Woman's Hour - Our Planet - the Power List judges answer your questions on greener living

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

We've been overwhelmed by the phenomenal response we’ve had from listeners about this year's Woman's Hour Power List - so today we’re making it all about you! Do you have questions about living a greener life? Do you want to help the planet but aren’t sure how? Send us your eco-dilemmas, queries and questions and our Power List judges Lucy Siegle, Flo Headlam and Prof Alice Larkin will be on hand with top tips and advice.You can tweet us @BBCWomansHour or email your questions to [e-mail]

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, welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast, Tuesday the 6th of October 2020. Boris Johnson is making his Prime Ministerial speech at that virtual Conservative Party conference a little later and as you've just heard he's going to talk about the environment and that's what we're talking about, too, this morning on Woman's Hour. We're here to give you some tips on how you can live a greener life. And my company this morning consists of three of our brilliant judges.

The Woman's Hour Power List this year is all about our planet. You have so far been fantastic in suggesting hundreds of women who could make that list, which we will reveal on November the 16th. I think I've got that right on the programme. Yes, I'm getting the nod. So it is the 16th. Very much looking forward to that. We can carry on taking your suggestions until midnight tonight. No more after midnight, please. But if there's someone you really are keen to make us think about, somebody from your town, your street, your community, who's doing loads of brilliant work just to make life better for everybody. Let us know.

You can do so on social media or you can email the programme via our website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. At BBC Women's Hour is where we are on Twitter and Instagram. If you have a question for the three judges with me this morning, loads of good ones in already. Alice Larkin is Professor of Climate Science and Energy Policy at Manchester University. Flo Hedlum, a garden designer and horticulturalist.

And Lucy Siegel, environmental journalist and broadcaster. Welcome to you all. We're going to start, I think, with Alice, because, Alice, I imagine you're going to start, I think, with Alice, because Alice, I imagine you're going to be listening with interest to what the Prime Minister says later on today. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, any big announcement in terms of renewable energy and rapidly increasing the amount that we're doing to decarbonise our energy system is hugely important. I just worry that this is a little too late we should have been doing this a long time ago When should we have started?

Well you know we were talking about these challenges back in the 1990s you know I've been working, I was lucky enough to get a job at the University of Manchester since 2003 looking at decarbonising our energy system rapidly reducing carbon dioxide emissions and plans for doing that. And we were talking about that, you know, 20 years ago. So this is coming late.

But, you know, nevertheless, we need to do this. We need to invest hugely in renewable energy. And the UK has such an amazing opportunity as an island nation, not just on offshore wind, but wave and tidal energy as well. So huge opportunity here that we need to be exploiting as much as possible. Yeah, just expand on that a little bit. I'm obviously somebody with almost no knowledge at all about this, but keen to learn.

It would strike me that Britain would indeed be in an ideal situation to harness wind power. But do we get enough wind enough of the time? Well, we do. I mean, we're very windy and we have a lot of weather in our nation we do fair to say and certainly we have you know amazing wind regimes particularly around the west coast and so we do have a lot of opportunity there of course the issue then is as people will say you know well sometimes the wind isn't blowing and it's lovely calm day and

what happens then and one of the you know messages, I suppose, around the problem of decarbonisation in our energy system, so basically cutting the greenhouse gases out of the system, is that it's not just about one technology. It has to be about a mix of technologies, but also about how we use energy. And that's a key part of this, because, you know, at the moment, we very much supply for the demands that we want and we have um whereas you can actually also do smart things around when we're demanding that energy and so you know one of the interesting changes at the moment is as people start to to purchase for example electric vehicles then the demands that we're taking in terms of the energy uh will be at

a different time of the day and so you know you know, we have to have our electricity supply has to meet when we've got a high demand. But if we can also moderate that demand, either with technology, but also thinking about how we are using energy, what we're using that energy for. Right, sorry to interrupt, but a different time of day. Do you mean that we'll be charging our electric vehicles overnight

when traditionally perhaps we wouldn't have needed electricity? Yeah, so there are things like that. And, you know, if we move our heating systems to more electrical systems as well, there will be different times in the day when we're drawing that electricity. So that's part of the mix. But we also have to remember that we're not just talking about electricity when we're talking about our energy system. So, you know, we still get a lot of our heating from natural gas and transport is a really big issue, which is not largely electrified at the moment. Now, you take a very firm stance on flying. You just don't do it, do you? No, I don't. I haven't done it for a long time, no. And the impact on your life has been what? Well, I've seen more of Europe as a result, I guess. I have had to make some difficult

decisions sometimes in relation to my job, because as an academic, there's lots of opportunity and, you know, and sort of pressure, if you like, to internationally be internationally recognised and to take work overseas and often fly to do that. But I've tried very hard to still stay connected with those international audiences, but using other virtual means. Means that, you know, clearly now at the moment with the situation that we're currently in,

lots of other people are also using it and finding, you know, to be advantageous. So, you know, there are certainly things that I've not been able to do in my personal life as a result. But, you know, I've also done lots of other positive things, you know, been able to go by high-speed rail or by boat or by car, van to places around Europe. I had some lovely holidays as a result.

