The climate crisis is closer than you might think. The food we eat, the products we buy, the car we drive, the place we choose to live…so many things play a small but significant role in the global story of ecological instability - whether we’re contributing to the problem or feeling the effects. Plastic in the oceans, Outback wildfires and tropical floods may seem far removed from our world, but they’re all part of a chain of cause and effect that cuts through our lives every single day.
At The University of Warwick, we’re tackling many of the key sustainability issues head on. Our researchers are employing groundbreaking science, but we’re also exploring more unusual solutions. We’re using art, looking at the dynamics of politics, and even listening to earthworms to open up exciting new avenues. The University is collaborating with businesses, government, charities and the occasional animator to form dynamic partnerships. It’s an Infinitely Curious approach to discovering how each and every one of us can better understand our deeply personal relationship with the environment.
Air pollution:
a life and death issue
Can the air you breathe kill you?
It’s a shocking fact that more than 9,000 Londoners die prematurely every year, simply because of poor air quality.
In the capital, and major cities across the globe, there’s an urgent need for powerful anti-pollution action.
Warwick’s Professor Theo Damoulas is one of the scientists leading the fight.
“How can we use data to actually inform our decisions and create robust infrastructure?”
Professor Damoulas is at the centre of the London Air Quality Project. This cutting-edge initiative has been developed by The Alan Turing Institute, a body co-founded by Warwick and dedicated to pushing the capabilities of new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In London, the team is getting under the skin of air pollution with an advanced array of monitoring tech. Satellite information is combined with a city-wide network of ground sensors measuring multiple pollutants.
And then there’s traffic – one of the biggest carbon emitters. The project is using more than 900 cameras to analyse traffic levels and movement across the capital – even down to the emission levels of individual cars.
The result is a groundbreaking 3D model of the city and its air pollution. A ‘digital twin’ that delivers highly detailed information. Marking emissions from virtually every home and business. Street by street. Vehicle by vehicle.
With this data, Dr Damoulas says, they “are forecasting air pollution at an hourly level.” And the team is making a major difference with this insight, “so that people can use information to guide behaviour.”
The researchers share their data with the Greater London Authority and other bodies to inform better public health policies. They’re giving more power to ordinary Londoners too. A new app delivers the latest local air pollution forecasts, so users can change the route of their walk, run or cycle.
Now Warwick researchers are looking to introduce the system into other cities, including Newcastle and Sydney, as we strive to save more lives across the globe.
Saving energy
through art
Some of our most significant sustainability projects are much closer to home.
When Coventry City Council struggled to encourage residents of the Foleshill area to take advantage of subsidised energy efficiency measures, they turned to their neighbours at Warwick.
Foleshill is one of the city’s most deprived districts, with many residents feeling the pressures of high energy costs. The improvements offered by the council would mean major savings, but for some reason, the message just wasn’t cutting through.
Dr Jonathan Clarke from Warwick’s Global Sustainable Development department was determined to reach this vulnerable community. But it would take a team effort.
“Co-creation is a really valuable and useful way of approaching a major problem.”
The Warwick team sought help from right across the community - working alongside local and regional government, local business, charities, creatives and others. Bringing together people from many professions, backgrounds and organisations.
A series of workshops allowed residents’ views to be heard, and potential solutions to be discussed.
The result of this collaboration was a highly creative approach.
The team produced an animated video that brought to life the importance of a cosy home. Shared widely on social media, it featured a poem from a local child and was created by Coventry animator Josh Leach. Using community talent and passion, it delivered a crucial message in a powerful and emotive way.
This unexpected outcome could, in the eyes of Dr Clarke, only have come about through getting together and exploring new perspectives.
“In terms of many of the problems we face at the moment, particularly around sustainability, co-creation offers a way into addressing these complex challenges.”
Picturing a carbon-free future
In another Coventry project, art is being used to transport people into the future.
“Let’s be optimistic about what actually is possible,” says local artist Paul Lemmon.
He worked closely with Professor Graeme Macdonald of Warwick’s English and Comparative Literary Studies department to create ‘Memories of a Future City’ – a dazzlingly colourful 6-metre-long abstract mosaic charting the history of Coventry from 1850, up to an imaginary future of 2123, with cycle superhighways and vertical farms.
"It is meant to give the viewer a feeling of how life would be better … and what we might gain, rather than what we might lose," Mr Lemmon adds.
The piece was presented as part of Coventry Biennial, a social, political and critical platform for contemporary art. It’s the latest in a series of collaborations between the University and local artists. And, in this case, came about as a response to Professor Macdonald’s study of the challenges and possibilities of life without fossil fuels.
“I am thrilled to be able to engage in this kind of collaboration with a real-life artist,” says Professor Macdonald.
For him, the biggest benefit is how art can make people think about the future in a way that cold science may not. A way that makes it feel more real, more relatable.
“I'm curious about the ways in which Paul's work provides a novel means to think about transition,” he says, “and to get the public to engage with it in ways different to … scientific reports or environmental papers.”
Breaking the
cycle of taboo around periods
Sustainability isn’t just about protecting the long-term future of our planet. Sometimes these solutions can offer immediate benefits to people in need.
“I’d gone to teach, but I came back learning one of the most important lessons in my life.”
Warwick graduate Soumya Dabriwal travelled to Ghana with the Warwick in Africa scheme – a programme partnering with local schools to give children better prospects. But for the girls in her class, there was a serious obstacle to education: their periods. Later, working with Warwick in India, she encountered the same problem:
Almost
23 million
girls drop out of school annually after starting their periods
“It became clear to me,” Soumya says, “that there was no effective solution; something had to be done.”
