Costing the Earth

Tom Heap introduces Rare Earth, a programme exploring major stories about our environment....

Steve Backshall lives in a new build house which is very energy efficient and almost totally off-grid. However, achieving this has been extremely time consuming, expensive and pretty stressful. For ...

It's said that a teaspoon of soil contains more life than all of the humans on earth. Microscopic life that is - bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematode worms and microarthropods like springtails and mite...

Climate resilient gardens are a feature of this month's Chelsea Flower Show, but how can the experts help the typical British gardener prepare for the future? To find out, botanist James Wong asks wh...

Many of us can remember returning our pop bottles to the shop in return for cash and wonder why we can’t use a system like this today to reduce, reuse and recycle. In Scotland a Deposit Return Scheme ...

Sewage is now discharged into our rivers and seas on a regular basis. It's joined by agricultural pollution and a host of microplastics. In this special debate programme, Tom Heap asks what's gone wro...

When castles collapse into the sea or ancient burial places succumb to floodwaters we lose a slice of our shared culture. Qasa Alom reports from the Norfolk coast on the threats to our heritage and a...

Costing the Earth - The Power of Nature Writing...

After a winter of spiralling energy prices, Tom Heap asks whether our attitudes to energy consumption have changed. What lessons have we learned in the last twelve months, both as individual consumers...

Waves crashing on the shore, footsteps crunching on the forest floor. Stress levels plummet when we immerse ourselves in nature. Nick Luscombe meets the Japanese scientists working to bring the heali...

UK commitments to phase out gas boilers and petrol cars may be good news for the environment, but do we have the skill to realise our ambitions? Where are all the trained workers able to fit heat pump...

New technologies are vital in the drive to turn our fossil fuel-based economies green and drastically slash carbon emissions. That technology requires investment and an enormous slice of the cash req...

Where do the prawns in your takeaway curry or pad thai come from? Peter Hadfield travels to South-East Asia to investigate the environmental impact of prawn farming.Producer: Alasdair Cross...

As sea levels rise, tough decisions are going to have to be taken about the flood defences of coastal Britain. How realistic will it be to continue to maintain them in future? In this programme, Qasa ...

Months of governmental chaos have seen contradictory policies on the environment come and go. Tom Heap asks where the Conservative Party now stands on the environment. Should we expect more onshore ...

Community energy might conjure up images of off-grid villagers working together to put up solar panels on a remote community hall. This is one model, but Tom Heap finds that there are now many more wa...

Since becoming pregnant, environmental historian and broadcaster Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has aspired to bring up her two children as sustainably as possible. In 2017, a Canadian study recomme...

The COP 27 summit in Sharm-El-Sheikh is welcoming world leaders and climate negotiators to Egypt. In a year that has been rocked by the war in Ukraine and global economic instability, can COP refocus ...

Anna Turns investigates what over 30 years of post mortems on dolphins, porpoises, and whales has revealed about the state of the seas. The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme in England and W...

The world's glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. 2022 has been a particularly disastrous year in the Swiss Alps, where new figures show that glaciers have lost 6% of their total volume of ic...

Life can be pretty tough for the pangolin. This scaly-skinned ant-eater is the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world. Followers of some branches of Chinese medicine believe pangolin parts can cu...

Early humans adapted and survived in the face of a changing climate. Eleanor Rosamund-Barraclough joins an archaeological dig in Malta to learn the lessons for our own time.A team led by Dr Eleanor Sc...

For many dog owners, watching your pet race around after a crow or leap joyfully into a stream is a source of great pleasure...but these natural behaviours all have an impact on the environment. Estim...

In the UK, more than half our electricity is generated without using fossil fuels. Despite that, the rocketing price of gas has lead to matching increases in our electricity bills. Why the disconnect?...

Running 12500km from the Arctic Circle to the borders of Greece, the European Greenbelt is one of the most ambitious conservation schemes ever devised. The idea was to use the no man's land of the Ir...

