Isonomia had a fine April, with four excellent new articles blossoming forth, two from new authors. Our readership in April 2013 was nearly 150% greater than a year ago: at this rate, the admin team calculates that we’re on course to be bigger than Google – perhaps around the same time as the national debt is paid off.
Peter Jones was our leading author of the month, thanks to his examination of the Daily Mail’s claims that 12m tonnes of household recycling is being landfilled overseas. The Mail’s clearly untrue claim has been the subject of a great deal of online debate, some favourable and some critical, so we’re happy to have put this detailed analysis of what’s wrong with their article.
One of the other big recycling stories of the year so far was Defra and the Welsh Government’s success in defending the current wording of the regulations that transpose the revised Waste Framework Directive’s requirements regarding separate collection of recyclables. Joe Papineschi provided an insight into what the ruling might really mean in practice, concluding that the decision was rather less of a victory for fully co-mingled collection than might initially be thought.
Our two new authors covered very different topics. Simon Hann explored what the future of eco labelling may be. While Tesco may have stepped back from its attempts to provide ecological impact information, developments in France may be paving the way for a new pan-European approach that will give consumers a more consistent guide to the environmental footprint of their purchases. And in our newest piece, Richard Vaughan applied the academic theories about what motivates criminal behaviour to waste crimes. His concern was that the deterrent effect of the increased penalties that the Environment Agency is managing to achieve through the Proceeds of Crime Act may be undermined if there is a reduction in the Agency’s enforcement budget.
With another strong month from his classics on turtles, aluminium cans and woodburners, Chris Sherrington maintained his vice-like grip on the top of the all-time most read articles chart, and he further closed the gap on Phillip Ward as our most read author. One more big month, and it could be all change.
We’ll have more for you in May: Mike Brown’s thoughts on how the planning system gives local authorities problems when their planning responsibilities come into tension with their waste disposal needs are nearing readiness, and a new author Hattie Parke is preparing a piece on food redistribution charities. There’ll be plenty more as the month goes on.
We’re always glad when our articles provoke 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 like to extend to you the opportunity 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.
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