Woman's Hour - Abortion in Poland, Who Holds The Real Eco-Power

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Poland's top court has ruled that abortions in cases of foetal abnormality are unconstitutional. Poland's abortion laws were already among the strictest in Europe but the Constitutional Tribunal's ruling will mean an almost total ban. Once the decision comes into effect, terminations will only be allowed in cases of rape or incest, or if the mother's health is at risk. We hear from Justyna Wydrzynska, who runs a group in Poland which gives information about abortion to women you want it.Public concern over the state of our planet is at a record high. But for all the targets and strikes and banning plastic straws, change still feels pretty slow. So what's the problem? Three women, who are suggestions for this year’s Woman’s Hour Power List, plus one of our judges, talks about the kind of power that brings about change, their own quests to make a difference, and how they keep going. We have Karen Shackleton, Sian Sutherland, Hil Berg and Emma Howard.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and a warm welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast from Monday the 26th of October 2020. Hello, good morning. Don't forget the Woman's Hour Power List, Our Planet is the subject this year, is officially unveiled on the 16th of November. And there's been so much interest in the Power List this year. Thank you for all the suggestions you've made to us of women you'd like to appear on that list. We are talking to some of your suggested women on Woman's Hour today when we discuss who has the real power to make change when it comes to the environment. And one of our guests is the chair of the Environment Agency,

Emma Howard-Boyd, is live with us on Woman's Hour this morning. There's also a campaigner on clean rivers from Ilkley. We're talking to Tishan Sutherland, who is the co-founder of A Plastic Planet, and to Hilberg, who works as a business advisor to Iceland Foods. And I should say that our guest from Ilkley from the Clean River campaign is Karen Shackleton. So looking forward to talking to all of those impressive women on the programme a little later. First of all, we're going to go to Poland, where the country's top court has ruled that abortions in cases of fetal defects are unconstitutional. Now, abortion laws in Poland were already among

the very strictest in Europe. But the Constitutional Tribunal's latest ruling does mean a near total ban on abortions. Terminations will only be allowed in cases of rape or incest or if the mother's health is at risk. There have been protests across Poland. There have been protests in London, too. And there is another one tonight at the Polish embassy just down the road from the BBC at about six o'clock this evening. We'll talk in a moment to a campaigner in Poland. Our correspondent there, though, is Adam Easton. Adam, good morning to you.

Good morning, Jane. So tell us a little bit about why and how the Polish government has done this? It has done this because it is a supporter of traditional Roman Catholic values and it has been under some pressure from certain Roman Catholic bishops and lay Catholic groups to tighten the law. And there are certainly supporters within the party, I'm thinking of its head, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who says the law needed to be made more tighter to basically save the lives of children who would be born with Down syndrome. That's what the justification is for making this tighter. So what has happened, as you mentioned, the existing law from 1993 gave three grounds, and one of the grounds has been struck down by the court.

Now, this was a hard fought for compromise since 1993. It's been more or less in place, and there have been attempts to change it in Parliament in the past, but they have proved so emotional and there's so much opposition that basically this law has remained in place for 27 years. The controversy here is the way the law has been changed because it's been done one during a pandemic and two by a court without a parliamentary debate, without a public debate and by a court which is dominated by judges nominated by the governing party and whose president, the Chief Justice of this court, is a personal friend of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the governing party.

So that is, it's really produced considerable anger, which we've seen over four days now, thousands of people taking to the streets, not just in the big cities. On Saturday, there were protests in 91 small cities, towns, large cities. So this has really spread nationwide. And there is indeed real considerable anger on the streets about the manner of this change and also the timing of this change. Who are the protesters? The protesters are generally,

if I'm going to make a generalisation, younger people, predominantly women. But there are young men on the protests as well. There's NGOs, women's rights groups, but basically people across the country as I say not just in more cosmopolitan large cities but also in smaller towns have been taking part as well so it's a broad section of society

Let's bring in another guest Justyna Wydreska who works for an organisation called Women on the Net which supplies information on abortion to women in Poland. Justyna, what kind of a weekend have you had? Hello, nice to hear you. It was really tough for days from the moment this decision was was pronounced. And we received daily more than 200 calls on Abortion Without Borders hotline and there were lots of different calls. And it was really a tough situation for us.

