Which Christmas tree is better for the environment - real or fake?Everyone loves the smell of a freshly cut pine or spruce but the vast majority of them go to landfill. So would a plastic tree be better?Listener Eleanor wants to have a more sustainable Christmas and has some great questions. Is there a better way to dispose of your real tree? How about a pot-grown tree you could use again the next year? And she's even heard about the possibility of renting a Christmas tree - the same one, year after year! Is that a thing?In this frankly festive episode I attempt to get to the root of the problem (sorry!) by speaking to an ecological expert and a journalist who's attempted to rent the whole of Christmas.Presenter: Greg Foot
Producer: Simon Hoban

Which Christmas tree is better for the environment - real or fake? Everyone loves the smell of a freshly cut pine or spruce but the vast majority of them go to landfill. So would a plastic tree be better? Listener Eleanor wants to have a more sustainable Christmas and has some great questions. Is there a better way to dispose of your real tree? How about a pot-grown tree you could use again the next year? And she's even heard about the possibility of renting a Christmas tree - the same one, year after year! Is that a thing? In this frankly festive episode I attempt to get to the root of the problem (sorry!) by speaking to an ecological expert and a journalist who's attempted to rent the whole of Christmas. Presenter: Greg Foot Producer: Simon Hoban

Christmas Trees

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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Christmas Trees

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