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Rising incomes and high demand for electric and electronic equipment (EEE) in East and South-East Asian countries have resulted in e-waste generation increasing by two thirds during 2010-2015, says a new study published by the United Nations University (UNU). The average increase in e-waste across 12 countries analysed - Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam - was over 60 per cent during the five-year period totalling 12.3 million tonnes.

South Africa's drought-stricken Cape Town told residents on Wednesday they would need to cut their daily water consumption by almost half from next month as authorities scramble to prevent the city running out of water as soon as in April.

South Korea's newly elected president, Moon Jae-in, has ordered the temporary closure of 10 coal power plants for the entire month of June to help reduce air pollution in the country. President Moon Jae-in reportedly stated that he plans to phase these coal plants out over his five-year term.

South Korea has been using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and a 'pay-as-you-waste' system to help cut back on food waste. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the Mayor's Zero Waste Challenge as part of the city's plan to send zero waste to landfill by 2030. Thirty-one businesses, including Disney, Anheuser-Busch, Citi Field, Etsy, Whole Foods, and more, have committed to divert at least 50 percent of their waste from landfill and incineration.

Extreme heat can kill, as it did by the dozens in Pakistan in May. But as many of South Asia's already-scorching cities get even hotter, scientists and economists are warning of a quieter, more far-reaching danger: Extreme heat is devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions more.

Coral reefs around the globe already are facing unprecedented damage due to warmer and more acidic oceans. If carbon dioxide emissions continue to fuel the rise in temperature, the widespread loss of coral reefs by 2050 could have devastating consequences, according to new research published in the scientific journal PLOS. "Some of the places that have the most to lose... are also among the biggest carbon emitters," Dr Pendleton said. "They really have it in their power to bring down the levels of carbon" they emit into the atmosphere. The researchers acknowledged that further study is needed to more fully understand what is happening to coral reefs around the globe and how that will affect humans.

According to a recent United Nations University report, e-waste generation is growing fast in both total volume and per capita measures throughout East and South-East Asia between 2010 and 2015. Driven by rising incomes and high demand for new gadgets and appliances, the average increase in e-waste across all 12 countries and areas analysed was 63% in the five years ending in 2015 and totalled 12.3 million tonnes. China's more than doubled to 6.7 million tonnes, up 107%.

Cape Town, the crown jewel of South Africa's tourism industry, has 100 days before it runs out of water.

South Africa, where gas and oil company, Sasol, has partnered with GE Power & Water to develop a new system for providing a high level of treatment for industrial wastewater that also recovers biogas for power generation. The new system, called Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Technology (AnMBR), is transferrable to other industries

The savings, in both energy and carbon pollution, can be considerable. At the city's St. Mary's recreation center in the South Bronx, where a solar hot water system provides hot water for showers and the pool, the city is saving $39,000 a year on energy and cutting the complex's carbon footprint by 141 tons a year-the equivalent of taking 27 cars off the roads.

Efforts to clean up ocean waste have been stymied by the sheer size of the areas in which plastic is concentrated. Traditional cleanup methods using vessels and nets to collect plastic are too expensive and time-consuming to work. For a job as arduous as this, some disruptive innovation is needed, and 20-year-old Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat claims he has created just that. The Ocean Cleanup will passively collect plastic debris in the waters between Japan and South Korea. 

Forest fires in Indonesia have resulted in a smoky haze that is blanketing the region and affecting neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.

In this Yale Environment 360 video, we present the first of a two-part e360 series, "Wasted," on the vexing global problem of food waste. Filmmaker Karim Chrobog visits two cities - Washington, D.C., and Seoul, South Korea - to examine why so much food goes to waste and what can be done about it. Washington, and the U.S. as a whole, has taken only minor steps to reduce this enormous waste and its related human and environmental costs. By contrast, Seoul has adopted innovative programs to minimize the amount of food that ends up going to landfills to rot. 

Since 1994, the researchers have found increasing amounts of evidence suggesting that lion bones are starting to replace tiger bones in certain tonics and cure-alls. Records show the industry forming in fits and starts-a skeleton here, a live lion there. The real action, though, began in 2007, after the international community adopted stricter measures to protect tigers and other big cats in Asia. The following year, South Africa issued permits for the export of 50 lion skeletons. By 2011, that number had jumped to 573 skeletons.

The recycling industry in South Carolina brings a $13 billion boost to the state's economy annually - double the estimated impact of recycling in 2006 - according to a report.

At the University of Miami's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Brian McNoldy and other researchers have been accumulating sea level data from Virginia Key (a small island just south of Miami Beach) since 1996. Over those nineteen years, sea levels around the Miami coast have already gone up 3.7 inches.

Live Zero is part of a growing movement of "zero-waste" supermarkets that aim to end packaging waste by doing away with packaging altogether. The concept began in Europe more than a decade ago, and has since spread globally. There are now zero waste supermarkets from Brooklyn to Sicily to Malaysia to South Africa.

Demand for soy and other crops grown in Bolivia and Brazil may be contributing to a rise in deforestation in the Amazon basin. In Bolivia, for example, estimates are that 865,000 acres of land have been deforested annually since 2011, up from 667,000 acres a year during the previous decade.

Britain has created the world's largest marine reserve, covering about 322,000 square miles of the South Pacific around the Pitcairn Islands. The move is an attempt to clamp down on illegal fishing. "People know Pitcairn because of the Mutiny on the Bounty, but their real bounty is the rich marine life underwater," said National Geographic explorer Enric Sala