For What It’s Earth

Getting sloshed, sustainably… This week we’re raising a glass and toasting the end of series 2 of For What It’s Earth, by taking a look at the environmental footprint of the alcohol industry. From the packaging used and the carbon footprint associated with your bottle or can’s transport around the globe, to the amount of water or energy used in the crop growing or distilling process, it turns out,...

In this episode, we find out why butterflies (and moths!) are an essential part of our ecosystems, learn about why they're under threat and in decline, and explore ways in which we can protect these beautiful pollinators from our own homes. As we're also recording separately and practising social distancing, we're also sharing some top tips for making sure you still get your nature fix while in lo...

As our population grows and so too does our consumption of resources, this week Emma and Lloyd are exploring why one of life’s most essential resources is becoming more and more scarce around the world. We look at the causes of water scarcity, explore big ideas for dealing with it and find out what easy changes we can make in our daily lives that can reduce our personal water usage.   Sources: Ted...

Dave Gardner, host of GrowthBusters Podcast and The Overpopulation Podcast joins Emma this week to talk about climate change’s uncomfortable truth: We’re struggling with overpopulation. We need to do something about our population size and our rate of consumption. How do you deal with that without telling women what to do with their bodies? Download the episode to find out! We even got Dave to ans...

With the UK still recovering from the flooding caused by Storm Dennis and Storm Ciara, we’re looking at the news this week. We're exploring the links between flooding, intense weather events and climate change, and whether there's much we can do about it. And that means, of course, we're also taking BEAVERS. Emma gets pretty enthusiastic about nature’s natural flood management squad, which are cur...

The passionate and fantastic climate activist Tori Tsui joins Emma this week! After a 3-month sail across the Atlantic which helped to raise awareness about the need for thinking about how we travel and making lower-carbon alternatives feasible, Tori is dialling in from Colombia where she's helping run the fantastic Sail for Climate Action project, taking Latin American and Caribbean youths across...

Renewable energy! What is it, how does it work, and how can you switch supplier? Some of the most common renewable energy questions are answered in this episode as we explore on-shore and off-shore wind, solar, biomass and nuclear energy. Find us on  Instagram ,  Facebook  and  Twitter , and leave us a review - it helps new listeners find the podcast!   Things we spoke about: Which? Understanding...

AKA Roxy the Zoologist, this lovely activist and wildlife filmmaker joins Emma this week to chat about all things vegan, how social media and activism can come hand in hand, and teaches us how to make oat milk.    Follow Roxy on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/roxythezoologist/ Check out her sustainable supermarket, Zephy EcoMarket: https://www.zephyrecomarket.co.uk/ Organic underwear co...

It’s a fun one this week as we explore some of the most interesting and unusual sustainability solutions and environment-saving action plans the internet has to offer! We’re talking about robot-bees, plastics made from fish waste, bicycles and towers which suck smog out from the air, toilets which convert urine into electricity, shower curtains which grow spikes to kick you out and save water… aaa...

This week we're exploring the topic of wildfires. As immense wildfires currently blaze across huge areas of Australia and both California and Siberia have also experienced vast fires in recent years, we look at the causes of wildfires, the impact they can have on biodiversity and the natural environment, how fires fit into nature's usual cycles and the role that climate change is having on the inc...

With lots of information about overfishing and depleted wild fish stocks in the news, it can be hard to know what fish or seafood we should and shouldn't be eating. This week Emma joins Charlotte Coombes from the Marine Conservation Society to talk about their Good Fish Guide, a handy tool for finding out which species and which fishing styles are 'red-listed' and to be avoided, and which species...

This week we're talking about that time of the month. Half of the world menstruates at some point during their lives and often the sanitary products used are single-use and contain significant quantities of plastic. City to Sea estimates that a regular pack of pads contains as much plastic as five plastic bags and that 2.5 million tampons are flushed in the UK every year, and the Marine Conservati...

A few months ago, a year 6 class at Mendip Green Primary School sat down to do a writing exercise; they wrote us letters on the topic of plastic pollution! Today we're sharing a few of these fantastic letters, which range from issues they've researched in-depth to some fantastic creative writing exercises. What happens to Rodrigo The Eager Sea Hampster, and why did Alfred clamber onto the oak tabl...