We were being prepared for this because Abortion Without Borders started last year in December. And because of the pandemic, we also went through some kind of crisis. And now we know that we can help all the women which can get us, can call to us, or need some kind of help from us. What kind of help can you give them? Do you give them money to go to other countries for an abortion? First of all, we can give them reliable information. Like if they need pills, we can tell them how to order pills, the abortion pills, and from which organization is best to order them.

If they want to go abroad for surgical abortion, we can point them where to go, where the best clinics are, where the best places are. And in a situation if they have fetus abnormalities, we can tell them also where they can go and to which organisation they should contact with to get money for paying the procedures and to give some kind of help in organising the trip. So, Justyna, we know that Poland has always had strict laws on abortion. Presumably, though, women in Poland have also always needed access to abortion. So have thousands of women been forced to go abroad in the past?

Right. As our statistics, government statistics from 2009 says that about 1,100 women got their abortion in hospitals. So it looks that the others went abroad by themselves, paying for the procedures with their own money. So now we think that it will be this 1,000, which we officially have each year, will contact us, our hotline. Right, OK, yes. But you don't have any idea of the numbers of women forced to go elsewhere for an abortion? No, no, no, no, we don't have. As we have our own statistics from not much than about 10 months, I think,

the abortion without borders is existing. So up to now, up to this 22 of October, we received about 182 calls from women and people who want to go abroad for abortion, but we never asked them about the reasons, if they were in the limits. If they were above the limits in legal abortion in each country, then we received information that they have fetal abnormalities. Thank you very much for talking to us.

That's Justyna Wydryska. Adam Easton, the BBC correspondent. I wonder, is the government moved at all by the level of protest on this one? I think the initial signs are there, Jane, because I think they've been taken by surprise by the extent and breadth of these protests. Incidentally, women's rights groups do estimate that the number of women that go abroad is between 80,000 and 120,000 a year.

So compare that with just over a thousand legal abortions annually. We've already seen one of the small junior coalition partners proposing something of a compromise. And they've said that perhaps legal amendments can be brought in to make this ban more specific, specific to fetuses who have a diagnosis of likelihood of Down syndrome. And then in other cases of fetal defects, then the mother would be able to have the choice. So that's a governing party coalition member saying that. So there is no actual legal requirement for the government to back down because the court's ruling is final and binding. They don't have to publish it. That's one thing they could do. But there is such a continuing

groundswell of protest on, as I said, across the country that I think they've been taken by surprise. And if this continues, which the protests are scheduled to continue, then I think they may decide to try and diffuse this ticking bomb and seek some form of compromise. Thank you. That's really interesting, Adam. And just on another note, coronavirus obviously is a massive issue. You already mentioned it in association with the protests and the difficulty in organising a protest. But what is the situation in Poland at the moment? Are schools open, shut in between? What's happening? Today, schools have switched online, all primary schools, secondary schools and universities already have done.

But from today, primary schools have done that as well, switched to online learning, apart from the first three years. We're seeing record numbers of new daily infections and deaths in recent days. So the public health system is really struggling here to cope with the rapidly rising hospital admission numbers. Right. OK. Thank you very much. It is always worth bearing in mind that everybody else is up against it as well as us. Thank you, Adam. That's Adam Easton, BBC correspondent in Poland.

You also got the view of Justyna Wydrzejska, who works for Women on the Net, a group which supplies information on abortion to Polish women. Any views on that? Well, on social media, of course, it's at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email the programme via the website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. And so many of you emailed us about our Power List this year,

the big reveal programme, which I'm looking forward to enormously, is on the 16th of November. It's all about our planet and about you suggesting women from your part of the world who've just done something brilliant to help the way we live, how we live, to improve the look of the place where people are living. Just so many great ideas from you and we are really, really grateful to you. So much so, in fact, that we're going to have a number of conversations over the next couple of weeks

about some of the ideas suggested from you, by you, for the Power List this year, because not everyone can appear on the Power List. We have invited three women suggestive of the Power List this year to come and talk to you today. And also one of the judges, who is Emma Howard-Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency. Good morning to you, Emma. Good to see you today, Jane. You have a letter in The Times today.

