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COSTING THE EARTH
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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Costing the Earth tells stories which touch all our lives, looking at man's effect on the environment and at how the environment reacts. It questions accepted truths, challenges the people in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world we live in.
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Contact Costing the Earth |
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LISTEN AGAIN Ìý30 min |
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PRESENTER |
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'Costing the Earth confronts accepted views on the environment. I think the programme consistently manages to get the real story and tell it in a way that makes people care.'
Miriam O'Reilly
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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| supermarket shopping |
Britain’s food is the cheapest it’s ever been. We spend less income on it than any other country in Europe and it’s the supermarkets that keep the prices low. But is so much cheap food taking its toll on the environment?As the supermarkets come under increasing pressure to adopt more environmentally friendly policies, Costing the Earth asks how far those policies extend down the food supply chain.
Agriculture is responsible for ‘significant’ water pollution, it costs over 200 million pounds a year to clean up our water supplies because of pollution from farming. It’s one of the government’s biggest environmental concerns. Each year the Environment Agency prosecutes farmers and food companies for water pollution, over-abstraction and other breaches of environmental law. Many of these prosecutions are againstÌýsuppliers to the supermarkets. Yet all continue to supply them. The county of Herefordshire is home to many large scale potato producers who supply the supermarkets.Ìý Miriam sees evidence there of the damageÌý intensiveÌýfarming is doing to the River Wye. The runoff of soil and phosphates into the rivers is polluting the water and damaging the wildlife.Ìý The new government body, Natural England, says half ofÌý England's rivers in Sites of Special Interest (SSIs) are being damaged this way. Scotland’s rivers and lochs are being similarly threatened by large scale salmon farming. The size and scale of the industry has madeÌý salmon an easily available, affordable itemÌýin the supermarkets, but it also costs the environment. Several cases of pollution against salmon farms successfully prosecuted by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency make for unpleasant reading – sewage fungus, blood scum and fish guts discharged into marine environment and local rivers. Miriam O Reilly asks three of the big retailers what approach they take to companies who break the law and damage the environment.
The Government is committed to meeting the objectives laid down in the Water Framework Directive which says the ecology of our waters must be restored to health by 2015. But as the supermarkets come under increasing pressure to go a deeper shade of green, and that includes sourcing more of our food locally, the pressures on our land and countryside will become greater.
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RELATED LINKS
Ìýhttp//www.naturalengland.org.uk
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for the content of external websites
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