A major water firm in UK is offering up to £200 off customers’ bills if they sign up to a scheme to monitor rivers and streams for pollution.
Northumbrian Water is looking for volunteers who regularly walk along certain waterways in the North East which are known to be hot spots for sewage contamination.
The firm wants members of the public to do visual tests of the water and is offering training to become a water ranger.The firm said details of the reward system were being finalised, but customers could receive up to £200 a year off their annual bills.
A wee proposal put to students
Students are being encouraged to urinate in the shower to save water.
The campaign, called gowiththeflow, has been dreamt up by Debs Torr and Chris Dobson at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich. They hope to get all 15,000 students at the university to take part – and are asking them to declare their habits on Twitter and Facebook.
Dobson said: “With 15,000 students at UEA, over a year we would save enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool 26 times over.” The pair are representing UEA in the Npower Future Leaders Challenge, encouraging students to devise an environmental initiative on their campus.
Shopping snapshot of 2014
2014 was the year of the loom band and middle-of-the-night shopping, with UK consumers sending online sales in the early hours soaring by a third on last year, according to an annual report by John Lewis.
The rise of mobile shopping helped sales between midnight and 6am soar 31 per cent over the past 12 months, the department store found.
The study revealed that men logged on at 2am to buy formal wear, parents shopped for nursery items at 4am and sales of women’s shoes and handbags spiked between 5am and 7am. Among the crazes was the playground obsession with loom bands, which went mainstream in May and saw the store’s best week-on-week uplift of 295 per cent.
Smouldering drama angers critics
An Australian opera company has been criticised for banning any performances of Carmen because the 140-year-old French opera depicts smoking.
West Australian Opera will not stage the popular opera, about a Spanish gypsy named Carmen who works in a cigar factory, for two years. The ban lasts the duration of a 400,000 Australian dollar (£218,000) sponsorship deal with a state government health promotion agency, Healthway.
The deal, which begins in March, has split Australians among those who complain of a nanny state and those who applaud its positive public health message. Prime Minister Tony Abbott condemned the deal as “political correctness gone crazy”.
Putin tiger strays into China
A rare Siberian tiger released into the wild by Russian President Vladimir Putin has strayed into China and may be in danger.
Russia has informed Chinese forestry officials that the tiger, tagged with a tracking device, was observed in a nature preserve in north-eastern China’s Heilongjiang province, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said. It said officials were notifying local farmers and were setting up more than 60 cameras in the hopes of locating the tiger.
The Russian President was photographed in May releasing the 19-month-old cub, named Kuzya, and two other Siberian tigers in a remote part of the Amur region.
Yoga yanked from primary school
An Austrian primary school has dropped yoga classes for children after a mother argued that yoga goes against Christian teachings.
Yoga teacher Ingrid Karner said she was told to stop classes at the school in the southeastern village of Dechantskirchen after a complaint “that it’s not allowed, according to the Bible”.
School principal Maria Hofer told the Die Kleine Zeitung newspaper that no parents complained when courses started this year. But she said they were stopped after the unidentified mother said even the word “yoga ... had negative effects”.