Where donated clothes actually go
Most clothes handed to UK charity shops are never sold there but graded, baled and exported by the tonne into a global second-hand trade…
Elena Marsh
394 reading now
Environment
Climate, energy, conservation and the future of the planet.
104 stories
How beavers came back to Britain and why engineers love them
Hunted to extinction in Britain four centuries ago, Eurasian beavers are now being licensed back into English rivers because their dams…
Elena Marsh
325 reading now
Light pollution: what Britain lost when the night sky went orange
Skyglow now hides the Milky Way from most of urban Britain, yet unlike almost every other pollutant it vanishes the moment the lights go…
Elena Marsh
435 reading now
Why wildflower meadows almost vanished and how they come back
Britain ploughed and fertilised away about 97% of its species-rich meadows after the 1930s, and rebuilding one means years of deliberately…
Elena Marsh
479 reading now
The National Grid balancing act: how supply meets demand second by second
Britain's grid must hold 50Hz continuously, so NESO runs a rolling auction of power stations, batteries and paid-to-switch-off factories, a…
Elena Marsh
442 reading now
Why water companies lose a fifth of supply before it reaches a tap
Leakage persists because finding buried leaks is genuinely hard and fixing the last ones costs more than the water saves, a threshold the…
Amelia Hart
431 reading now
What net zero actually commits the UK to
Net zero is a statutory duty under the Climate Change Act, enforced through five-yearly carbon budgets, an independent Climate Change…
Elena Marsh
334 reading now
Peat bogs: the unglamorous carbon store Britain spent centuries draining
UK peatlands hold more carbon than the forests of Britain and France combined, yet most are degraded and leaking it, which makes rewetting…
Amelia Hart
443 reading now
Hedgerows: the quiet infrastructure Britain keeps grubbing up
A field hedge works simultaneously as wildlife corridor, flood brake and carbon store, yet the 1997 rules meant to protect it are narrow…
Elena Marsh
456 reading now