Yeah. The cost of train travel, though, that's a concern, isn't it? I mean, it's astronomical. It is. Well, I wouldn't say it's astronomical, but it can be. And I think that, you know, this is a really important point. You know, I'm very privileged and lucky enough to have the opportunity to be able to make some choices about what I do. And not everybody is in that position. And, you know, at the moment, air travel is, well, I mean, the current situation sort of exempted. Air travel typically is very cheap, but doesn't actually capture the real cost in terms of its environmental impact. And so what we have is we have the lower carbon modes of transport that tend to be more expensive

and the higher carbon transport tends to be cheaper. And that's a problem. But we also still find that typically, you know, that most of the air travel, most of the highest carbon travel is still done by sort of frequent flyers or people who have the wherewithal to be able to do that. uh you know there's lots of inequity in this whole energy picture we have to recognize that do you foresee a future if boris johnson is entirely serious about all this he should just make frequent flyers infrequent um and as quickly as possible just tell them you know you actually you cannot fly uh more than four times a year. Why not? Well, there's an interesting sort of outcome of one of the citizens assemblies, which is this big initiative where a cross section of society was brought together to talk about the kinds of policies and measures that they would be interested in supporting or not as a result of the climate change challenge.

And a frequent flyer levy was one of the things that many of the citizens thought would be potentially a good idea. So that's where, you know, you take your first flight and you have a certain cost to that. The next flight you take is a much elevated cost and then it keeps elevating and so on. And that would certainly be a mechanism to be able to tackle frequent flying.

Loads of good questions from listeners. At BBC Women's Hour on Twitter, if you want to get one in before quarter to tackle frequent flying. Loads of good questions from listeners. At BBC Women's Hour on Twitter, if you want to get one in before quarter to 11 this morning. Can I just ask you this one, Alice? In a way, you've already answered it, but it's from 4starMary on Instagram. Is there a green way to travel or holiday internationally in a post-COVID world?

Well, what do you say? Yeah, I mean, I think it's really challenging. I mean, that the lowest carbon travel around Europe would be probably by rail. And I mean, in France, they have a lot of electricity that's provided by nuclear power, which means that their their rail network in particular is very low carbon, Eurostar is very low carbon. And so that is, you know, in terms of going a reasonably long way in a low carbon way, that is a good way to travel. And then, of course, there's always the different choices around, you know, do you have just one person in your car or four? If it's what kind of car, do you have the efficiency and so on?

So it's just thinking through when we're making decisions about anything that we're doing. It's just thinking through, you know, are there other ways in which I can actually reduce or go by a low, lower carbon mode of transport in order to have this particular holiday? I was really keen to get to this question quite early on. And it's from a listener. We don't need to mention their name, actually. And she says straight to the point, I try to live as climate consciously as I can, living and being and buying mindfully. I do what I can, but I know it isn't anywhere near enough. How can I do all of this while living on a budget? How can I make a more meaningful impact on the fight against the climate crisis in the groceries I buy?

Well, I am still much restricted by means. I have a tight budget and I shop at an affordable supermarket, she says, oldie, because this is the food store I can afford. I buy nearly all food, fruit and veg from the UK. And that does make me feel better. But some things can't be avoided. Also, what can I do about avoiding plastic waste that some veg are still stored in? Lucy, what do you say to that anonymous listener who wants to do her best, but you know, she's got a budget to stick to? I say to her, thank you. I say thank you for stepping up and doing so much on a limited budget, or on a budget, not limited, on a budget. I would also say to her, do you have any rich friends? Do you have any affluent friends?

And they should be doing more. So could you offset some of your guilt and responsibility and heck to them a little bit? Because we had a very important report that came out recently from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute. And we know that the richest 10 percent of the world's population so those who earn over 38 000 a year were responsible for 52 percent of the carbon emissions and they ate up 31 percent of the world's carbon budget from 1990 to 2015 and then you go into the richest one percent so that's over 10109,000 who are responsible for even more for 15% of carbon emissions. So there's a lot of people who are on more limited incomes or lower incomes who are doing a lot. And there's a lot of richer people who are not taking responsibility at all. So I think that's a really important point. So if you can influence those people who might be living, well, irresponsibly, frankly.

