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I hope you won’t think two articles on waste a waste. On entertainment value alone, they are nothing but. I’ve found myself the proud owner of a large amount of garden waste. I know this is disposed of in different colour bags, which I’ve not previously used. Sensible, I say, garden waste has characteristics which duly justify its separation from other, less environmental streams. So, armed with Quixotic optimism, with my laptop as my own, slim lined Sancho Panza, I set off exploring how this works in the UK. After a complex search, full of misadventures which truly justify the Cervantes analogy, I discovered that the green sacks are available for mail order purchase from the local council. Once received, you put your garden waste in them and place them for collection with the normal waste. They will be collected together, and landfilled together, the green bags serving the sole purpose of adding a bit of colour to the otherwise boringly black landfill sites. I cannot wait to try it ou...

The UK is richer than Spain, for now and whilst Brexit does not show its full effect, which will still take the best part of a generation. I live in two similar size cities, Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, and Hereford, in UK. Both provincial backwaters, far from the buzz of the capitals. They could, however, not be more different from the perspective of recycling. In Santiago, you can dispose of seven different waste streams at any time in the day, in your own street. In UK, you get one waste stream, which you can dispose off once every two weeks. If you want to separate more, or don’t want your house to be filled by a mountain of yet to be recycled waste, you can take it to the recycling centre yourself, appealing to Brits’ love of DIY. This is great fun, only by appointment, which you must secure online, with weekend slots typically filled well in advance. Will I have availability three weeks on Saturday, at 13.45, for such an exciting adventure? Can I maybe do it by MS Teams? Len...

Last night I watched the new David Attenborough documentary, ‘A life of Earth’. It is a powerful witness statement on the biodiversity destruction caused by climate change. it should be watched by every single person on Earth. One obvious conclusion one draws on watching is that the main challenge in solving or mitigating this issue is the difficulty countries face in developing agreements where the global interest is balanced with their perceived short term national interest. It is as if many leaders thought their country can exist even if Earth doesn’t. Climate change and biodiversity extinction are, with pandemics (not only coronavirus, think diabetes, etc.) and inequality, the gravest challenge every human faces. Nationalism prevents their solution, it is not only futile, but prejudicial. We must, to have a chance to solve these issues, shed nationalistic identities and preserve our local, regional and national cultures whilst working as a single species to protect our environment...

Sustainability is a big issue for humanity today. Ten years away from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals deadline, we are well behind schedule. Few people talk or write about this more eloquently than Peter Lacy, author of ‘Waste to wealth’ and ‘The circular economy handbook’. You should check out his work. Sustainability is a critically important long term objective, but too long term for most politicians, driven by the extremely short sighted agendas which have the potential of winning them another term. But, alas, we can no longer afford to delay. Time is short and the consequences are grave. It is therefore time to demand greater sustainable efforts from our leaders, not only politicians, but captains of industry and global leading entrepreneurs. Let’s challenge them, through public debate on social media, using our power as citizens, to provide answers to the sustainability question. They have the power to change our outcomes, and we have the right to demand that they do  ...

  Global warming (or the euphemistic climate change) is the biggest challenge humanity is facing today. Given the lack of consensus about policy to tackle it, the continuous failure to fulfil agreed targets and the disinformation onslaught surrounding it, it is easy to despair, but we cannot afford to. We cannot leave the answer to our politicians only, rely on them to save us from impending disaster in the same way we relied on them for pandemic prevention. Green Parties may be unelectable, due to limited funding, media bias and an extremism tarnish in public perception. We must therefore do more as individuals, as citizens. It is high time to take it seriously, and it is up to each one of us to inform, to convince and to act, thinking about the impact of each one of our decisions and continuously striving to do more. There is a lot that we can do as individuals, if we believe we can have an impact, targeting our consumption, our economic actions and our human to human interaction...