on younger minds requires bolder and better advertising regulation and coordination with the game franchises. But action to date has been limited.
The immersive nature of esports presents an added challenge for regulators and the limited scope they currently exercise to protect young people from exploitative influences. In-game advertising blurs the divide between what is advertising and what is the game. Take Shell’s foray into Fortnite in 2023, where players were encouraged to fill up their digital cars at a digital petrol station to promote its V-Power Nitro+ fuel. Here, the advertisement was part of the game. It is only a matter of time before other polluting companies take Shell’s lead.
With esports fans and athletes facing a precarious future in a warmer world, those responsible for this burgeoning sport and the community built around it must take the threat posed by polluting sponsorship seriously. To protect athletes, gamers and fans around the world, esports teams and governing bodies need to align their commercial partnerships with their values, duty of care to players and audiences, and policies for a liveable future and thriving environment. And when top gamers and streamers speak out about their fears of climate breakdown, they should be supported and nurtured.
Esports are on the cusp of repeating the mistake of other traditional sports in letting themselves be used as a billboard to promote polluters, but it is not too late to clean up. Those polluters that are gaming the climate should not be given free reign to game young minds too; or it could soon be game over for everyone.
A tanker pumping out excess sewage from the Lightlands Lane sewage pumping station in Cookham, Berskhire which flooded after heavy rainfall, January 10, 2024
ENVIRONMENTAL groups called on the public today to mobilise this autumn and ramp up pressure on the government to tackle Britain’s water pollution crisis.
River Action, Surfers Against Sewage and Greenpeace are among the groups who will join the March for Clean Water in Central London on October 26.
It will mark the end of the first 100 days of the Labour government, and take place just days before Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first Budget.
An escalating water crisis looms, driven by factors such as ageing infrastructure, lack of investment from water firms and industrial pollution.
More than 3.6 million hours of raw sewage discharges poured into rivers and seas last year — a 105 per cent increase compared with 2022.
Original article by Andrew Wasley republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The river Wye.
The case will argue the meat giant knew of the potential environmental consequences of industrial-scale chicken farming
The US meat and grain giant Cargill must compensate those affected by pollution in the River Wye or face court proceedings, lawyers preparing to sue the company have warned.
Legal papers served to the company by the law firm Leigh Day say hundreds of people have suffered loss and damage because of pollution linked to growing industrial chicken farming in the region. The firm also demands that Cargill cleans up the river.
Leigh Day’s letter to the company, seen by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), also accuses two of Cargill’s UK entities – Avara Foods and Freemans of Newent – of jointly polluting the river with phosphorus. The companies have two months to respond to the allegations.
Natural England downgraded the river’s health rating last year, citing higher phosphorus levels and increased eutrophication – a phenomenon where a build-up of nutrients prompts some plants to grow excessively, depleting oxygen levels.
“Chicken manure is high in phosphorus, having a concentration four to five times higher than other forms of manure,” Leigh Day’s letter states.
Pollution of the Wye has become a national issue as the number of chicken farms nearby has grown. Today, Avara Foods is responsible for more than four fifths of the 20 million birds reared in the region, according to Leigh Day.
Until recently, waste from the farms was frequently spread on nearby land as a fertiliser, where it would run into adjacent waterways, including the Wye and its tributaries.
In the legal papers, Leigh Day accuses Cargill, Avara and Freemans of being responsible for “substantial water quality degradation and widespread algal blooms”, as well as “species decline [and] a loss of income from tourism, water sports, fishing, hospitality and other local businesses”.
Local house prices have also been affected, the letter notes, along with the quality of life for residents living next to industrial-scale farms.
Initially, Leigh Day only named Avara as a defendant, but in May it announced that Cargill would also face action. Avara is a joint venture between Cargill and Faccenda Foods – a major UK poultry processor. There are more than 100 intensive poultry farms in the Wye Valley over which Avara, and thus Cargill, “has significant legal and factual control”, Leigh Day claims.
Avara has previously said it is “confident that there is no case to defend” and that Leigh Day’s civil claim is “a year-old, opportunistic attempt to profit from a serious environmental issue”.
“It has no merit and is not supported by evidence or expert opinion,” the company said in March. “It ignores the long-standing use of phosphate-rich fertiliser by arable farms as well as the clear scientific data showing the issue of excess phosphorus considerably pre-dates the growth of poultry farms in the Wye catchment.”
The letter also notes that Avara supplies 4 million chickens to the UK retail, hospitality and food service sectors, and is a supermarket poultry supplier.
The case will argue that Cargill, which is headquartered in Minnesota but operates around the world, must share responsibility for the pollution of the Wye and related waterways.
Cargill knew of the potential consequences of industrial-scale chicken farming because of similar legal challenges in the US, Leigh Day argues. There, waste from poultry farms from a number of companies – including Cargill – was found to have contributed to historic river pollution in Oklahoma.
Leigh Day’s letter adds that Cargill’s importing of phosphorus-rich soy, which is then used to make poultry feed, has also contributed to the problem. TBIJ previously uncovered how Cargill soy from Brazil is shipped to Liverpool, where it is processed for use in animal feed at farms that supply Avara.
Leigh Day partner Oliver Holland told TBIJ: “We hope that Avara and Cargill will take this opportunity to engage constructively with the substance of the claim and work with us to avoid court proceedings being issued. However, if they do not, our clients will be issuing court proceedings and looking to proceed with this claim through the high court.”
Original article by Andrew Wasley republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Rishi Sunak boards an RAF plane to travel from London to Leeds. Photograph: No 10’s Flickr account
Last week, Rishi Sunak flew from London to Blackpool – his third private jet trip in 10 days. He’s far from the only one using air travel for short journeys. Just how much damage is this doing?
It was a Labour spokesperson who said the prime minister was behaving “like an A-list celeb”, after Rishi Sunak made his third trip by private jet in 10 days. Last week, he flew from London to Blackpool in a 14-seat RAF jet – a 230-mile journey that would have taken about three hours by train. The week before, he did the same to Leeds, which he could have done in two and a half hours by train, but which wouldn’t have looked nearly so glamorous – to go by the ludicrous photograph of him looking important and being saluted as he boarded the aircraft.
Private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per passenger, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a report by Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign organisation. “It goes against the fact that the government has committed to net zero by 2050,” says Alice Ridley, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Better Transport. “They have said they want to see more journeys by public transport, walking and cycling. Taking a private jet is extremely damaging for the environment, especially when there are other alternatives that would be far less polluting and would also be cheaper.”
Private planes carry far fewer passengers, while about 40% of flights are empty, simply getting the aircraft to the right location. Flying short distances also means planes are less fuel-efficient.
“A private jet is the most polluting form of transport you can take,” says Matt Finch, the UK policy manager for Transport & Environment. “The average private jet emits two tonnes of carbon an hour. The average European is responsible for [emitting] eight tonnes of carbon a year. You fly to the south of France and back, that’s half a year in one trip.”