Question here from Judith on Twitter. What if your family lives in Australia or New Zealand or Canada? This is one for you, Alice. Do you simply never see your grandchildren, she asks. I think this is such a difficult one, particularly, you know, friends and family. We did quite a lot of work talking to people who fly a lot quite a long time ago now um and you know there's lots of different reasons for why people fly but friends and family is the it was you know the top that top of the list if you like of the flights to protect in order to uh you know to to stay in touch with loved ones and i mean it is it is incredibly difficult i think that the the issue is the problem has been the growth in flying

so if you fly once this year then don't fly twice next year and don't fly three times the year after and actually if you could reverse that so if you fly twice at the moment then only fly once or maybe then once every couple of years so it's like can you reduce the frequency of those of those flights because that would quite significantly impact on your your carbon footprint if you like because because they're so carbon intensive, those long flights. And, you know, I think it's a positive, one of the positives that's coming out of the situation we're currently in is that this use of online technology, I know it's not a replacement,

it's not the same thing at all, but as it improves and as it makes us, you know, more able to connect with people, I think the more people that use this technology, the better it will get and the more we will feel close to people through it rather than it feel clunky and stuttered and so on. I just think it will get better and better and I think that does help. Right, good email here from Jane.

You can go a lot further than Europe by train. I gave up flying, but my son and his wife moved to Hong Kong. I did go all the way by train from Wakefield she says with an exclamation mark so that's brilliant um Flo Hedlum good morning to you how are you hi Jane I'm good thanks good question for you from Jess Wheats on Instagram I've got two young children and I've got a new build garden I'd love to know how to get a balance between practicality and an animal and bug friendly outside space, and two, something that's robust and easy to maintain. That's quite a challenge for you. But what would you say?

Yeah, well, the first thing is what sort of animal? I'm assuming it's a dog, but it could be something else. But for example, if it's a dog, so dogs kind of like to kind of run around and root things up and, you know, sort of pee in places. And I guess one of the main things is to get really robust plants in your garden that are going to take a bit of whacking around by dogs. The other thing to think about is raised beds, just sort of elevating what you're planting, so they can't, you know, immediately get to them. And then in terms of bug friendly, there's lots of pollinating plants that you can get. I mean, there's a real sort of trend now towards bringing as much wildlife into gardens.

So there's lots of lots of plants. You can get sort of seed packets to just sow plants or very specific perennials. And then creating spaces for bugs like bug hotels or just, you know, sort of spaces at the back of the border where you can just sort of leave it a bit untidy for bugs to inhabit. Yeah. And of course, young children would enjoy pitching in and helping out with that, I guess, wouldn't they? Oh, yeah. Cheap food, because our first emailer just wanted to know about what they could do on a budget. I guess growing your own if you have the space is something we could all attempt. But what's the easiest thing to start growing? Flo? Is that for me?

Yes. Sorry. Sorry. The easiest thing, yeah, I think, well, tomatoes and strawberries. I mean, everybody kind of loves those and they're really easy to grow. Other things that might not be immediately you think about, but for example, some of the herbs that you buy in the supermarkets, you can actually just pop them out into the garden and then start to cultivate them. Things like sweet peas are easy to grow. Lots of perennials, actually. Lots of flowering plants are fairly easy to grow. You put them in, you water them, you feed them. You know, a lot of it is really quite straightforward. But so I would say for sort of starter plants, things to grow,

tomatoes, beans, strawberries, and your soft fruits like blueberries, although they do need ericaceous soil. What's ericaceous soil? Ericaceous soil is soil that is lime, for lime-loving plants. I'm trying to take Cathy Cluckston's job here on Gardener's Question Time. That's not what I'm doing. But anyway, Lizzie on Twitter says, reshopping ethically on a budget. Food waste is a huge contributor

to climate change. Fabulous charity in Sheffield called Foodworks redistributes surplus supermarket food. Sounds like an excellent idea. Philippa is a listener on the phone. Hi, Philippa. Good morning to you. Good morning. How are you doing? Very good. Thank you. Now, you have a whippet called Prue. That's right. Does she have any particular requirements? What's your question? Well, my question is the most environmentally friendly way to feed Prue. She has dry food, which comes in a paper style sack, and she likes a small amount of wet food. And it either comes in a plastic tray or a tin, which is the best in terms of carbon footprint and recycling?

Oh, that's a good question okay um lucy one for you yes um i have a similar thing because i just rehomed daphne from battersea dogs home um she's very cute so um dry food in a paper sack i So it's made from insect flour. And I go, I've gone back to a tin of dog food, because tins, we know where we are with recycling them. We know that aluminium is a, you know, a material that can be recycled many, many times. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but the recycling yield is high. Pouches and those little single servings or individual servings, for me, are mixed materials, so they're fraught with issues. Pouches in particular, and you also find them a lot for baby foods,

they're mixed materials, lots of plastics and and metals um glued together they're not going to be recycled because we can't take them apart okay there's some experimental uh chemical recycling but for standard recycling a tin wash it out and then put it in recycling right why are manufacturers still using those apparently unrecyclable materials i don't really understand. If we're really serious about this stuff, then we've got to stop them using chemical recycling or different sorts of techniques, which, okay, there are some schemes up and running, but you know, it's never going to be the amount that we use, it's never going to be a viable solution. And we should, we should swap and we should be forced to swap by legislation, I believe, to easily recycle materials, which are recyclable more than once. So that is things like aluminium, glass, paper, that we know how to recycle. Plastics, as we've heard in recent weeks,

has been a number of reports. It's not easy to recycle plastics. And only 9% of plastics globally are recycled. And we have to acknowledge that pretty much they're recycled once. Wow. So it's just delaying the inevitable, really. Right. OK. Do you think Prue, is she going to take to insect food? What do you think, Philippa? I'm definitely going to look out for some of that.

