03/06/2025
Last Monday's "start the week" program on BBC radio 4 was fascinating and worrying all about rubbish.
They now think some plastics buried out of sunlight might last millions of years! We need to really reduce our consumption of it.
Another interesting thing is that this post is unlikely to survive, but the pencil that I use in my notebooks might well. Paleontologists have found graphite from 4 billion years ago!
This is a link to the program: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cpqq
Hay Festival: exposing the secrets of rubbish
In front of an audience at the Hay Literary Festival Tom Sutcliffe talks to The archaeologist and presenter of the hit TV show, The Great British Dig, Chloë Duckworth, who explains how every object tells a story. She reveals how even the rubbish our ancestors threw away can offer a window on the past and forge a connection with the present day.
Business journalist Saabira Chaudhuri's new book Consumed, examines how companies have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits over the last seventy years. Consumer goods makers have poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable cups, bags, bottles, sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods. Taking in marketing, commercial strategy and psychology, she explains just how we got here.
The paleobiologist Sarah Gabbott is more interested in looking at how what we throw away today becomes the fossils of tomorrow. Discarded (co-authored with Jan Zalasiewicz) highlights the cutting-edge science that is emerging to reveal the far-future human footprint on Earth.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Tom Sutcliffe at Hay Festival, with Chloe Duckworth, Sarah Gabbott and Saabira Chaudhuri
