Introduction Within just a few years, fossil fuel divestment has overtaken previous campaigns targeting apartheid in South Africa and tobacco advertising to become the fastest growing divestment movement in history. In September, a report from Arabella Advisors found that 436 […]
By James Carson Last year, a survey for Churchill Home Insurance reported that in the first nine months of 2013 nearly 500,000 complaints had been made to UK local authorities. By far the biggest single issue concerned noisy neighbours. Loud […]
By James Carson To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. Wendell Berry The worlds of place and imagination came together last weekend at EcoCultures, […]
By James Carson London’s Tube may be the oldest underground network in the world, but it’s still breaking new ground. Last month, engineers began testing a process that enables waste energy from Tube train brakes to be collected and recycled. […]
October 16 is World Food Day, an annual day of action to raise awareness about the problem of global hunger. It’s also a particularly good day to reflect on the problem of food waste. Over 800 million people – one […]
By Morwen Johnson When we talk about preserving biodiversity many people will assume it’s something that’s only an issue in far-flung places like the Amazon rainforest. England however has at least 55,000 species of animals, plants and fungi, and over […]
By James Carson Earlier this year, we looked at a style of building known as Passivhaus, which is playing an important role in creating energy-efficient homes. Now, another concept – the Aktivhaus – is taking this approach even further, graduating […]
The Scottish Planning and Environmental Law Journal (SPEL) held its annual conference in Edinburgh on 17th September. This year’s theme was “the changing landscape of planning”. The death of strategic planning? The keynote speech of this year’s conference was delivered […]
By James Carson Plastic carrier bags have been part of Britain’s retail landscape since their introduction by supermarkets in the 1970s. Dispensed freely and liberally, the bags were originally made of polythene before evolving to the high density polyethylene (HDPE) […]
By James Carson Last summer, a report for the Heritage Lottery Fund offered mixed news on the state of public parks in the UK. While increasing numbers of parks were reported to be in good condition, and visitor numbers and […]