That sounds like an excellent idea. How old is Prue? She's two years old, so it's only a small problem but over her lifetime it's going to be quite significant so it's worth thinking about. Yeah, no it definitely is. Philippa, thank you very much and best of luck to you and to

Prue. Laura has a question and I suppose this was bound to crop up and I'm glad it has. Nappies. Laura, hello, good morning to you. Hi, morning Jane Jane how are you doing yeah very well thank you good I'm well as well thank you so tell us um what your issue is uh well my question to the panel is just around raising children in an environmentally conscious way um I've got a five month old little girl and so far kind of using reusable nappies and

doing swaps with friends where possible where we're not kind of buying things where we just use them for two months buying things second hand um but I guess my question is sort of what other areas that I could be thinking about and particularly as she grows older um areas that I can be thinking about now and reading up on okay um Alice first of all would you like to have a go at that one yeah I mean it's obviously incredibly challenging to yeah to to grow up in the world that we're in because of all the things that are around us in a in a very environmentally uh you know low low impact way and i think that

you know it sounds like what you're doing at the moment you know thinking about it thinking through the decisions that you're making and and i guess the lifestyle and the culture around your child and children you know and how how you know how they're observing the world i think that you know obviously people pick up a lot from the those around them um and you know if we can embed a culture of of you know using less buying less new stuff using things for longer and you know traveling traveling on foot and by bike if we can more you know you think back to to when you know, traveling, traveling on foot and by bike, if we can more, you know, you think back to when, you know, when I was at school, it was really wasn't very unusual to be dropped off at school in a car. But that has become quite normal now. You know, our transport emissions, I mentioned before, you know, really big issue. Now, children, you know, getting children used to walking, you know, even if it's just a relatively short distance, but not going in the car, getting a bit of fresh air and even doing it on a rainy day and just, you know, going for the kind of like not bad weather, but bad clothing kind of argument.

You know, just little things like that will help embed that sense of, you know, that we don't have to use energy like, you know, consume fossil fuel energy for all of the things that we do. And kids will get that. Do you think there's a slight risk that Laura is very well intentioned and wants to be be extremely well informed but she's putting a bit of pressure on herself and she's sweating the small stuff which may or may not have an impact Alice do you know what I'm getting at yeah no I do know what you're getting at and I think that that sometimes this problem feels so huge that we feel very insignificant and we feel like what's the point what's the point in what I individually do and I think what's really important is to remember that what we do as individuals actually impacts on others because others see what we do. It could influence others in terms of the conversations that we're

having. And sometimes people feel more empowered when they're seeing other people doing similar things to themselves. And that sort of empowerment is where you might then lead to writing to an MP or, you know, your local councillor might see that there is an appetite for doing X, Y and Z and therefore be able to make more difficult decisions that will get us in the right direction. So, you know, we're all connected in this and it isn't about it's not that the individual is insignificant. It's actually that if we connect with others in communities, that's a really, really powerful thing. Laura, I've got your email here and there's a reference to being vegetarian, but I't work out whether you actually are vegetarian are you yeah I am vegetarian no I'm only mentioning it because we're starting to get I mean as you wouldn't you won't be surprised here we're

starting to get tweets and references to vegetarianism and people are asking whether that is the right thing to do so I'll put that question to the panel in a minute but um how long have you been a vegetarian Laura um uh consistently for sort of the last two or three years um but was sort of prior to that leaning towards that way so sort of only having meat if I was out um or hadn't told somebody when I went to a dinner party right moment yeah and is your baby going to be vegetarian um I'm kind of keen not to kind of force her down that path but we don't currently buy meat and have it in the home so i think it will be more a case of if we're out and about or friends or family and she wants to try it then

she's very welcome to yeah okay thank you very much and take care and the very best of luck to your baby as well um just to correct something that was mentioned earlier, ericaceous soil, it means suited to lime-loving plants, was what was said. It's actually just the opposite. It suits acid-loving plants like heathers, rhododendrons, etc. Right, I hope that's clear. At BBC Woman's Hour, if you want to get involved,

I'm afraid my ignorance of gardening and soils was exposed there. So apologies from me about that. Let's talk vegetarianism, veganism. Alice, do you have a stance on this? I still eat a bit of meat, but I eat it very, very rarely. And I, you know, I've sort of done a little bit of work on this in the past. And, you know, the big issue is the sort of amplification effect of eating particularly things like red meat. So the fact that we have to grow an awful lot of food to feed the animals, that we have to use, you know, irrigation and water to, you know, to fill the feed, etc., etc. And so what we find is that the actual carbon intensity or the greenhouse gases produced by a meat eating, heavily meat eating diet are much greater than if you're vegetarian or vegan. But there are, you know, there are challenges that I'm not expert around, but around nutrition and individuals and what's what's good for one person is not necessarily good for another.

