Child announcer on London Underground
Level: Intermediate
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Clothing and the environment
Fashion is worth £28 billion a year to the UK economy. MPs (Members of the British Parliament) say British shoppers buy far more new clothes than any nation in Europe.
Mary Creagh, Member of Parliament
Clothing production has more than doubled globally over the last 15 years, and in the UK we’re buying twice as much as we were buying 15 years ago. What that means when we have more clothes is that we're using them, we're wearing them less.
But what happens to all these clothes that are loved and then junked? This warehouse in North London sorts some of them and sends them to charity shops for resale. That saves the environmental impact of making new clothes. But it's only a tiny proportion of garments and shoes that get recycled. Most are scrapped with around 80% ending up in landfill - around 20% getting incinerated.
Andrew Opie, British Retail Consortium
We as retailers have a really big responsibility in making sure that those clothes are as sustainable as possible, and we know from the figures that we've been looking at, working with government, how we have cut things like energy and water use. There's much more we can do.
The MPs welcome the move but say there is a fundamental problem with an industry that relies on people throwing away good clothes because they're last year's colour. They say fashion firms must try harder.
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The effects of pollution on London's schoolchildren
For teacher Ben Macdonald, air pollution has long been a concern for both him and pupils at the Addey and Stanhope school in Deptford (London). It sits on a busy road.
Teacher, Ben Macdonald
We do have a lot of students here at Addey and Stanhope who do have asthma and obviously this has an impact in terms of their long-term health, but also their ability to participate in sporting activities.
Schoolchild 1
I'll literally not be able to breathe.
Schoolchild 2
You can feel how the air, like how it affects your lungs.
A study which looked at 28 primary schools in London has now revealed that children living in boroughs with high diesel pollution suffer from stunted lung capacity .
Dr Ian Mudway, King's College London
It's not that there is an effect those children will feel now. It's that this is indicative of the lungs not growing optimally, which means they won't actually attain maximum lung development later in life.
The research looked at 2,000 London schoolchildren over five years and found that exposure to dangerous particles was linked to around a five percent reduction in lung capacity.
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Today Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London) was in New Cross to launch one of five new Low Emission Bus Zones - an attempt to tackle air quality on the most polluted roads with what are being described as the cleanest buses available. They'll add to the two existing zones already launched last year.
With seven low emission bus zones now launched, the plan is to introduce another five, and by 2020 the aim is for all buses in London to be as clean as possible.
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Train of the future
It looks like the sort of standard diesel train you'd find on commuter lines and in rural areas that rail electrification hasn't reached.
But here in Germany, they’ve developed one of the world's first trains to run on hydrogen fuel cells.
This is how it works. Hydrogen from an on-board tank goes to a fuel cell. That takes in oxygen from the air. And it creates a chemical reaction to make power.
The first trains ran on coal, of course. That was filthy. Diesels still emit gases that harm people and heat the climate, unlike ultra-clean hydrogen.
This is the emission from the exhaust. You can't smell it. I'm told you can't taste it. That's because it's water, pure water.
Battery-powered trains have been trialled in the UK and elsewhere as a substitute for overhead power lines. So what's the advantage for hydrogen?
Mike Muldoon, Alstom Engineering
We are using hydrogen because it gives us a better range for the train during the day than a battery would. Batteries take longer to charge and give us less energy through the day. So we would have to recharge them several times to provide the range that we can get with hydrogen.
One 15-minute hydrogen fill-up drives the train for more than 600 miles. What’s more, hydrogen can be produced by surplus wind power.
Hydrogen trains made here in Germany will go straight into service. The makers expect good business as governments round the world accept the need to cut emissions to protect the climate.
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Child announcer on London Underground
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Around a quarter of a million people use Victoria Station in London each weekday. And for the past few months, they've been hearing an unusual voice. Meet the station's newest and youngest safety announcer – nine-year-old Megan. Her proud parents both work at the station.
Megan, safety announcer
Hello, everybody and please listen up. Take care on the escalators. Hold on to the handrail and your luggage.
Megan's recorded announcement is designed to tackle a serious problem. Around 10 people a day get injured on the underground network.
Mark Evers, Chief Customer Officer
What we have noticed is that when people do injure themselves, it's typically because they're not taking enough care when using stairs and escalators.
At Victoria alone on average, 15 people a month are injured this way. For some passengers at least, Megan's message seems to be getting through.
Passenger
I think everyone takes notice when a child says something. And because they don’t… they always mean it!
So what does someone who studies the psychology of the human voice make of this?
Dr Valentina Cartei, Voice Lab, University of Sussex
Research shows that deeper adult voices are perceived by humans as having more authority than higher voices. So a child’s voice wouldn't have that authority. But perhaps it's the shock factor of using a child's voice.
It may be just a short-term result from this shock factor. But the station says injuries have dropped by nearly two thirds since Megan's announcements started.
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An app to calm you down
It’s been less than a year since G. A. Sharma was laid off from his job in India’s IT sector. But the experience left Mr Sharma feeling angry and sometimes even depressed. And he found it difficult to open up to his family. But he did find some comfort in a chatting app called Wysa.
The chat robot, or chatbot, behaves like a counsellor, focusing on what users are feeling and how to respond to them.
So this is what the future of therapy looks like. An interface where people can ask questions and this chatbot will answer. So if I type in a question about, say, losing my job, the codes in the software process it and give you options.
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I’d like to help but first could I do a quick check to see how this is affecting you? Option one – yes, sure; option two – maybe later.
The founders say the year-old chatbot has 200,000 clients, who are using this app for free. The company behind the chatbot makes money from professional therapists and firms that use the app.
Artificial intelligence-based counselling is a new field and there isn’t a clear consensus on how effective it is.
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