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Australia has the highest rates of colon cancer in people under 50 in the world.

More young people are getting colon cancer. Here is what you can do to protect yourself

Australia has the highest reported rates in the world of colon cancer in younger people. Understanding the possible causes is the first step towards dealing with this deadly disease.

  • Paula Goodyer

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Bottom trawling footage from David Attenborough documentary Ocean.

Forrest calls for global fishing overhaul as Australia backs major treaties at UN summit

The mining billionaire says “the ocean is in freefall” following a UN conference, where Australia backed a global commitment to marine protection and ending plastic pollution.

  • Alex Condon
James Dorney, chief executive of Tomra Cleanaway, which manages the NSW container return scheme, at a sorting plant at Eastern Creek.

Australian container return schemes are a booming good news story

Unlike efforts to recycle soft plastics, container deposit schemes have been a success across Australia, with billions of bottles recycled.

  • Nick O'Malley and Bianca Hall
Sally Rewell, manager of the Malabar wastewater treatment plant (right), and Kate Miles, head of system planning and land acquisition at Sydney Water.

The grime balls were a symptom of an ailing sewerage network. The cure could be to drink recycled water

Sydney Water is proposing to add purified recycled drinking water – effluent that has been highly treated back to drinking standard – to Sydney’s tap water supply.

  • Caitlin Fitzsimmons
University of Sydney professor Stuart Khan says the results of the ABS survey on PFAS are “shocking but not surprising”.

‘Forever chemicals’ found in blood of 97 per cent of Victorians

Synthetic chemicals called PFAS have been detected in the blood of almost all Australians, in growing concentrations with age. The health impacts are unknown.

  • Adam Carey
Woodside accidentally released more than 186kg of plastic clamps into the ocean as it decommissioned its Minerva gas well and pipeline.

How parts of a dead gas rig washed up on our beaches

Energy giant Woodside has acknowledged accidentally releasing almost 200kg of hard plastic waste into the ocean off Port Campbell in Victoria.

  • Bianca Hall
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The James Brown campaign truck dumping corflutes at a Sydney tip in May 2025.

We can have democracy without the plastic waste

Corflutes are fully recyclable, but signs from the 2025 election are already winding up in landfill or as litter.

  • Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Planet Ark championed the Australasian Recycling Label.

Labor commits to national packaging rules as Planet Ark collapses

The environmental charity behind a number of high-profile recycling schemes went into voluntary administration this week.

  • Caitlin Fitzsimmons
A bag full of nurdles – plastic in its embryonic form – splits open and spills from one of the riverside sites surveyed in Melbourne.

Revenge of the nurdles: Oodles of tiny plastic ‘toxic bombs’ wash into bay

Every year, an estimated 2.5 billion nurdles – lentil-sized plastic resin pellets – enter Port Phillip Bay through stormwater drains.

  • Bianca Hall
The Plasrefine recycling facility was planned for construction next to a critical medical research mouse-breeding facility.

Fear of thousands of cannibal mice helped sink a huge NSW recycling plant

Australia’s largest recycling plant was set to be built next to a crucial medical facility – and the potential impacts were dire.

  • Angus Dalton

Original URL: https://www.theage.com.au/topic/plastic-jlg