Martha Kearney visits Wallasea Island in Essex, the largest manmade coastal nature reserve in Europe. It was created from the 3 million tonnes of London clay that were excavated in the digging out of the Elizabeth Line. The RSPB project used soil from the Crossrail scheme to rais ...Show more
Stroudwater's missing mile
The Stroudwater canal in Gloucestershire was built in the 1770s. It brought coal to the mills along the Stroud valleys, which had become an important centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth, but the arrival of the railways in the mid 19th century led to the canal's decline an ...Show more
White phosphorous is an incendiary material and if it were to be used in any built-up civilian areas, the practice would violate international law. We find out what makes white phosphorus so dangerous, and we ask how easy is it to identify? Andrea Sella, professor of chemistry at ...Show more
Long abandoned metal mines are having a huge impact on rivers across the UK. BBC Inside Science reporter Patrick Hughes visits Cwmystwyth in Wales, where he finds lead, zinc and cadmium seeping into waterways. It’s the costly legacy left after hundreds of years of mining. Roma Ag ...Show more
When Jocelyn Smith was growing up, she told her friends and family she didn’t want to go to college. Instead, her goal was to hike all 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail, a rugged journey spanning from northern Georgia to central Maine. Last year, she finally realized that drea ...Show more
Dr Seuss' fable of needless consumerism and environmental ruin, The Lorax, is half a century old this year. The 'shortish, brownish, oldish and mossy' character who 'speaks for the trees' increasingly features on placards at demos. Michael Rosen looks at the book's influence on t ...Show more