I have, yes. I know you know because you wrote it. But let me just give people an idea of what it is you're saying today. You're basically saying, our rivers and bathing waters are in a much better state than 20 years ago, with wildlife returning to rivers that were once biologically dead. Our air is far cleaner, with emissions dramatically reduced. But we constantly innovate to do more with less. Ultimately, we will get the environment we pay for. The gist of your letter to The Times is that the Environment Agency hasn't got enough money.

That's right, isn't it? That's the point that I wanted to get across in that letter. It coincides today with a report that's come out from an organisation called Unchecked, looking at the work of regulators across the UK and the environment sector and the environment regulators have been shown to have fewer resources than we need now to do the work that the general public would like us to be doing. So do you think that people unfairly target regulators like your own and say why aren't they doing x y and z? We have a number of very passionate and professional staff up and down the country. We work in England and we are doing our utmost with the funding we do have for our regulatory work, our monitoring and enforcing.

On the water side of our business, our resources have been cut down to 15 million pounds. This is the amount of money that we have to look after 240,000 kilometres a river. Wow, in England. Which comes in England, which works out at about 62 pounds per kilometre. Well, I mean, 15 million quid probably isn't a lot of money. How much would be enough? Well, we are doing ever more with less we are innovating all the time we are working with our department and our sister bodies

in the department of the environment natural england to do to work together to collaborate but the sorts of amounts that will make a real difference aren't huge but give us an idea 40 million 50 million 100 million so i want to put it in the context of money that we got earlier this year through the budget um for our flood work so as well as environmental regulation we lead the country's response, England's response to flood and coastal erosion risk management. And we were delighted that in the budget back in March, we saw a doubling of our money to 5.2 billion. Within that work, we know that we couldn't because we're working there on too much water, we're looking after water resources, so what we do to make sure we've got how we deal with drought,

but we also need to look at water quality. So with that money, we're looking at how we can integrate with others the work that we are doing on water management. We have, through our work, through our regulatory work with the water companies, we have secured about £5 billion to go into our work with improving water quality. So that is where we are using other sources of money to focus on the environment.

But there is no doubt that we need more resources to help us with our monitoring, our legal work. So I suppose some would argue you could never have enough money. But the point of the conversation this morning is to ask who has the real power. Plenty of people listening will be thinking, well, this woman is the chair of the Environment Agency. She is the one with the real power to bring about change. But you've just explained why, even in your position, it's not that simple, if only it were. And we'll talk to somebody who feels passionately about cleaning up rivers in a moment. I should also say that with us in the studio is Sian Sutherland, who is the co-founder of A Plastic Planet.

Good morning to you, Sian. Good morning, Jane. And we'll talk, too, to Hil Berg, responsible business advisor to Iceland Foods. She's in Chester this morning. Hil, hello. Good morning to you, Sian. Good morning, Jane. And we'll talk to Hill Berg, Responsible Business Advisor to Iceland Foods. She's in Chester this morning. Hill, hello. Good morning to you. Hello, everybody. And we'll talk to come to talk to you in more detail in a moment or two. Hill, thank you for being there. Let's go to Karen Shackleton, founder of the Ilkley Clean River Campaign. Karen, great to talk to you. Tell us what galvanised you? What got you going? How did you get involved in all this? Hello, Jane. I was approached by a local fisherman who was discovering that instead of catching fish on his line, he was catching sanitary towels, condoms,

and the so-called flushable wipes. And he'd found out that every time it rained, there was raw untreated sewage being discharged into the river by the Yorkshire Water Company, the water company. So I thought, I'd better go down and have a look and see what's happening. So I trundled down to the river and when it was raining and it was absolutely shocking the force of the raw sewage entering the river was going so fast that it reached right across to the other end of the the bank and as far down as the eye could see and it was just a grey cloudy river which was basically an open sewer and and this went on for a whole week um so i thought well what can i do about it

but i'm as vice president of the woffdale naturalist society i thought well i'll bring this up at the um committee meeting so when i went down there i says look we've got a problem where whenever it rains there's raw sewage going down into the river and uh we should be really doing something about this and i sat there in the meeting in a room full of committee members and was told well we're not a campaign group we're a wildlife group which is quite correct and it's allowed by permits in issue by the regulatory body the environment agency so what can we really do about it there's not a lot we can do about it and i remember looking around the room thinking oh well, it's up to me then.