And we have to be a little bit careful on that. I mean, my my particular stance is that I just just eat meat as rarely as I possibly can. And, you know, when I do eat it, I like to know exactly where it's come from and so on and so forth. Yeah. So you buy locally produced meat. Yeah. All that side of it. And, you know, again, if we're thinking about the whole planet, you know, this sort of, you know, theme that we're looking at here we forget sometimes I think in the UK you know we're very a lot of people in the UK are you know privileged and have the opportunity to to make choices about what they eat um but we we have a world of people many people who can't eat meat or don't get access to you know to good food and so on at all and you know it's as as the the diets

change around the world there's also this issue of rising greenhouse gas emissions. So that also puts pressure on us, I think, where we have those choices to actually think very carefully about what it is that we're consuming. Because the less impact we have, then the more opportunity for other countries to develop. Right. So when we talked earlier about how sometimes the problem can seem insoluble and simply too enormous to even bother with too mind-boggling you would say actually eating red meat rarely is something we could all do and that would help absolutely would help i mean i think not great for the farming community is it well it depends i mean you've you know you all need food so we need to be farming different things you know we need to be farming for the different diets that we have. I mean, we've gone down quite a high meat consuming

diet, you know, sort of culture, but that hasn't always been there. And we just need to think about, okay, well, right now we have this climate emergency, we have a huge problem on our hands in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and other sustainability concerns. So we need to look carefully what it is that we're producing and and you know support the industries that are producing that but but make sure that it has you know we're thinking about the greenhouse gas and other impacts first right um i should have said earlier when we were discussing train travel that tomorrow on the program i'm really looking forward to this we're talking about a hydrogen powered train there are two women involved in that project and they're right at the top of the project and we're going to be talking about

the hydrogen powered train on woman's hour tomorrow. So looking forward to that a lot. Lynn says, I've been thinking about all the non vegetarians out there like me. Well, I'm me, Lynn. And what a difference it would make if we all ate just one or even two vegetarian meals a week. I'm doing that now. And it became clear that if everybody did this, it could really make a big difference, given how big a problem meat production is. Lucy Siegel, what about that? Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I swapped to a plant-based diet a while ago, and I did it for different reasons, weirdly. So my parents were both in the meat industry. This is not a very glamorous story.

I'm essentially a sausage baby. So eating meat was just very normal. It was just part of the industry. And I sort of had to unwrap the whole thing, if that makes sense. But the thing that did it for me was I'm basically quite lazy. And it was just easier I had to clean out the fridge less often if I if I didn't have meat products it was just all easier vegetables for me are just easier to deal with and I enjoy cooking them more but I think that

another thing that I'm really motivated by I love forests I love trees and I am obsessed with the rainforest, for example. So we know that wildlife populations have plummeted by two thirds since the 1970s. And we know that forests being felled to grow food. So for me, it is about protecting forests and doing everything that I can to de-link my lifestyle from the destruction of forests. But if you are, let's say you live in a part of Britain which is dependent on farming and has many farms and a vibrant farming community, is it such a bad thing to help your locality out

by eating the occasional locally produced bit of meat? No, and I understand that there are some really good, even beef and dairy in the UK with grass fed animals, that there are some really compelling climate arguments. I won't get into the deep on them, partly because they're really complex. I don't fully understand them. But that, you know, the grass sequesters carbon and there's a carbon cycle so it's actually it could be argued that those particular farms and those producers it's quite environmentally friendly food right me not living me not living in that locale i think you have to do you have to be realistic about your circumstances and again about your budget and what and your your

habits we mustn't forget what we're likely to do and that's why I said I'm lazy I need to confront the fact that I'm lazy and I'm not going to trek to a farmer's market and have a long conversation with a beef farmer so for me it was quicker to cut it out right um Flo Hedlum do you eat much meat um not a lot actually I don't actually like the taste of meat so i eat a bit of chicken and a bit of fish salmon mainly but um i would go vegetarian tomorrow if both my kids would join me but you know it means cooking two three different options yeah yeah no i i i'm a i'm a yeah sort of reluctant carnivore i call myself yeah well like i've kind of got the opposite problem where my offspring are vegetarian, vegan in one case. So I have learned to cook vegan and vegetarian meals, which, by the way, I've really enjoyed.

