As workplaces and work-related transport generate around two-thirds of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions, the TUC has today (Tuesday) proposed ten simple steps that employees can take at work to cut energy use and protect the environment.

UK w orkplaces generate over 66 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year from the energy and resources they consume, yet businesses waste 30 per cent of the energy they buy, on average. For many organisations, a 20 per cent cut in energy costs is easily and cheaply achievable, and would be the same as a 5 per cent increase in sales .

If your 'home energy survey' is a solar panel hard sell, just run the cowboys out of town

A leaflet drops through your letterbox offering you a free home energy survey. You take up the offer, but find yourself talking about solar panels. The surveyor turns out to be a solar panel salesman and his price for a new installation on your roof sounds good, given the discount he offers. He even says he will take £400 off the bill so that you don't have to bother applying for the government grant. You sign on the dotted line before he leaves, and a few weeks later there's a bright new panel on your roof making carbon-free hot water.

But did he really have to fly halfway round the world to do it?  This week, George Osborne went to Japan. There the shadow chancellor made a speech denouncing the deleterious environmental impact of British short-haul air travel. Spotted the irony yet? You will.

Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New figures show that this year's harvest will fail to produce enough to feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years. Humanity has so far managed by eating its way through stockpiles built up in better times - but these have now fallen below the danger level.

Security has been stepped up at the country's biggest power station, the Drax plant in northern England, ahead of a protest by environmental campaigners today, a spokeswomen for the plant said