So what I did then was I went down and took some pictures of all the sanitary products, condoms and wet wipes that were left behind on the riverbed and approached the local Facebook page, Ilkley Chat, and said, look, this is happening in Ilkley Chat and said look this is happening in Ilkley um you know should we do about it in this as well it needs proper investigation um ring the local radio station and and see if they can you know cover it first which they did and then Ilkley Chat posted it on their Facebook page and Twitter account and it just went viral immediately. People's reaction, they had no idea this was happening

in our lovely spa town and were absolutely horrified. Before I knew it, BBC Look North was involved. They came down to film what was happening, ITV, Calendar and all the local media. Right, well, your media show was very much on the road at that point, Karen. Let me bring in Emma because she's obviously with me and heard all that. Why would that ever happen, Emma? Can you explain that?

So when we see extreme rainfall, the sewage works have the permission to, instead of the flooding, the water backing up into people's homes, to emit the sewage into the water. And that is set out in regulation. It is set out in our permitting. What we're now doing. What does that mean? So that is allowed. That's allowed. That is allowed because of the rainfall events that we're now working with closely with communities but also with the

water companies is how we make sure that the sewage system as well as what happens to surface water so what is happening is when the rain is is rainfall events are taking place, all of the water that we see from the streets are going into combined sewers. So they get overwhelmed. Where we have seen that happen in London and with the Thames, we now have a major, major infrastructure project called the Thames Tideway which is

taking dealing with that surface water to allow the surface water to be separated from sewage. Effectively our systems were built many many many years ago. Just to interrupt you a little bit I'm just thinking of people listening out of London who will immediately have spotted that it looks as though, on the face of it, the Thames and London has been prioritised over places like Ilkley. Is that fair? We're working up and down the country

to make sure that we are doing things right for the environment. Where we have bathing water status for our coastal areas around the country, we have been separating out our surface water from going into our sewage outfalls. So that is around the entire country. And if you look at where we have got to after many years of investment many beaches up and down the country are now safer for swimming yes but you seem to be saying at the beginning that the situation in Ilkley which I know has improved thanks in part to the more than in part to the efforts of the Environment Agency. But situations like that will have to be lived with

because of climate change unless we invest more in this. So it's partly about investing, but it's also about how we create more space in the pipes. So that is where... Just by making them bigger. It's as simple as that. Changing them. But also making sure that we're not flushing down into the sewage systems things that create and block the sewers.

Light wet wipes, light sanitary. All of the things that Karen has observed going into the river are the sorts of things that we, as members of the community, should not be putting into the sewers. Let's bring Karen back in. Karen, how much have you changed, thanks to your groundwork? Well, Yorkshire Water have been actually brilliant, really, because they've taken on our concerns, reacted to it, and have promised to investigate and look at solving the problem and invest in Ilkley sewage treatment works.

The problem that we came up against was actually the permits that Emma's just described. We were saying the permit is set too low, that it's not happening under exceptional periods of heavy and extreme rainfall. It's happening under everyday normal rainfall conditions. We were finding it was happening in under half an hour of rain and we're in Yorkshire.

It rains in Yorkshire, believe me. Let's ask Emma about that. So we have put in increased monitoring across the country. We have set up a storm overflow task force led by DEFRA with other regulators, Ofwat, which is the financial regulator for the water companies, ourselves, the Consumer Council for Water, alongside Water UK. We are working actively to come up with a plan to deal with combined sewage outfalls. And one of the things that we want to do in the early months of this new task force is look at the trigger levels for when the wastewater treatment plants are looked at, including the permits. Just very briefly, Karen, you can answer this. Is there any such thing as a flushable wipe? There's no such thing as a flushable wipe. The situation

is so bad now that these combined sewage overflows are discharged so regularly that there are places in the Thames where the banks are so full of these flushable wipes, condoms, sanitary towels, that it's actually altering the course of the Thames. It's literally altering that the river is going in a different direction because of the amount of rubbish we're flushing down there. Absolutely. Is that true, Emma? Is that true, Emma?