And I actually find it, I agree with Lucy, it's kind of nice to cook with vegetables. You learn a lot more about cooking and flavours, actually. Let's bring in Eleanor McAllister. Hi, Eleanor. Good morning to you. Hi there. You've got a question. Well well it's headlined the hierarchy of virtues what are you what are you getting at here it's terribly good it's a radio for that is uh what is it you're getting at um it does make it sound quite sort of um high and mighty but actually it's a fairly simple question it's just around the the um the trade-offs that that we make so you know we all know we should be eating local and organic produce when you go into the supermarket because

we can't all buy everything at farmer's markets um you see the organic produce is always wrapped in plastic whereas the non-organic produce is quite is quite often loose um and similarly the local produce you might see local produce that's not wrapped in plastic versus organic produce that's not local and it's just about sort of what's the best option when you're faced with those kind of mixed messages what should you go for. Yes I do get what you mean. Alice how would you answer that? I think this is such a difficult one and I find it very frustrating myself as well. You know, some of the things to think about is, you know, what are the things that you think might last for a very, very long time? We know the problem with plastics. I mean, some plastics will be biodegradable ones, so those are ones to look out for. And often now

you are starting to see, you know, with organic produce, they will also be thinking about the kind of plastic that is being used. But, you know other kinds of plastics that's already been mentioned are actually quite difficult to recycle and may well just get into the system and be we you know within our seas and so on for a very very long time so well yeah i mean you know the damage is awful to think about so um i think it is really challenging i mean one of the other things i would say on this is to talk to the people in the supermarket about, you know, complain about it. I mean, I think we perhaps don't use our, you know, our agency quite as much as we could. Yeah. And we just say, look, I want to buy this product, but frankly, you know, you've got it wrapped in plastic, so I'm not going to.

And little by little, those kinds of messages, you know, if more of us are doing it, then they will get through. Can you name the best supermarket? Because let's face it, most of us do most of our shopping in a supermarket. Who's good in this area? I wouldn't be able to name the best supermarket, I have to admit. I mean, I just think that and it's just not as simple as that. You know, one of the challenges on the whole sort of food miles and purchasing food is that the supply chain really matters you know where where you know all the way down that supply chain where the food's coming from and but also the supermarkets of course have the power to change those supply

chains pretty quickly yeah and so you might have been going in one week and the same product that you're purchasing looks might look the same but actually be coming from quite a different place and have a different impact and that is a really big challenge. You know, there's lots of complexity around this that makes it really difficult. Yes. And we all, as I say, I'm certainly dobbing myself in here. I use the supermarket and maybe I need to learn to be a more intelligent shopper and actually demand more from my supermarket. Lucy, if you can, do you know who the best supermarket is in terms of the environment? Well, I think that Iceland, the supermarket, not the country, have done some really interesting things recently. Yeah. And it's things like they came out and they said publicly how much plastic they used overall. And it was an enormous amount. And they said, oh, we're shocked by this.

It's disgusting, even though they'd already done a lot to reduce it. And I think that sort of transparency of stuff like just tell us, just disclose how much plastic you use in your supply chain is actually more significant than maybe they carry three different lines of plant based burgers. Julia on email says supermarkets and and plastic wrapped vegetables are they always bad does increasing shelf life of food and reducing food waste compensate for plastic use lucy no so i have this argument a lot with um especially academics who have seemed to have dedicated a huge amount of research time to proving that cucumbers need to come in that you know thin plastic which drives me mad that is insane yeah yeah and what we're seeing is we're seeing this sort of life cycle analysis so this is a a metric that's used to factor in all the energy and everything that goes into um it's like an energy calculation and what's often said is well if we

didn't cover it in plastic, then we would get food waste and more people would throw away their cucumbers. And my argument would be yes, but the plastic wrapping is facilitating a 10 week length chain of a supply chain for that cucumber, which is all about maximizing profit for the retailer. And actually, food waste from cucumbers is not that significant. I think citizens, I don't like to call us consumers, citizens are perfectly able to buy a cucumber, take responsibility for eating it in an appropriate amount of time, and not throwing it away. So I think a lot of this is to facilitate a very over-engineered supply chain, which needs to change anyway because we can't have any more plastic.

Interesting. At BBC Woman's Hour, if you have a question, overpopulation. Lots of people now mentioning this. So, Alice, how many children, if you want children, if you're able to have them, should you have? So this is interesting because I have quite a different take i guess on the on this overpopulation question you know the challenges i've mentioned before you know we're one planet and there are there are many parts of the world that are much less uh you know wealthy than others the issue is the amount of consumption you know per person that is a challenge and so i don't i wouldn't say that you know it's population per se but it's the consumption per person that is a challenge and so I don't I wouldn't say that you know it's

