39 Ways to Save the Planet

Why use gas or electricity to heat your water when the power of the sun will do it for free? Faisal Ghani, a young Bangladeshi-Australian engineer, has invented a deceptively simple glass pyramid that takes cold water in at the bottom and supplies hot water from the top. He believes it can bring cheap, hot water to every home around the Equator. In the first of a new series packed with carbon-busting ideas Tom Heap visits Faisal at his Dundee production line to hear about his plans to bring hot showers to the world. Climate scientist, Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, helps Tom calculate just how much carbon hot water from the sun can save.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Dr Nazmi Sellami of Robert Gordon University, Professor Chris Sansom of Cranfield University and Professor Henning Sirringhaus from the University of Cambridge.

Fast-growing bamboo has gone in and out of fashion but is now being seen as a possible climate hero. Its capacity to absorb carbon is enhanced by how densely it can be grown, the speed and its regrowth after harvesting - a great advantage over trees.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci of the University of Birmingham.

Cattle emit huge quantities of planet-warming methane. But they can be stopped! Tom Heap meets Eileen Wall from SRUC, Scotland's Rural College who introduces him to a host of cunning carbon-cutting ideas- from seaweed in the feed and gas masks for cows to barns that can convert methane into energy to power the farm.

Tom is joined by Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London to calculate just how much difference these ideas might make to our warming Earth. Are those the best answers or should we all be persuaded to cut our meat consumption?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci of University of Birmingham and to Dr Michelle Cain of Cranfield University.

Is logging always bad for the planet? A team from The Nature Conservancy in the United States believe they have developed a way to cut down the trees we need for construction without damaging tropical forests or adding to our carbon emissions.

Tom Heap meets Peter Ellis, the man behind Reduced Impact Logging, and his Indonesian colleagues, Purnomo and Ruslandi, who are persuading the foresters of Borneo to take up the new techniques.

Back in the UK, climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards joins Tom to crunch the numbers- how much carbon dioxide could these ideas save?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor David Coomes from the University of Cambridge and to Professor Michelle Pinard and Professor David Burslem from the University of Aberdeen.

While at sea or in port, the hull of a ship can be an attractive new residence for all sorts or creatures. The initial slime build-up can provide a welcome mat for more and more creatures. This 'biofouling' can end up being inches think and heavy in weight as well as stopping the streamlining of the vessel. The drag caused can result in more fuel being needed to keep the ship moving forwards at the same speed - more cost and more carbon.

Tom Heap meets a new stowaway on ships which will help fight the build up. Paint company Jotun has now developed the Hullskater robot. Monitoring of conditions will alert when the robot needs to be deployed on missions - with its magnetic wheels and high definition cameras it inspects the surface and uses brushes to remove the build up.

With an increasing fleet of ships, Dr Tamsin Edwards from Kings College London also reflects on other measures to keep hulls free of build up and alternative fuels that might help the international fleet reduce its carbon impact.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Bharathram Ganapathisubramani from the University of Southampton.

There are already examples around the world where the manufacturer helps to pay for the safe disposal of waste from their goods once used - such as electronic items or bottles. But what about the carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuels?

Tom hears about the 'Carbon Take Back Obligation' concept - in which oil and gas producers would have to capture and store C02 - ratcheting up from 1% of what they produce by 2023, to 10% in 2030 and 100% by 2050. Some say it's impossible to meet the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement without it.

But where would all that carbon dioxide go? How much storage space would we need for it and how much of the cost would trickle down to the petrol pump?

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, armed with statistics gathered by the Royal Geographical Society, joins Tom to add up the numbers.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Stephen Peake of the Open University and Dr Chris Hope of the University of Cambridge.

For more information on the Carbon Take Back Obligation www.carbontakeback.org

Modern civilisation is quite literally built on steel. Our cities, our homes, our cars are unthinkable without it. But steel-making is the biggest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide so the search is on for a clean, green method of turning iron ore into steel.

Tom Heap meets the Swedes who are ahead of the pack. Three local companies- Vattenfall, LKAB and SSAB- have come together to deconstruct the whole process and develop ways to remove fossil-fuels from each stage of steel-making. From the enormous iron ore mines of Arctic Sweden to the smelters and furnaces that produce the steel, carbon dioxide emissions are being radically reduced, but how close can they get to a truly green steel?

Tom and Dr Tamsin Edwards discuss the Swedish plans and calculate just how much of this industry's emissions could be wiped out in a generation.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Chris McDonald of the Materials Processing Institute.

Photo courtesy of: Åsa Bäcklin and HYBRIT

There's a lot of carbon locked up in the peatlands of Britain and Ireland but many of them have been drained for agriculture and dug for fuel or garden compost. The loss of water resulted in the massive loss of carbon to the atmosphere. Rewetting the bogs can not only stop that leaching of carbon but potentially help the bogs sequester carbon once more. Could these once forboding 'creepy' habitats be something of an underrated super solution?

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Christopher Evans of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Mike Peacock of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

When the cod disappeared from the Grand Banks of his Newfoundland home, fisherman Bren Smith saw the light. He realised that we need a new relationship with the oceans- the age of the hunter-gatherers was over and the time of the ocean farmers had begun. After many years of trial and error he developed a new farming system that produces thousands of tonnes of shellfish and edible seaweed, cleans the oceans and absorbs our carbon emissions.

Tom Heap meets Bren and takes a trip to the seaweed farm of the Scottish Association for Marine Science to see if the new techniques in ocean farming can be replicated around the islands and sea lochs of the west coast of Scotland.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, joins Tom to calculate just how much of our carbon emissions might be swallowed by farming the oceans.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Professor Jennifer Smith of the University of California San Diego and Professor Michael Graham of San José State University.

There's a dirty secret around the back of your fridge. The world's freezers, fridges and air conditioning units are chilled by gases that have planet-warming properties that are hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Disposed of properly they're not a problem but in much of the developing world these gases- legal ones and even more dangerous illegal gases- are simply vented to the atmosphere when the cooling units are dumped or recycled.

In the first of ten more programmes highlighting the world's best carbon-busting ideas, Tom Heap meets the fridge detectives hunting the planet for the worst offenders and safely disposing of their dangerous gases.

Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London, armed with statistics gathered by the Royal Geographical Society, joins Tom to add up the numbers and calculate the carbon impact of the fridge detectives.

Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock

Researcher: Sarah Goodman

Produced in conjunction with the Royal Geographical Society. Particular thanks for this episode to Dr Luke Western and Dr Daniel Say of the University of Bristol and to Professor John Pyle of the University of Cambridge.