Brands are promising to plant a tree for each can of beer, tshirt, or pair of trainers you buy, offsetting their carbon emissions so they can put an attractive ‘carbon negative’ sticker on a product to show green they - and you - truly are. But how effective is a new forest at offsetting a company’s emissions, what does ‘carbon negative’ really mean, and how do they go about proving they’ve achieved it? Trees are just one type of carbon offset. Another, albeit promising but expensive, option is Direct Air Capture. Could that be the future of long term carbon offsetting? 
Greg Foot finds out. This series, we’re testing your suggested wonder-products. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or fad and wonder if there's any evidence to back up a claim drop us an email to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send us a voice note to our new WhatsApp number: 07543 306807PRESENTER: Greg Foot
PRODUCER: Simon Hoban

Brands are promising to plant a tree for each can of beer, tshirt, or pair of trainers you buy, offsetting their carbon emissions so they can put an attractive ‘carbon negative’ sticker on a product to show green they - and you - truly are. But how effective is a new forest at offsetting a company’s emissions, what does ‘carbon negative’ really mean, and how do they go about proving they’ve achieved it? Trees are just one type of carbon offset. Another, albeit promising but expensive, option is Direct Air Capture. Could that be the future of long term carbon offsetting? Greg Foot finds out. This series, we’re testing your suggested wonder-products. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or fad and wonder if there's any evidence to back up a claim drop us an email to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send us a voice note to our new WhatsApp number: 07543 306807 PRESENTER: Greg Foot PRODUCER: Simon Hoban

Carbon Negative and Carbon Offsetting

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers. In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist Sean Farrington examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt? Some of the world’s most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world’s most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand’s fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions. From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in January, 2026. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds. For this brand new series of Toast, episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode on BBC Sounds first, a week earlier than anywhere else.Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

Health & Fitness

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers. In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist Sean Farrington examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt? Some of the world’s most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world’s most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand’s fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions. From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in January, 2026. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds. For this brand new series of Toast, episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode on BBC Sounds first, a week earlier than anywhere else. Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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