population per se but it's the consumption per person that is that is the issue and and and there is some analysis out there there's some nice work from the University of Lund I think it was that looked at some of the different choices that you could make as an individual that would have the biggest impact on your individual carbon footprint and and one of them was having one child or having And? country or wealthier household. Okay, I'm going to be really brutal. Is it irresponsible to have three, four, five children in Britain in the 21st century? Well, again, I think you have to be careful about in Britain, because there's a big disparity between lifestyles within Britain. So I mean, I, you know, I think that's a really, really difficult one. I think we just need to think about the amount of consumption, maybe you could think about it but per family if you like um because you then sharing out the same

amount of impact you don't you don't want to have a bigger impact on the climate so could you share that out between your family and rather than thinking about it as the number of children lucy i am think that we should you know we can't, we can't dictate how many children people can have in emerging developing countries, which is often what population control means. And I have a real problem with the phrase and the idea that it's population that is driving environmental problems when we know it's consumerism and we know that consumption among richer people in rich economies is the real problem here. In a way, it's often a way of offsetting responsibility. In terms of should you have loads of children in the UK, well, it's quite expensive and stressful. So I would say on that basis, no. But I think the truth is that we don't

really know how many children the earth can sustain. And I don't think it is always our place to say. So I find the whole thing actually a giant red herring. And I wish that we would concentrate on our own consumption. Right. You say red herring. It's clear that a lot of people feel that it is actually the biggest issue. So why are you so, you seem really reluctant to go with that one, Lucy? Yeah, I do. And I think partly because I think, as I said, that it's often put onto the developing world. So it's a judgmental thing world it's a judgmental thing and i think a lot of the population uh preachers are actually saying to let's face it black and brown women that you you should have fewer children and i don't think that that is um i think that's morally

reprehensible and i will go back to the report that i mentioned before from oxfam and the stockholm environment institute that says that the richest 10 of the world's population are driving the environmental crisis. And that is to do with consumption. I don't know how many children they have. Maybe it's also to do with the fact they have loads of children, but I think it's more to do with their determination to acquire more consumer goods and fly around the world the whole time. Here's a nice email from Alice who says, my question is, can we think about changing our social patterns to ultimately work within a much smaller radius from our own homes? This would reduce commuting and surely create benefits for

all communities. It would need to be a long-term goal and involve major changes to locations of the workplace, factories, etc. Well, to a degree, of course, all of us have been forced to change our way of living this year. Is that the solution, Alice? This email was from an Alice and I'm going to ask our other Alice about that. Well, I mean, I think that the situation we're in has really made us realise that we can live in a different way, that we can change things and also that change can happen quickly. The question is whether that can be, you know,

aligned with some of these objectives around reducing energy consumption and material consumption has just been discussed. And this locality issue, I think is really important. Transport is a really big problem. What at the moment, you know, we are finding, although people are not commuting, they are then using more energy in their homes to homework. Yeah. But, you know, we also can do, you know, like that you were saying before about the renewable energy announcement, you know, we can decarbonize electricity. That's what we need to be doing. And so decarbonizing our homes so that that would be less of a problem in the future. And yeah, I mean, also boosting those economies around us, you know, the villages and towns that we live in,

you know, having small shops and thriving businesses in those smaller communities would be fantastic, I think. And rather than having to travel a long way to do everything, which is the sort of norm that we've come used to. Do you have an issue with the built-in obsolescence of so much of the tech that we're all increasingly idiotically dependent upon. Yeah, I mean, and I think that we we can regulate that away.

I mean, you know, it's just not not on that. We haven't got strict regulations around the consumer goods and the electronics and so on. You know, there are directives that help to some extent. But I think we could go an awful lot further in just being able to properly manage the material consumption in a much, much more sustainable way. And also thinking about the sharing economy and rentals, you know, remember radio rentals and things like that. I mean, we could use technology in that way. We could still have the latest technology, but not necessarily own it. And that's all part of this debate as well.

So much to get out here. I've really enjoyed the contributions from all of you. Thank you very much. And thanks to the listeners who took part online and indeed via email and Twitter as well. My thanks to Alice Larkin, Flo Hedlum and Lucy Siegel. And we'll catch up with them again, I think well before November the 16th, which is when we do our Power List 2020 Reveal Our Planet.

And thanks to so many of you have bothered to suggest a woman who ought to be in that list. So I'm not quite sure. I'm glad I'm not one of the judges going to have to rifle through all those ideas and come up with a list. But I think we'll also be able to get to some really interesting and positive stories

about what women are doing in their local communities for the environment between now and the middle of November. So thank you, everybody. And brilliant emails as well today. On travel from Daphne, I've had to live away from family and close friends for much of my adult life. Flying has kept us able to keep the bonds of love strong. Nothing but actual physical presence will replace that. Sorry, she says. The responsibility of elder care means flying becomes more and more common, and I don't regret using planes to be with family, to help, to nurse, and to deal with

