Little Blue-Green Planet

It's about time someone with weight began to question the wisdom of an all-electric future based on batteries. The EBRD has woken up. Now it needs to kick some others into paying attention. It says that "green hydrogen could power tomorrow's industry."

1,800 million cotton buds, 5,000 million plastic straws. This is in the UK. Every day. Until today. And it's not the only initiative coming into effect

Dots, here's a line. We hope you like being joined up.

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has "granted authorisation" for a scheme to collect and recycle batteries. The scheme, known as "The Battery Stewardship Council," was originally launched in 2918. In December 2017, Elon Musk's Tesla company installed the then biggest Lithium-Ion battery in the world in South Australia. This week, it's been announced that its size has been increased.

In an article for the World Economic Forum's website (How your 'thank you' emails are polluting the planet) it is argued that Britons " send more than 64 million unnecessary emails per day, a study by energy supplier OVO Energy found, with unactionable pleasantries such as 'thank you' and 'thanks' topping the list of most common offenders." So, the theory goes, we should be discourteous to save the planet. Are there other, more socially acceptable ways of reducing the carbon footprint of our internet use?

When the drains backed up in a city centre sports block, the cause turned out to be a mix of rubber and fabrics, paper and plastic: wet wipes, a variety of tissue papers, sanitary pads, disposable (haha) nappies, Q-tips, various forms of bodily output, plasticised paper (burger wrappers) and condoms were to blame. It wasn't a fatberg, as sewer techs call the stuff they routinely have to remove, but the effect was the same. If disposable nappies aren't actually disposable by any sensible definition of the term, what about using "flushable?" That's a case that has just come to court.

They were claimed to be the solution to fossil fuels. Acres of land and sea have been devoted to the alien structures that make even power-grid towers seem inconspicuous. Now about two decades into what was the future, has the promise of Wind Turbines turned into reality? Are there unintended consequences and are they good or bad?

Research by the UK's National Oceonography Centre (NOC) and the University of Manchester forms part of a broad international collaboration. It reveals that micro-plastics often accumulate on the deep sea floor in the same place as diverse and dense marine life communities. That's no big surprise. But how it gets there is.

It's freezing here at the house in France. Really. There's ice on the pond in the garden. I broke it last night so that the fish could breathe (is that necessary? I don't know. Seemed like a good idea at the time) but now it's frozen over again.