Sorry? That the course of the river is being changed by sanitary towels and so-called wet wipes and flushable wipes being put into the system? I think in certain parts of rivers you see such a build-up and I have seen firsthand from visiting sewage treatment works the volume of wet wipes, etc, that are going into the drains. Whether it's really changing the course, I haven't heard of that, but I know that the of that. But I know

that the volumes that we're dealing with, we need to create more space in our sewers. And that is one way that we could make a real difference. Other initiatives that I know that Karen and her group have been working on is also how you keep rainwater out of the system. So encouraging members of the public in Ilkley to put in water butts that stop small amounts of water going into the system. We're also working with the water companies on sustainable drainage systems, so where water, again, doesn't go into the combined sewage network, but goes into, for example, parks. So again, this is water that is, I'm not talking about sewage, I'm talking about the rainfall that goes onto our streets so that it can be observed elsewhere. to work with developers to make sure that these sinks for water become something that is absolutely the norm

rather than as tarmacking over greater parts of the landscape. A lot of interest in this and keep your thoughts coming at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter. But we also know that we have lots of audience members who perhaps will be going out food shopping later, will have done a food shop at the weekend. they're interested in how food is packaged in particular which is why we have Sian Sutherland here who has been suggested for our power list this year co-founder of a plastic planet and joining us to Hilberg responsible business advisor to the supermarket Iceland Foods

so first of all Sian what compelled you to start A Plastic Planet? Well, my epiphany really was after running an international skincare brand for over 10 years. So you can imagine I am no plastic saint. How many bottles have I personally pumped out into the environment without really thinking about it? And then I got involved in advising on the launch of a documentary called A Plastic Ocean. So that was my big epiphany. And as an entrepreneur, I wondered if there was a way that I could use my business experience, my marketing experience, to create a different kind of organisation that instead of attacking business from the outside in perhaps the traditional activist model, could try and ignite and inspire business from the inside and help them change faster.

So make it easier for them to make change that they should have thought about making in the past? Well, yes, and hold them to account when they don't. But I absolutely believe as an entrepreneur in the power of business to create change at scale and at speed. So that's our focus. What has changed in terms of plastic, in terms of our use of plastic? What honestly has improved over the last decade? I'd love to be the bringer of good news on this Monday morning, but not nearly enough has changed. Massive amount of rhetoric. How many plastic pledges, promises, pacts do we read about every single day? Plastic production is up. Plastic has never been cheaper to buy. Why have those two

things happened? Because the price of oil obviously has plummeted. And that means? That means that plastic is now one of not only the cheapest materials on the planet, it's also the most subsidised material on the planet because of course it comes from the fossil fuel industry. Carry on Sian, go on, sorry. So you're asking why things haven't changed. It's all about money and it's about lack of accountability. So when you look at, you know, sometimes you have to step back and think, so what is plastic made of? It's made of fossil fuels. It's made out of oil. You look at something like the Exxon Mobil, terrible oil spill. They had a responsibility to clean that up. You look at the big industry,

the consumer brands, who pump out billions of tonnes of plastic made from fossil fuels every single day, languishing now in the environment, 7 billion tonnes. They have no responsibility for it. This is where it goes wrong. There is zero responsibility for the mess they cause. Thank you very much for carrying on talking very professionally there when i was distracted by this email but it's quite relevant it's from a listener called joe who says but surely we need to target the source of the problem which is non-sustainable products pushed by pushed onto consumers through their price if products could be made biodegradable because let's face it not everyone cares about recycling um then the consumer can't always be responsible.

Then, sorry, of the consumer... Can you... Anna, the producer, I'm looking to Anna. Can you print that one for me and find out what... Because it sounds good, but I can't make sense of it. I've tried. I get the gist of what they're saying. Do you, Sian? Good. OK, then pick up on that. Yeah, because I think at the moment, with this lack of accountability, there is a deflection of responsibility.

From the people that decide to use plastic as a packaging material, it is deflected onto us, the shopper. It is our problem. We buy it. We take it home. We feel guilty when we put it in the bin. And recycling is an absolute myth. All right.

