As Eurostar moves its HQ from Waterloo to St. Pancras, and shaves off 20 minutes' journey time to the continent, another milestone is being somewhat overlooked: it's about to complete its first ever carbon neutral journey.
The greenest Eurostar trip yet will leave London for Paris on at 11.03 on Wednesday November 14th. All journey on Eurostar from then on will be carbon neutral, at no extra cost to passengers.
Stagecoach has decided to power its Scottish buses and coaches with chip fat - hot on the heels of McDonalds doing exactly the same thing with its delivery vehicles. It sounds like a strange choice for a fuel, but used chip fat makes a good biofuel because it doesn't present the same problems regarding destruction of natural habitats or interference with the food chain which other biofuels do.
I have to admit to the fact that Stagecoach, like McDonalds, is not one of my favourite companies - if you remember the scandal involving Brian Souter donating £1m to the Scottish Schools Boards Association in order to campaign to keep Section 28 in place, you'll know why. However, while I have reservations about Stagecoach as a company after Souter's actions, I have to admit that this latest initiative is a good idea.
Related: McDonalds to turn chip fat into delivery van fuel
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Carbon Cred works much like a supermarket loyalty card, but the rewards are much more far-reaching: the points you earn can be used to buy green lifestyle products and services to cut your personal CO2 emissions.
For example, if you were to buy a laptop, you earn 35 carbon credits. Check out the website, and you'll see that with those credits, you'd be able to get a Freeplay LED lantern, Power Chimp mobile phone charger, several energy saving lightbulbs, a Freeloader charger or any other item listed at 35 credits and below. Earn more credits, and the eco-friendly gifts get bigger.
Boots, M&S, Argos, Oddbins, Vodaphone, Tesco, BT, Lastminute.com and British Gas are just a selection of shops and site where you can use Carbon Cred. So why not sign up today and get greener as you shop?
Planning to move house? It seems that Bradford is the place to go for the green minded individual. The city was revealed to have the lowest environmental impact of any British city, in spite of its undeniably large role in the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to popular belief, Bradford's rivers were not polluted beyond redemption during this period in its history, and the streams surrounding the city are now a veritable haven of wildlife! Bradford also boasts large areas of green space, and has a number of successful recycling schemes in place. You can read more about Bradford's environmental initiatives - from their 'real nappy' scheme to the Forest of Bradford project, which aims to extend areas of woodland in Bradford - at the Bradford Environmental Action Trust.
Liverpool was voted the least sustainable place to live, with poor water quality and a lack of evidence that it is working towards a more sustainable future dragging it to the bottom of the list.
The survey of cities was carried out by charity Forum for the Future.
Want to make sure you don't get the requisite garish pair of socks and large box of non-vegan chocolates for Christmas this year? Fed up with people forgetting your birthday? You could do a lot worse than making your way to the award-winning Natural Collection website. Once you're there, you can browse the fabulous range of products and make yourself a Gift List filled with deeply desirable eco-friendly treats.
With goodies ranging from beautiful items of fairly traded jewellery to handy and affordable eco-gadgets, and from eco-friendly baby accessories to green accessories for the office or study, I defy anyone not to find something they want on this site. Start securing yourself a Cool Yule now, and ward off the mouldy old Quality Street and the nasty socks before they're even a twinkle in the mother-in-law's eye!
British Telecom today unveiled plans to meet a quarter of its electricity needs using wind turbines by the year 2016. BT already reduced its carbon emissions by 60 per cent between 1996 and 2006, and it is estimated that the use of turbines will cut BT's C02 emissions by a further 500,000 tonnes. The project is set to be the largest corporate wind power initiative outside the energy sector. The cost of the project will be in the region of £250 million.
BT has applied for planning permission to build test masts at Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in Cornwall, Wideford Hill Radio Station in Orkney and Scousburgh Radio Station in Shetland. It is hoped that 100MW of energy will already be being produced by turbines by 2012.
Related: Turbulence for home wind turbines | Visit a wind farm | Wind turbines in your back yard | How to build a wind turbine | Renewable energy versus the environment
Despite the fact that it is a signatory of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, which stipulates that no new claims shall be made over any land in the Arctic, the Foreign Office has revealed that Britain has made plans to extend its rights to oil, gas and mineral exploitation up to 350 miles offshore into the Southern ocean. A good proportion of the resources which Britain plans to extract from the Antarctic are yet to reach levels shallow enough for them to be mined, but fears nevertheless abound regarding the possibly detrimental impact which Britain's proposed move will have on the environment.
This proposal comes at the same time as WWF are calling for areas of the Antarctic to be turned into marine reserves in order to protect endangered species.
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