Record breaking readership figures are in danger of becoming something of a habit for Isonomia. Our readership in March 2013 was more than double that of a year ago, and the admin team has been rushed off for urgent treatment for enlarged heads, aggravated by an attack of hubris. So what has brought them to this unfortunate condition?
Mike Brown contributed a barnstormer of an article prompted by hearing Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden talking about energy from waste on Any Questions. The piece provoked some vigorous discussion, both on the site and on LinkedIn. It ended up smashing our record for the most page views in a month, which was set only in February, and was picked up by MRW – in an edited form, mind you, so you still need to come to Isonomia for the full picture.
It was followed by four pieces that show the variety of subject matter that we’re keen to keep producing. Adam Baddeley offered some nuanced thoughts on how likely the UK is to develop excess residual waste infrastructure. Making a welcome return is the author of Isonomia’s first article, Ann Ballinger, who dissected the reasons why trust in science has been eroded in the context of the climate change debate. Steve Watson made a welcome debut, asking where we can find the modern inheritors of the ideals of ‘70s sitcom the Good Life. Finally, Peter Jones offered some thoughts on the budget and the fate of the fuel duty and landfill tax escalators.
However, in a rare event, none of these was our most read author of the month. In a feat of reuse to make any exponent of the waste hierarchy proud, Chris Sherrington has reaped the rewards of promoting both his recent and older articles on Facebook and beyond. As a result, Facebook became our biggest referrer of in March, and now we have a new all-time most read article, Turtle Economic Value. Despite being more than a year old, this piece about marine litter was our second most read article of the month. Chris also found new readers for his piece on recycling littered cans, and became our first author to be republished on a blog based in Moldova. Authors take note – if a little bit of self-promotion can go a long way!
As a result of his efforts, Chris is now the leading contender to catch Phillip Ward as our most read author – watch this space.
As ever, we have more new works on the way. Joe Papineschi will be offering his thoughts on the less obvious implications of the recent Judicial Review on the requirement to separately collect recycling; and Mike Brown has been pondering the problems faced by local authorities when their planning responsibilities come into tension with their waste disposal needs.
A number of our recent articles have provoked some lively debate. Our aim is to provide a platform for a wide variety of views, and if you are annoyed or enthused by something we have published, we’d be delighted if you wanted to respond with an article of your own. We try to provide an informed but accessible viewpoint on a wide range of environment issues, whether it’s offsetting or outsourcing, solar power or skips – whatever’s on your mind, get in touch.
Whether as authors, commentators or just visitors, we’re always glad of your contribution. Whether you’re from Sydney or Slough, Brisbane or Brighton, we’re striving to create a space where thoughts on topics from across the environment sector can be expressed and explored, enabling communication and cross fertilisation of ideas – and we’d be delighted if you joined in.
There are now more ways to explore our material. You can visit our Paper.Li site, where you can see Isonomia’s articles, and other interesting material, gathered together in a newspaper format. And now you can visit our Facebook page. There have never been so many ways to enjoy the site – hope you keep on doing so!
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