this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour straight after this programme. this week, we are going green, although other colours of nature are available. oh, i can change the colour of my tree. we discover some highly unusual building materials. it is, in a sense, mould in here.

that's the strangest case of rising damp i've ever seen. no, the whole place is made of it. and spencer meets the man behind an icon. this is your baby. but as the ipod is laid to rest for good, we meet the robots built to break down your iphone. and also, cats — big ones. a giant redwood — the largest tree on earth. and this one's been laser—scanned with lidar technology, capturing a sense of the endangered species so viewers don't have to physically visit california's sequoia national park to be inspired. it's beautiful. this digital art exhibition at london's barbican centre aims to get more people thinking about the interconnectedness of humans and nature, the materials we use

in day—to—day design, and how to build cities that are fit for the future. at a time of extreme climate crisis, we've got to consider all of these things if we're going to avoid an apocalyptic fate. this is one of the more controversial... the digital technology we have can create a sense of awe, a sense of wonder and a sense of playfulness, but, ultimately, it can ignite hope and ignite a sense of courage to enact change. what are we doing here? so, this is, essentially, us dissipating into particles. we're looking at our identity through the lens of fluid ecology. you've done this before, you're more flowery now than me. i've got that growth energy going on, yeah. i remember my old drama classes where they said, "pretend you're a tree." now i don't have to do those classes anymore. immersive media that transports us in size and place lets us play games with the elements

and see our surroundings differently is not only a joy to experience, but could help us rethink a world in which sustainability must come first. i'm also here to meet the man behind some of apple's most iconic devices. first, though, paul carter's been to the netherlands to look at a new way to try and make sure that these things don't keep piling up in the back of your drawer. it's estimated that the amount of e—waste generated last year was over 57 million tonnes, and that figure is set to increase year on year. although phone recycling is on the rise, the majority of handsets still end up in landfill. traditional methods of recycling phones generally involve shredding them in industrial machines and then sifting them to remove the precious metals or reusable material. but apple, who produced over 200 million iphones last year, has devised a modern way of recovering the materials,

and they let me in to have a look. most of us are now quite used to the idea of recycling our phones when they reach the end of their life. but if you're anything like me, you probably don't think too much about what happens to them once you send them away. here, at a secret location in the netherlands, apple have created daisy, this robot behind me. and it takes the process of recycling these things to a whole new level. let's give it a go. daisy can completely deconstruct an entire iphone from start to finish in undera minute. the product travels through four modules. the first step separates the display from the iphone. what's happening behind me is the removal of the batteries. and to do that, it's using really cold air — —70 degrees celsius — to actually stop the adhesive from working so the battery

can be taken out. it's pretty cool. afterwards, the screws are taken out, before all the different components are separated by the machine. all individual bits and pieces land here to then be sorted by a human. most modern smartphones contain as many as 30 elements and rare earth materials, including cobalt, tungsten, gold and tin. and the world economic forum has warned that some elements may be completely depleted in 100 years. apple claims that new methods of recycling phones, like daisy, could help recover more of these metals from end—of—life phones, and that its products contain more recycled materials than ever before. rare earth elements and metals require extensive mining with considerable environmental, social and political impacts. our goal is to make all of our products using only recycled or renewable material. daisy is helping us with that — she can do 23 models of iphone,

she can do 2.4 million units a year, and all of that means more material going back around a circular supply chain so, ultimately, we can end our reliance on mining. daisy concentrates on m key materials which would otherwise be extracted from the earth, from the rare earth magnets to the aluminium in the housing. if you take, for example, the main logic boards, the cameras and the flexes, one tonne of that has the same amount of material that we'd have to mine 2,000 tonnes of new material to get to, so it's quite important and also it's much lower carbon. but it's notjust about recovering the materials, but crucially, getting them back at a purity where they can be used again. the brute force traditional methods of recycling can degrade the recovered materials or miss them entirely, meaning they can end up in landfill, causing pollution and environmental damage. perhaps, though, the most sustainable solution of all would be reducing the volume of e—waste

we create in the first place. paul there, in the netherlands, looking at ways to reduce our e—waste. later in the show, spencer will be talking more about sustainability with the co—creator of the ipod. now, here in the uk, conservationists are also seeking to protect the earth and the joy of living things on it. they've gone for a rest in the shade. my daughter's favourite, i had to come and see them for her. london zoo's best known for protecting endangered animals. there are over 750 different species here. think you might be able to hear one of them behind me! but today, i'm taking a leafier approach. i'm going to sow some seeds with my smartphone. this is the eiwaz tree of life app. your mission — to plant a virtual tree. ok, so i need to find a big space — that hits sorted. scan your surroundings and digital branches unfurl in augmented reality. oh, wow, there's a tree.

a big tree. and a series of mini games plays out. oh, no, it's on fire. all to unlock your very own digital seed. a heart is drifting to the ground, and tap to grow. you can design and snap pictures of your own creations too. 0oh, i can change the colour of my tree! but this isn't just for fun. the app also tells you where in the world a real tree is going to be planted on your behalf, giving impact and carbon information. and to mark the moment, you could always rope in a friend to take a video of you under the ar branches. the app's creator believes that this intersection of art, technology and science can inspire real change. martine, tell me about the technical process behind the ar app.

eiwaz tree of life was essentially made by drones 3d—scanning an ash tree, and then we put it through the processing software photogrammetry, and then that essentially takes the 2d photos and makes it into a 3d asset. add to that some virtual sculpting and gameplay developed on unity, and you get an exciting interactive experiment. the essence of this is that i want to empower people, i want them to feel that they're part of the solution and they're part of a greater movement in a battle for nature. martine has sourced donations to grow 200,000 trees. 140,000 of these will be earthed in the philippines, which has lost 50% of its mangroves. the mangroves are - biodiversity superstars. they provide nursery grounds for local species. _ they are vital stocks of fisheries - and income for communities. they protect coastlines from damaging floodsl and storm surges, and they also lock vast amounts

of carbon into the ground. - replenishing this kind of natural resource is vital, even if trees aren't cute or fluffy. animals are great ambassadors for conservation. _ i'm standing here in front of our penguin exhibits, i which are always l incredibly popular. however, conservation can be quite an abstract notion. - we can be asking people to care about things - that are many thousandsl of miles away from them. people are engaging more and more - with the climate crisis in particular, - and looking to restore whole ecosystems, i and that's really. where our focus is. markers like this one in london zoo are designed to grab the attention of passers—by, and portals have popped up in cities including 0slo, copenhagen and at the world expo in dubai, although you can play anywhere through the app. this project isn't going to fix climate change overnight, but it was certainly fun getting my digitalfingers green. that looks less like a real tree... 0r whatever other colours i fancied. that looks spooky.

0k, time for this week's tech round—up now, and first up, it's official — ads are coming to netflix. yep, co—ceo ted sarandos has announced the streaming giant will begin testing a new cheaper tariff option which you can use if you don't mind some commercials popping up while you watch your favourite shows. medical students at the university of cambridge are taking part in what the uni says is a world first — treating holographic patients. through the use of an augmented reality headset, the students are learning by practising on virtual people. it feels very much more that you're connected to the scenario. and when you feel the patient, you see their neck muscles straining, and the way they're breathing, the trained eye of a doctor will tell a lot from how a patient�*s chest rises and falls, and we spend a lot of time trying to get that exactly right.

nasa has launched its first rocket from a commercial spaceport outside the united states. it hopes the sub—orbital rocket launched from australia will enable astrophysics studies that can only take place in the southern hemisphere. and after taking me for a spin last year, paralysed racing driver sam schmidt has broken new ground by being the first person ever to complete the hill climb at the goodwood festival of speed using only head movements and breath to drive. he achieved the feat in his modified mclaren that uses infra—red cameras and a breath—measuring device. i'm at the barbican in london to meet tony fadell, the co—creator of one of apple's biggest icons, which has recently been decommissioned after 20 years. can we have a moment of silence, please, for the ipod? this is your baby. it is. how do you feel about it? oh, it's obviously sad to see an old friend go,

but at the end of the day, you know, technology marches on. without the ipod, the modern—day apple wouldn't exist, and the iphone, i don't think, would have ever existed if the ipod didn't. was there any consideration for the green credentials of these devices — the disposability, the renewability of these things — was that even on the table back then? no, it wasn't really highly considered by any means. of course, it wasn't just, go trash things, but at the same time, it's very different now. do you think we have reached a turning point now, where companies are more aware, and in fact, it might be good to market something that can last a few years? you know, the iphone i have in my pocket is not the latest one. you don't have to necessarily ship new hardware. in fact, it might be actually more profitable for the company to ship a lot more services on the same piece of hardware. what we should be seeing is more subscription—based devices, and you get a new version of the device when the company thinks you need it. maybe it's the right thing to do for the environment, maybe for the customer as well.

what's the next big idea? i think when we look at our existential problems on this planet, there are so many ideas that need to be brought to life. something like the hydrogen economy. we can use hydrogen to make all kinds of materials, and make them much more climate—friendly. and actually for business, they're actually better for business, you can make more money. agriculture, materials, transportation — we should be using all of the technology to revolutionise those, some of the biggest polluters on the planet. now all we have to do is convince big oil. but, for his part, fadell heads a fund that's made dozens of climate investments. although he's notjust focused on this world. virtual reality — discuss. you can make shoes, you can make furniture, homes, what have you. it is the first way to truly break the 2d barrier, to 3d. so, fadell is backing virtual collaboration, though the metaverse at large doesn't quite have him convinced.

some people are trying to trap us in these kinds of headsets. it's a place where you're going to go socialise, where we're going to dance, we're all going to turn into cartoon characters, we'll never even see each other�*s eyes. is that a problem we really need to solve? i don't think so. let's park zuckerberg's vision for a moment, then, and ask tony instead about apple's biggest visionary. steve moved the whole smartphone industry. yes, i'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please. no, just kidding! the great thing about steve was he never projected himself as a real expert of any one thing. so there was some humility there — it wasn'tjust about, i know everything and i'm right all the time? absolutely not — he had strong opinions, but sometimes they were weakly held, if we brought in data or other things to show him that there was a different way. and since stevejobs, the biggest personality in tech surely now has to be this guy.

hope you like what you see. but what does fadell make of him? without the personalities, without the passion, without the drive, you wouldn't see the ev revolution that we're having. you need these personalities that people can really resonate with. that was tony fadell, who is admittedly a bit of a character himself, and he's not the only one who believes that big tech can clean up. adrienne murray's been finding out more in denmark. whale call each time we upload a selfie, chat online or stream a video, we're transmitting data to and from a server, and all those files we store virtually in the cloud, well, there's a physical backbone, keeping it all running smoothly — a datacentre. this hyperscale facility on the outskirts of 0dense in denmark is among a growing number found in the cooler nordic countries. and here, how our internet use is actually helping to warm people's homes.

this is one of our servers. and if you feel underneath it's quite... it's really hot. datacentres are all over europe, providing services for all our applications, facebook, instagram, whatsapp, messenger, etc. it is pictures, videos, stories, all of that. all these servers are running 24/7, and keeping them ticking over requires huge amounts of energy. but they also produce a lot of heat. at many data centres, the heat given off is lost or wasted. here, the hot air is trapped behind the servers and then it's put to use. it really is much warmer in here, it's like stepping inside a sauna.

what happens to the heat that's coming off these servers? so the heat goes up to the roof where we have some cooling units. when it reaches the rooftop, the hot air flows through almost 200 heat exchangers. oh, gosh. that's really windy. we are getting cold water from a district heating system from the city, and then we give them warm water back. it is a heat exchange, so you take one warm element and then one cold element, and you actually exchange the heat and warmth. residual cool air is left over from this process and that's used to help cool all those hot servers. across the road is a pump station. all these different coloured pipes are carrying water. as you might have guessed, red is hot and blue is cold. so right here, we have the heat pumps where we elevate the heat. so when we receive it, it's only 27 degrees celsius. but we need it to elevate it

to 70 degrees to put it in this district heating grid. district heating is a community—wide heating system that's common in scandinavia. in 0dense, which is the third largest city in denmark, we have about 200,000 inhabitants. that's about 100,000 households. and this plant can actually provide heat for more than 10% of these customers. hello, welcome. hi, thank you. long—time resident hans erik is one of them. what do you get as part of the district heating? it's water, it's heating, it's everything with hot water. you don't have to have a boiler, it's coming out of the pipes. every household has a meter, and then you pay for what you use. what do you make of the fact that the surplus heat from the datacentre is now also providing heat to homes in the area? i mean, the heat is there.

either you give it to the birds or you make use of it in our households. other nordic countries like sweden have also embraced the idea of warming homes with recycled heat. and in finland, microsoft and energy firm fortum are now planning the world's biggest project of this kind. that was adrienne in denmark. but these companies aren't the only ones considering how our buildings could become more sustainable. this is recycled concrete. the idea is that that'll be the basis of kind of almost a whole ecosystem. my name is martyn dada—robertson, i'm professor of emerging technology at newcastle university. we're sitting in the 0me, which is an experimental house where we're developing a new generation of building technologies. the way that we build isn't sustainable —

it's polluting, it uses high amounts of energy, and that really needs to be addressed if we're to live sustainably. just behind me is one of the most significant pieces of biotechnology that we have. it's a structure that is initially knitted, grown with a root network of fungus we call mycelium. this is black fabric, - and the white that you're seeing is all the mycelium. it is, in a sense, mould in here, or at least what some people think of as being mould. this is a case where we could replace, say, a cement with a biological process instead. this is quite nice, the way you can see the cellulose. it's not a stained glass window, it's a stained cellulose window. it looks like a kind of skin. in our different labs, we're growing different materials. but in relationship to digital technologies as well. we're developing a robot arm to control the way that materials are deposited in three dimensions. we're also developing our own machine that looks a little bit like a 3d printer.

the main kind of fermentation will be happening here. - the pumps will be located here. it allows us to program the material for different outcomes and different material properties. imagine the construction of a wall. you've got your bricks, which are cemented together, often you have insulation material, you have your plasterboard inside. we want to do that in one step. the wall might be able to respond to light by thickening, maybe giving greater insulation or reducing insulation, maybe allow a building to sweat in the way that skin does. that will mean that servicing our buildings are not as heavy, because we don't have to make use of heating and ventilation quite as much. we use all kinds of different computational models that are key to the research that we do. often, they're modelling the way in which our biological systems will respond to different environments. we're even thinking about the soil beneath our houses. the idea is that the bacteria

can detect the load on the soils and make crystals that will make the soil stronger. we're not using polluting concrete, and moving the land is a very energy—intensive process _ artificial intelligence might give us a way to discover these new biologies and processes that we can't, as human beings, on our own, work out. some of our technologies are quite near—future. i can see mycelium, for example, being part of our built environment actually very quickly. this feels really, really solid. some of the work in engineered living materials is decades and decades away. there are lots of technical challenges, but also the construction industry is very conservative, so persuading people that this is the future is going to take a lot of validation and effort. sustainability calls for transformational technologies that will change the way that we live.

we've had the digital revolution, but we see ourselves as heading up a biological revolution. that sense that we're at the frontier of a completely new science and technology is really exciting. some great ideas there, although some of it did look a little bit unusual, i'm not quite sure that it would fit in with my decor. whilst that's all we've got time for this week, i think i'll stick around for a wander. they know how to do it — slower pace of life.

hurricane harvey has batted co—director, the dominican republic and the turks and caicos islands, winds over 30 mph, going to bermuda, thursday, friday, it could maintain the harry kane status as it hits canada, aided and abetted by warm sea waters in the atlantic. it could head to the atlantic. it could head to the arctic, seeing warm air there as well. to our shores, rather cool conditions. milder with south—westerly winds developing ahead of the weather front. it means it is going to take a few days before the warm air gets in because it will be actually start to wednesday, six degrees across the south—east. multiples north and west. the breeze, cloud and apra suffering. western isles, rain all day long, 0rkney, shetland, some outbreaks of rain developing and stomp on the north—west of ireland, damp

late in the day. isolated showers at scotland, northern england. most of the uk dry. mist and fog in the south clearing, some cloud eastern england, spells of showers elsewhere on the coast, feeling warmer than recent days. temperatures are pedigree also. when letters to the south and east wednesday afternoon. strongest towards the north and west. the western isles, golfers winds before the day is out. the wind strengthens across scotland and northern ireland as we go to wednesday night. into thursday, outbreaks of rain developing widely. a little bit of a rain shadow so not muttering towards the north—east of scotland. some ran into cumbria and the isle of man. iran, a mild night, 12-14, of man. iran, a mild night, i2—i4, fresherfurther of man. iran, a mild night, i2—i4, fresher further south. the odd mist and fog patch. dry and bright foremost on thursday for england and wales. cloudy with outbreaks of rain, north and west well through the day. staying that way for the south and east of scotland. north—west part of scotland and northern ireland should

brighten up, fresher later on. to the south—east of the rain band,it to the south—east of the rain band, it will head west wales by thursday. another mild if not warm day, 2i—22. milder air squeezed out as the weather front moves erratically to the south—east corridor heading into friday, it could bring bring to cardiff and london, showing up on the capital city forecast. by the weekend fresher for forecast. by the weekend fresherforall, many forecast. by the weekend fresher for all, many places will be dry.

welcome to bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: separatist leaders in ukraine announced a series of referendums to decide if their region willjoin russia. western leaders queue up at the un to condemn president putin's invasion. , ., , , , invasion. they are responsible for the displacement - invasion. they are responsible for the displacement of - invasion. they are responsible for the displacement of vast . for the displacement of vast populations, the idea of organising a referendum in those regions where people have been forced to flee is the very signature of cynicism. exhuming the dead. we report from one city in eastern ukraine where the bodies of civilians are being dug up. further protests across iran over the death in custody of a young woman accused of breaking the islamic dress code.