practicalities. I'm afraid I regret nothing. If I'd been jetting off for shopping sprees or weekends in Dubai, maybe. But this is different, she says. There are huge issues with shipping, which you didn't mention. The commercial fleets are a large percentage of carbon emissions. The cruise industry pollution, as well as myriad labour law and environmental law violations could fill an entire programme. Ask Venice about cruise ships, says Daphne. Good to hear the conversation about flying, says this contributor. Why fly when you can have a train adventure? When going on holiday, the journey can then be part of the adventure rather than something to endure. Sue says,

why do eco-conscious people never talk about limiting the number of children they have to two? I fly a bit but have no children and I'm a vegetarian and I use public transport whenever I can. Having too many children seems to be the one thing they don't want to discuss. Well, I did press them a bit on that and they did give their responses, but thank you, Sue. Alan says, frequent flyer levy. This measure will only allow the well-off to buy their way out of

any responsibility they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of co2 emission again that point was made clear in the program Bob says I've made over 300 flights in the last five years mainly to deliver stem cells for transplant. Frequent flyers are often flying frequently for a legitimate reason, says Bob. From Jane, my husband and I think everybody should be given a carbon budget every year. This would work like rationing. Each person would receive the same amount. This would mean that nobody would be able to use their wealth to travel more, for example. Interesting idea.

Dean says there are flights to Spain for 35 quid. Interesting idea. April says sweet peas aren't edible and ericaceous plants such as bilberries and blueberries are acid loving plants that die in limey soils. Okay well that was something that we did mention in the programme so apologies if that caused confusion. Sue says it would be really helpful if all councils recycled the same things. We're only allowed to put tins, plastic bottles, cardboard packaging and paper in our sacks. Other councils allow glass and food waste. Yeah, thank you for that, Sue.

I tried to find out this morning when my local council brought in recycling and I couldn't get the I couldn't get the date at all. Don't know why. Probably my poor search engineering. But I can remember a time and I'm sure a lot of you can when we just threw everything away. I mean, it seems like another planet now, but it is well within living memory. Jenny says our dog, dog, our dog, who's dog? Jenny says our dog loves to have some wet food. I boil up chicken pieces and chop them up, freeze it and then get some out every day. I give him the stock from the boil with it and he loves it. There is then less of a problem with packaging. Thank you for that. Barbara, for

years I used tins for my cats but now that they're old I have to use the 11 plus plastic pouches. Why can't the producers use tins for this as well? One more thing, I've grown spuds for years, she says. They're very easy to grow. Barbara mentioned cats, which I think therefore gives me, am I allowed to mention my new kitten? Yeah, Anna, the producer, says you can allow one mention of that kitten, and only one.

Okay, well, she's adorable. Her name's Dora. She arrived on Saturday. I'm afraid she is on plastic pouches. But I'll do something about that. I'll shove her up. She's very tiny and I think she does need building up. Actually, she's microscopic. Anyway, that's enough about her.

Population. Tony says, Lucy Siegel seems to have her head in the sand regarding population and environment. Population growth, says Lucy Siegel seems to have her head in the sand regarding population and environment. Population growth, along with the trend to live in smaller family units or as singles in affluent societies, is driving increasing urbanisation and loss of wildlife habitat and green space to housing and infrastructure, as well as the need for more land to be farmed. Mike, your interviewees on population haven't got the courage to say,

yes, population is the problem. More children mean more cars, more houses, more traffic, more pollution and more consumption. Of course the limit should be three children. I was disappointed in them. Anne, for some time now, some supermarkets have made very fine mesh, small nylon bags available for a couple of pence. And I find that these are the answer to take with me when buying loose fruit and veg. Felix says, because I've been shielding, I've been using online shopping

and I found that many items have palm oil, etc. And I wouldn't have bought them if i've been in the store that's interesting uh from floss we know that plastic is bad but it's impossible to avoid but we don't hear about what's happening to sort out the current problem i would happily donate money saved by tesco club card for example to offset or sort out the issue but who is doing that work she she asks. Another good point. Thank you all, because this is all really interesting stuff today. On meat, Emma says,

as an organic beef and lamb farmer who's farmed this way for 21 years, fighting for the environment and wildlife, feeding my animals on my own grassland, species-rich, wildlife-rich, I object to the argument about vegetarianism and vegan food being better for the planet if we all thought about where our food comes from and asked how it's produced i think the veggie world would be shocked at the deforestation and loss of local flora and fauna and excessive water use exposed in the production of many basics of vegetarianism. Yes, another good point. We are obviously going to talk much more about all this stuff in the build-up

to our Our Planet 2020 Women's Hour Power List reveal on November the 16th. Thank you very much for your involvement. It really means a lot that so many of you are contributing, and not always agreeing because we're never going to agree, but it's just great to have you involved in the programme. Tomorrow, we're talking about hydrogen powered trains, two women involved very much at the forefront, in fact, of this technology. They're on the programme tomorrow, or at least one of them is. And also Essex girls. Are you one? Are you proud of that? Do you resent all the clichés around it? That's tomorrow on the programme and the podcast.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.