While many parts of England have been lashed by rain, leaving some in nearby Somerset putting up with dreadful floods, Isonomia was the recipient of a much more welcome inundation during January. The bleak depths of midwinter have proved a period of good cheer for the admin team, as visitors torrented to the site in unprecedented numbers, many swept from distant shores.
The current that washed the greatest number in our direction was generated by Catherine Hansen, whose December article on olive oil processing wastes had an even more productive second pressing in January. Vigorous discussion on LinkedIn kept the visitors flowing our way deep into the month, and enabled the piece to slip into our all time top five of most read articles, formerly the territory only of authors named Sherrington and Vergunst.
Close on Hansen’s heels was a new and very welcome contributor to Isonomia, Ad Lansink. The inventor of the waste hierarchy has allowed us to translate and adapt a chapter of his recent book for a blog article. The wave of interest in his rumination on how to make the strategic decision between focusing efforts on energy from waste or on recycling means we’re likely to be able to bring you further chapters in future.
Chris Sherrington’s latest contribution appeared courtesy of Keep Britain Tidy, for whom he had written a chapter of a recent report on litter. In the spirit of reuse, the chapter made for an excellent article, looking at how strong the evidence is to support greater action to tackle litter.
Three of this month’s articles examined different recycling challenges. James Fulford kicked January off by plotting the association between the rise of the iPad, a decline in newspaper circulation, and paper’s decreasing share in the waste stream, which seems set to have practical and economic impacts for recyclers – an idea that was picked up by Edie as a news article. Hattie Parke teamed up with Adam Baddeley to examine how the development of additional anaerobic digestion capacity is being held back by problems with the economics of commercial food waste collections, and to suggest ways in which this knotty problem can be unpicked. Roy Hathaway rounded off January by asking why England’s household recycling rate has stopped increasing – Roy had many of his own ideas, but our readers suggested several more.
And it wasn’t all waste in January, thanks to Laurence Elliott, whose debut contribution probed the problems and opportunities we’re likely to face in if increased reliance on renewables for energy leads to more decentralised generation.
Thanks to all those who commented on our articles; it’s something we and our authors really appreciate. Offering a platform for a variety of opinions and generating debate is what we’re all about, so if anything you’ve read here has floated your boat or holed your hull, please do let us know through our comments section or even with an article of your own. We try to provide an informed but accessible viewpoint on a wide range of environment issues, so whether it’s collection vans or life cycles that are on your mind, please do get in touch.
It’s easy to shift from visitor to commentator to author, and we’re always glad to hear from you. Whether you’re from New York or Nijmegen, Belfast or Bogota, with your help we will create a space where thoughts on topics from across the environment sector can be expressed and explored, enabling communication and cross fertilisation of ideas.
February is already set to be anything but a wash-out, with several articles already in preparation. George Cole will be telling us about the hidden problems of marine litter; Ann Ballinger has more on the potentially misleading conclusions arising from WRATE analyses; and cat owner Steve Watson will be examining some of the environmental perils of pets.
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