This week Emma's chatting to Dr Nancy Grimm @DrNitrogen  from Arizona State University about sustainable architecture, and her research and role in designing our cities to better prepare them (and us) to handle climate change, which is bringing more frequent and extreme weather events. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review and keep in touch with us on  Instagram ,  Facebook  and  Twitter! G...

Happy Christmas! This week we're kicking off the festive season by sharing some of our favourite ideas for making this Christmas a real hoot without it being hard on the environment. Links we mentioned: Recycle Now's local Christmas tree recycling finder:  https://www.recyclenow.com/local-recycling?rlw-initial-path=places/all%3Fmaterials%3D97 Furoshiki Japanese Fabric Wrapping:  https://www.1milli...

Every year, millions of items of litter wash up on our shores, from crisp packets and plastic bottles to cigarette stubs and microplastics, and every year hundreds of volunteers join the Marine Conservation Society's Great British Beach Clean weekend. Volunteers get to be citizen scientists, picking up all the litter found on a 100m stretch of their local beach, recording what they find and sendin...

This week we're wandering through the topics of rewilding and reforestation! We find out how many trees we would need to help the UK become 'carbon neutral', learn about some of the amazing projects in Scotland, Yosemite and Mauritius in which fantastic teams of conservationists are restoring whole ecosystems and reintroducing species, and explore the ways in which taking inspiration from Mother N...

This week Lloyd speaks to the completely lovely Dan Rouse, ornithologist and wildlife presenter! Find out more about how to look after our birdlife, how to make your garden super wildlife-friendly, how to get the best from bird boxes, and how fulmars use vomiting to protect their chicks. This is the first in our efforts this series to sprinkle more interviews and interesting chats with brilliant p...

Emma and Lloyd are back for season two of For What It's Earth! To kick off our next batch of sustainability podcasts, we're celebrating Greta Thunberg's sail across the Atlantic to raise awareness the need for us to reduce our carbon emissions, and, because trans-Atlantic boat journeys aren't always feasible, we're exploring other ways that we can make our travels more sustainable. We're also dead...

Hello from the Arctic! In this cheeky bonus episode, we're sharing an episode of one of the podcasts that Emma has been working on in northern Sweden this summer, for the Climate Impacts Research Centre. She's joining Ryan and Lottie from Imperial College London for a day out on the mountain, catching and recording Arctic bumblebees!  Click here for more episodes of Field Notes on Climate Change,...

And that’s a wrap for season one of For What It’s Earth! This week, to celebrate making it this far, we’ve been answering your questions, from finding the most impactful environmentally-friendly actions we can make from our own home and exploring whether we can travel the world sustainably, to finding environmentally-friendly earplugs and wondering whether the series has changed our own attitudes...

Children have gone on strike from schools, Extinction Rebellion has occupied our headlines and our cities, and now the UK has declared a Climate Emergency, as have many individual towns, cities and communities - Universities, even!  But what has the Greta-effect actually had on the UK, and what does declaring a very official sounding (but not actually very officially-binding) Climate Emergency eve...

Marine conservationist and educator, Libby Bowles, joins us to chat about her journey across New Zealand on a bamboo bicycle, discussed why she's dedicated her time to educating kids about plastic pollution and shared her wisdom on how to live a more sustainable life in a genuinely helpful, less 'I'm doing this for Instagram' kind of a way! We featured a few minutes of her interview on our 'Plasti...

Joined by the Rosie Maple from the Avon Wildlife Trust, we explore the reasons why we need urban wildlife and to understand why conservation movements such as The Wildlife Trusts believe cities rely on their green spaces. Find out why we need to keep our cities little bit wild, how careful planning and tree management can help urban environments cope with climate change, and what each of us can do...

Chocks away! From life-cycle emissions and the environmental issues surrounding the lithium-ion batteries to finding charging points and looking at how EVs (electric vehicles) can help rather than hinder the National Grid, buckle up your seatbelt because this week we’re racing through the topic of electric cars. We’ve also got a quick chat with Robert Lewellyn (of Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge an...