Well, we'll come on to that in a moment. So apologies to Jo. Your email made perfect sense. It was my problem. Let's bring in Hill, Hill Berg, who is an advisor to Iceland Foods. So, Hill, what about that? The responsibility is being lumped onto the consumer. that is the way that things have happened over in history in terms of it becomes the consumer's responsibility to take action. I mean I think if I just go back a step, I mean Iceland is a little bit unique here because Iceland has actually pledged to remove all plastic from its own label packaging by the end of 2023 and actually we've got huge support from customers in doing that and in making that announcement we really were

acknowledged as creating a bit of a tipping point in shaking up the industry you know a couple of years ago so customers were actually very very seen to see reduced plastic. But I think it's the, it's actually the job of the supermarkets to actually help give them what they want. You know, some people, Hill, I think we've got to be honest about this, might describe an interest in the environment as a somewhat middle, and I know I'll be criticised for saying this, but a somewhat middle class obsession. What would you say about that? I think that I would agree with that because that's where the kind of loudest voices always are uh that's where all the opinion always lies

and all the commentary customers are really really seen uh i think um well perhaps i can give you an example we get really really hung up on the idea of loose fruit and veg and I think that's partly because we go back to our childhoods you know when I was growing up in Liverpool in the 70s I walked to the greengrocers with my mum and you know filled up a trolley or a bag and helped to carry everything back loose and so I think we've kind of got this idea that everybody wants to see loose fruit and veg and that's always the commentary tell me about that Iceland experiment yeah so last year Iceland ran a three-month trial at one of its biggest stores in Liverpool and and I was part of that and actually it was a thing of beauty you

know once you you saw the store set out it was it felt like a green grocers um we ran that trial and at the end of that period sales were actually 30 down so you know the first rule of retail is you can't actually sell people what they don't want um okay some people will really be shocked by that i was quite surprised myself i must admit 30 down that's i mean you could no company could live with that. So why? Well, I think that if you look at bigger supermarkets, they sell loose food alongside packaged food. They haven't entirely switched. People buy both. Iceland can't do that because Iceland has tiny high street stores. And so I think that there's a number of reasons it happened. One is that people didn't come in expecting to see loose produce.

So they had to get their heads around it and how to buy it. Ice on tills don't have weighing scales and it would cost millions of pounds to convert them. So the expectation was that the customer would select it, bag it, weigh it, label it. And actually a lot of women, predominantly women coming into store, just simply, you know, you simply don't have time to do that. So customers are coming in very, very tight on time. But there is another bit to it as well, which is being tight on budgets. And if you've got X amount of money to buy so many meals or so many packed lunches,

then actually some people prefer to be able to buy a pack of food for a set price. Because they can see what they're getting. They know exactly what they're paying for it. Yes. So typically in an ice and store, you can buy six apples or eight apples. You can buy a bunch of bananas with five bananas or nine bananas. And actually they prefer to be able to do that quickly but know exactly what they were getting. Stay with us, Hill.

You understand that, Sian, don't you? You understand why that appears to work for some shoppers. Yeah, very much so. And I think, just as Hill was saying, this whole pressure on the public, the shopping public, to be an ethical consumer is actually wrong. Why is the blame and the responsibility put at our feet when really it is governments who need to impose new taxes, strong laws.

We need new legislation and policy that will mean the industry has to change faster because what isn't working right now is all the voluntary pacts that we're seeing. If you added up the reduction in plastic pollution that would be forecast, if every government commitment and every pledge from every big consumer brand, if you added it all up together, you'd actually see nothing more than a 7% reduction in ocean pollution by 2040. So even if all of these voluntary pacts and pledges, none of which are going to be met, by the way, even if they were, because people are failing on them and they're failing on them because there is no consequence. By people, who do you mean? The people that are running business. And at the moment, it's a nice to do, to have a plastic

reduction pledge. It's not a have to, which is why governments have to step in, which is why Emma and the Environment Agency have to have more money in order to give them bigger, sharper teeth to really have an impact on business. Because it's too hard for industry to change right now. You raise a good point. Emma, what teeth do you have? So we have enforcement and penalties. Financial penalties. Financial penalties. Financial penalties. But if I put them in the context of financial services and penalties there, the size of fines are incredibly small. Even our largest fine for a water company, £20 million pounds is only 10 days of operating profit for that company so again i come back to this point about we get the environment that we pay for one of the things

