The Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry are holding an evening seminar entitled 'Science and the Environment: Solutions for mitigating pollution' on Wednesday 13 December. Dr Claire Barlow, Senior Lecturer and Head of MET, has been asked to present at the event to be held at the Kohn Centre, the Royal Society, London.

Dr Claire Barlow will give a presentation entitled 'A load of rubbish'. The talk will question some of the issues surrounding the role of waste management; the recent trend that deems the use of landfill sites in the UK is inappropriate, the social and political concerns over mainland Europe's use of incineration and the economic, technical and logistic problems associated with recycling. There will also be discussion of the strategy behind current research at Cambridge into ways of improving the environmental impact of recycling processes.

This seminar is part of the Institute of Physics "by invitation" evening seminars which supplement their Vision paper series. The seminars aim to facilitate debate on the key issues in physics covered by these papers, highlighting areas with which the audience, invited policy-makers and opinion-formers, may not be familiar.

The seminar will look at the latest that science and technology have to offer to prevent and mitigate the effects of a wide range of environmental problems. With concerns over environmental issues growing this seminar will focus on emerging techniques and technologies that could help alleviate a number of these problems.