Environment

France’s Pavillon Bleu was the world’s first blue flag scheme for clean beaches. Here, Samantha David finds out what coastal authorities have to do to be awarded the prestigious mark

France is facing a rise in hard-to-eradicate bed bugs with a study showing they have infested 200,000 sites.

Battery recycling group Corepile is encouraging households to do more to take out batteries from old equipment and recycle them – saying for every 100 batteries just 40 are recycled while 35 are ‘stored at home’ and 25 thrown out as rubbish.

A start-up company in Strasbourg has designed a public bench which doubles as a ‘hotel’ for insects.

Brown bins handed out to 120,000 residents as part of recycling 'revolution'

Lyon is at the forefront of a drive to make France’s green spaces more environmentally friendly. 

Supermarket takes measure for environmental reasons but will still sell fizzy water

Residents encouraged to pick up packs and plant seeds to brighten streets

Tours, Nantes and Angers triumphed in honours given out by Observatoire des Villes Vertes

Rainfall is down and and underground water table levels are low in Vienne

The first victims of the Torrey Canyon disaster were the birds, and their populations have never recovered.

Fifty years ago this month, one of the world’s first super tankers, the Torrey Canyon, ran aground on rocks between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles.

Right next to the station building in Aix-en-Provence is a surprising sight – a little garden with calendulas, giant sunflowers and amaranthus and, later, tomatoes, courgettes and raspberries.

Instead of sitting hidden and unused in a drawer they can be recycled for valuable materials

Warning to investors that claims are full of hot air

A businesswoman in the south of France is producing cardboard coffins because she says they are more ecological and cheaper than traditional wooden coffins.