that gives me huge courage um is the amount of businesses who are stepping up and calling for greater powers, greater regulation, because they understand that a healthy environment is absolutely vital to a healthy and prosperous economy. So we're beginning to see that come to the fore. We're beginning to see that from the investment community as well. We have the government's 25-year environment plan. We have an incredibly important environment bill, which will be making its way through Parliament. But we need to make sure that the targets that it's set are the right ambitious level that will allow change to take place. And a fundamental part of the 25-year Environment Plan is that this is about government as a whole. And I think we will see power change when environment becomes an issue for everybody, all departments, rather than a smaller department within government. Okay, so the current, the ministerial secretary of state

you're working with, minister now, is George Eustice. How many have you worked with? Since becoming chair of the Environment Agency, I think it is five different secretary of states. Which isn't great, is it? We have seen, with the 25-year environment plan, greater ambition for the environment. What we now need to see is through the environment bill that's set out with clear targets and clear resources

for the environment to take the place that we want it to. I know it's a basic thing, but it keeps coming up on social media. People just saying, why hasn't the government banned wet wipes? I mean, it seems to me to be an obvious thing. They're clearly causing all sorts of problems. Why doesn't the government ban them, Emma? Again, I think the Storm Overflow Task Force is going to look at what are the key actions we can take in the short time. But that might be one of those key actions. Absolutely. It is something that I know that water companies as well as that campaigners would like to see take place quite quickly. Just go back to Hill briefly and what Iceland have done, which has worked in terms of packaging, but you've done something with

bunches of bananas, Hill, haven't you, at Iceland? Yeah, I mean, actually, there's lots of things happened at Iceland. You've got 20 seconds. Go on. OK, we get a bit tied up on produce. But with bananas and actually with other kinds of fruit and veg, there's been just a really simple approach of using minimal cardboard packaging. So with bananas, we sold them loose. It didn't work. They also got really bashed and damaged. And so now we simply put a thin cardboard strip, a paper strip around a bunch.

And so you can buy a bunch of bananas for a pound with a very minimal paper strip around them. That's the kind of solution that's really worked massively for customers who really like it. Just a brief question for you from a listener called Kath. What the lady from Iceland, well, you're not actually from Iceland, you advise Iceland, we need to make that clear. But Kath says, what she described there about the test in a Liverpool store. This is how supermarkets work in Europe. You just bag your loose fruit and veg and you weigh it and you label it. Why can't we do that here? Well, I suppose it's a question. Hill, why can't we? Is it just that we are time poorer than anybody else in europe i think the real issue for us is that people really really care but we've got to give them solutions that they can afford and that fit into their lives and the mistake we made with the first

trial is we didn't listen closely enough before we set it up we've just run a trial with 36 stores across London with lots of different fruit and veg in minimal cardboard packaging through COVID when everybody was suspicious that everybody wanted plastic. That trial has absolutely flown brilliantly and in fact the one thing that didn't work on it was we had packages of plums and we used to have nine little plums in a pack, and we changed that to five because it was easier to fit in the pack. Nobody bought them. We switched them back to nine, and they just flew out the door again. So, you know, this isn't actually for us about plastic.

This is about people wanting minimal packaging around their products, and it's finding sustainable answers to that. We know our customers don't want plastic thank you very much that's you've provided us with a real insight hill into the way we as consumers think i really appreciate it hillberg who is responsible business advisor to iceland foods you also heard from karen shackleton of the ilkley clean river campaign from uh sean sutherland co-founder of a plastic planet and from emma howard boyd the chair of the environment agency so much we could have talked about i'm sorry time against us as it

always is loads of stuff from you on that subject which we will get to in a moment after i've just nodded to the thoughts we had from you on our first conversation about poland um laurie says upset about poland's vote on abortion uh What is the EU going to do about it? Surely a clear violation of human rights, women's hard-fought rights to be precise. From Richard, there is an argument in support of the vote, but it's not entirely to do with Christianity, as your discussion suggested. Many Polish people feel that their culture is under attack by Western secular values. This vote has far more to do with nationalism and appeasing the right, he says.

