It wasn’t all bad

Parents who hate the waste involved in buying clothes for their babies that are outgrown in weeks now have a more ecofriendly alternative: to rent them instead. At Bundlee, which launched last year, parents pay a monthly subscription of £24. For that, they get a set of 15 good quality pieces of baby clothes (and insurance against stains). When these have become too small, they send them back (to be cleaned and re-let) and get a bigger set delivered through the post.

A 36-year-old Nepalese climber and former Gurkha has ascended the world’s 14 highest peaks in just 189 days – smashing the previous record by six years. Nirmal Purja, who served in Britain’s elite Special Boat Service, reached the summit of the smallest of the 14 mountains that soar above 8,000 metres – Shishapangma, in China – on Tuesday. To climb all the “8000ers” is a prized challenge among climbers. During his mission, Purja took the photo of a winding queue to the summit of Everest that went viral earlier this year, and also took part in four rescues of other climbers.

The Dutch non-profit that created a floating rig to gather plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now launched a system to stop plastic getting into the sea in the first place. The Interceptor is a solar-powered machine that traps plastic debris as it flows down rivers. Its designers hope to place the systems in 1,000 of the world’s most polluted rivers within five years. They estimate that, in total, these would pick up 50,000kg of plastic waste a day, reducing the amount that flows into the oceans by 80%.