To give women in these communities the support they needed to learn and live, Soumya and her friends devised Project Baala, funded by the Lord Rootes Fund at The University of Warwick.
Their aim: to create a sanitary product that was easy to obtain – but also sustainable. Washable pads that women could reuse for up to two years. Going a long way to combat the 125kg of sanitary waste generated by every woman in her menstruating years.
Combined with a steadily growing programme of education and taboo-busting, Project Baala is using an eco-friendly solution to drive a positive cultural shift.
For Soumya, this isn’t just about solving a problem. It’s about sharing empowerment.
“You can't just give somebody a solution for now and walk away. You just leave a longer-term problem.”
Sustainable plastics through polymer chemistry
Providing more choice while cutting waste lies at the heart of another Warwick sustainability project.
“Polymers are everywhere. They’re in your mobile phone, your clothes, toiletries in your bathroom…”
It’s a stark truth, acknowledges Professor David Haddleton of our Department of Chemistry.
Plastic waste is one of the biggest, and most widely recognised environmental issues around. We’ve all seen images of rubbish-strewn beaches and animals trapped in plastic.
But the answer may not be as straightforward as simply banning it.
Professor Haddleton is adamant: “doing that completely is impossible, so what I think we need to do is to provide materials that perform a lot better and are sustainable, whilst not costing very much more.”
Key to this is working closely with industry, and the professor has headed up a series of partnerships with some of the biggest names in the business, including Unilever and Lubrizol. Their shared vision: to create more recyclable and cost-effective polymers.
It’s a thriving two-way street, says Professor Haddleton. “Scientists are always trying to solve problems, and often the big solutions come from working in the world beyond academia.” And for the firms involved, access to Warwick know-how is a big pull: “we have probably the best set of equipment for analysing polymers in Europe, but also…expertise [businesses] just don’t have internally.”
The results of these collaborations are filtering down to the real world in surprising ways. For example, the plastic food packaging in your shopping basket is more likely to be clear, when once it was black. And all because the latest see-through variety is more recyclable.
On another project, Professor Haddleton is using polymers as part of a hormone replacement patch for women going through the menopause.
None of this, asserts the Professor, would have been possible without the Infinitely Curious culture of Warwick.
“I’ve always felt at home at Warwick because it’s a place that gives you a lot of freedom and has never been too traditional.”
Want healthier soil?
Listen to the earthworms
If you really want to look after the planet, it can help to listen to those living closest to it.
Because it turns out that noisy soil is healthy soil.
Warwick’s Crop Centre is pioneering a new scheme to assess the number of worms in farm fields, using a technique called ‘echoacoustics’.
“Soil is the most biodiverse habitat on the planet, and it makes sense to use technology to help us understand these complex ecosystems.”
Dr Jacqueline Stroud continues, “earthworms make rasping sounds and rhythmic scrunching as they move through the soil, which we can use to detect them.”
So why is the sound of worms so important? More worms mean healthier soil for better crop production, and plenty of prey for local wildlife.
Working with echoacoustics specialists Baker Consultants, the Warwick team set out to deliver more insight and save farmers valuable time. In the past, studying worm populations meant an hour of digging and counting for just a few shovel samples. Now it’s a case of slipping a probe into the soil for a much quicker digital biodiversity report. Simple, efficient and powerfully effective.
This cutting-edge solution is now being readied for worldwide release, with the support of the Farming Innovation Programme. A valuable tool for creating more sustainable agriculture everywhere.
It’s not just science, it’s politics too
Warwick research isn’t just exploring the causes and results of climate change. It’s tackling how we understand it.
Dr Caroline Kuzemko and Professor Simon Caney of our Politics and International Studies department are passionate about driving the environment to the top of the public agenda.
“It concerns how we might all live well together, in a fundamentally changing world, and how we might respond to the climate crisis in a fair and legitimate way.”
Politicians, more than anyone else, direct the world’s climate strategies. And, the team’s study has shown, short-term political ambitions aren’t always good for long-term environmental protection: “some power relations and embedded norms and interests are a major obstacle to combating climate change.”
But even if a state wants to do the right thing, it’s not straightforward.
“Climate change is a political issue as well as a scientific one.”
Dr Caroline Kuzemko
For example, more governments are supporting the use of electric vehicles – 8.3% of global car sales in 2021. Good news, right? Or is it just reinforcing a culture of car dependency and taking away investment from more sustainable alternatives, such as cycling and public transport?
Likewise, if a nation decarbonises energy production in-line with the 1.5-degree Paris Agreement, that’s a great achievement. But it also has to make sure the green energy sector grows enough to counter the stranded financial assets and job losses of a dismantled fossil fuel industry.
The Warwick team’s role is critical in helping to develop practical, balanced solutions. “We help to facilitate the knowledge required to drive change and pave the way ahead.”
Using vast amounts of global data, the researchers challenge many current models and point the way to more just sustainable transitions.
And they’re taking this information straight to the top. Influencing governments and policymakers across the world, including the UN International Panel on Climate Change.
Global climate crisis, real world research
The environment is more than one issue. It’s a complex web of causes and effects. Of short-term changes and far-reaching impacts that all, in one way or another, have a direct impact on how we live. But Warwick researchers are delivering real change at many different levels. We’re making governments sit up and take notice. We’re bringing communities together for more sustainable living. We’re shedding light on air pollution street-by-street. We’re giving girls in Ghanian schools the freedom to keep learning. And we’re discovering that noisy soil is healthy soil.
The issue of sustainability can never be ‘fixed’ once and for all. Every new initiative or improvement needs continual care and monitoring. But there are so many things that all of us can do to make a difference, however small. And with an Infinitely Curious mindset, as well as an insatiable hunger for change, we’ll never stop working for new ways to protect the world around us.
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