Here's a quick one from Inga who says, I was surprised to hear you say that Poland has always had restrictive abortion laws. It hasn't. I, together with thousands of Swedish women, went to Poland for abortions in the 60s because we couldn't get them in Sweden at the time. Well, there you go. That tells you how things have changed. Of course, Poland was a communist country, wasn't it? And I'm sure that in those days you could get an abortion when it was part of the communist bloc. Green issues. Maureen says, I live near the River Windrush,

which is constantly polluted legally by our water supply company. When will shareholders pay for cleanups and better management? We can no longer swim in this foul water, yet they're allowed to exceed limits whenever there are extreme weather conditions, so-called.

From Liz, government action and legislation should target manufacturers, prohibiting the use of certain products and tightening up labelling. It shouldn't be possible to describe anything other than toilet paper as flushable. Once products reach the consumer, it is far too late. Thank you, Liz. Other people did point out that particularly when you're involved in certain caring situations, those wet wipes are really useful. So we just have to acknowledge that they're successful for the reason, well, that they're useful and that so many of us have become dependent upon them. Kate says, I run a zero waste shop. It's very small, but we are well used by our

community. However, I agree it puts expectation on the consumer, especially on women. So many changes encouraged to be made in the home are things that make a woman's life easier. Nappies, sanitary products, ready-made meals, tumble dryers and cleaning products. Yep, get you there, Kate. From Mary, I live yards away from the River Wharf, fortunately on elevated ground. Most of my neighbours have paved over their gardens so water has nowhere to run. We need to educate people not to destroy these valuable habitats

as they allow excess water to soak into the earth rather than flood the riverbanks. From Mike, I'm aware that in France housing developments must have rainwater capture. Rainwater from roofing gutters is directed into underground tanks. Properties must not have rainwater runoff from paths and driveways. This is diverted into storage as well. This helps reduce localised flooding and is used by the household on gardens to save clean tap water. Simple and effective measures put in place during construction.

Michelle says, my eight-year-old granddaughter put up posters in our bathrooms that say, for peas only, paper, puke, pee and poo. Well, that couldn't be clearer, could it? From Alex, might it not be the case that the drop in sales in Iceland produce reflects people buying what they actually need rather than being forced into buying multi-packs, which are too big? Yes, I guess that's a good point. That was with reference to what Hill said about the store in Liverpool, where they saw a 30% drop in sales. You might be right, I don't know. Mark says, although it may be that the middle class is obsessed with the environment, it'll be the poorest who suffer the most if the environment is degraded further. from John if someone goes into a supermarket with say a fiver and wants to buy food to that value they want

to know the cost of every item so making packed fruit and vegetables the sensible option and from Jeremy ok well let's have we've got two opinions here Nicola says on the programme today the standard of your interviews today was below par

you need to raise your game listen to the answers and find better interviewees. That's Nicola. This and this, fair enough. And Jeremy says, as a long term listener, even an addict, you might say, I thought that was one of the most interesting and informative programmes I've ever heard about the environment and shopping habits and the problem of plastic, etc. It frankly came as a bit of a shock when the 45 minutes was up. And he says, so glad the Power List this year is on this topic. Well, Jeremy, so am I, because I really do think we're tapping into a rich vein of enthusiasm in our listeners. You're very concerned about this and you're very involved as well with a whole range of community projects. So I think it's a great idea for the Power List.

That programme will be on November the 16th, but I'm sure there'll be more about green issues and climate change on Woman's Hour before then. Thank you for listening. Make sure you're with us tomorrow. One of the contributors is Caitlin McNamara, the young woman who alleges that she was the victim of a sexual assault when she was in the UAE and she says that her assailant was the country's Minister of Tolerance. That's tomorrow.

Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast for Radio 4 called Tricky. This is how it works. Four people from across the UK meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks talk about issues they really care about. Sex work is quite complicated for a lot of people and it's okay to be against it but not to you know shame someone because of their profession. Across the series we'll hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh Another thing that really gets to me is when people say I know what we need to do

I know what black people... Shut up You don't, like, that's the thing That's not how it works Nobody knows, if you knew you would have done it Discover more conversations like this By searching Tricky on BBC Sounds CBC Sounds. that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

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