Nature and wildlife tourism has surged in recent years. Millions of us seem to want to want to follow in the footsteps of David Attenborough; meeting mountain gorillas, ticking off Africa’s big five ...

Steve Backshall explores whether slowing down and quietening noisy shipping could help protect Canada’s whale population.A busy shipping lane between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland – known...

It's said that the environment is the silent victim of war. In this programme, Tom Heap finds out how the conflict in Ukraine is affecting environmental work in the country. With so many people forced...

Two of the biggest sports events of the year, the Commonwealth games in Birmingham and the FIFA world cup in Qatar have pledged to be the most sustainable and green sporting events to date. Both have ...

Making your finances work harder against climate change. Tom Heap speaks to Richard Curtis, British film director and architect of Comic Relief, about his Make My Money Matter campaign. This encourage...

Green industry is heading to Scandinavia's far north. Fossil fuel-free steel and clean, green wind energy are in great demand but what does this rapid development mean for the indigenous people of th...

Millions of trees were brought down by this winter's storms. Storm Arwen in November proved particularly damaging, taking out whole swathes of woodland in Scotland and the north of England. It comes a...

The government announced its new energy strategy last week, outlining plans to tackle energy supply over the coming decades. In this edition of Costing the Earth, Tom Heap chairs a panel discussion wh...

It's not easy fighting for nature in many of the former Soviet states. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent reports from Tajikistan, on the trail of the snow leopard and the extraordinary people who protect them....

The pandemic has changed the way we work and shop meaning a growing number of offices and retail outlets are empty. So, what do we do with them? Knock them down and start again or find a sustainable w...

In Northern Ireland peace and prosperity have long been prioritised over environmental protection. Tom Heap asks if a new generation can push nature and wildlife up the agenda.For decades a blind eye...

Energy prices have hit new heights. Gas and electricity bills will rocket for most people at the end of this month as the price cap is lifted and nobody filling their car could fail to notice record ...

Landowners are being offered big money for land to absorb carbon dioxide emissions. What does it mean for British farming and the shape of the countryside? Tom Heap reports.Producer: Sarah Swadling...

Perfluoroalkyl substances - or PFAS - are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals which have been widely used in everything from frying pans to firefighting foam. Anything which is non-stick, water...

On a hot summer's day the River Wharfe in Ilkley in West Yorkshire is a tempting place to swim. In 2020 it was designated as the first inland waterway to be safe for bathing. Just over a year later ...

There have been big promises about tree-planting numbers over the last few years - but is there much point in planting more trees, if we're not looking after the ones we've already got? The Woodland T...

The public wanted to name her Boaty McBoatface, but in the end she got a slightly more stately name. The UK's newest polar research vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, has just set out on her maid...

Britain's rivers are in crisis, with only 14% of them deemed to be in a good ecological state. Chalk streams are particularly vulnerable, as so much is taken out of them for use in our water supplies....

Golf courses do not have a good reputation when it comes to the environment. Keeping the greens and fairways looking immaculate usually means using pesticide, fungicide and fertiliser - as well as lar...

We are all surrounded by synthetic chemicals in our everyday lives - from pesticide residues in food to chemicals used in the manufacture of household products - but most of us are not aware that they...

World leaders have offered up a suite of promises at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow but how many of them will make a real dent in our greenhouse gas emissions? Tom Heap talks to experts in susta...

As world leaders gather in Glasgow you can be certain of one thing - the loudest voices won't be coming from the people most impacted by climate change. Inuit hunters on melting ice and Pacific island...

Abandoned by its entire population in 1930, St Kilda has been uninhabited ever since. What's it like to spend six months with the birds on one of Britain's most isolated islands?Conor McKinney is a na...

Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s Moonshot which united people around a goal to put man on the moon and spurred the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred...

Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s Moonshot which united people around a goal to put man on the moon and spurred the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred...