Sustainability

Amanda Sampedro has won three leagues and one Queen's Cup with Atlético de Madrid Féminas, where she always dreamt of playing. She made her first-team debut at the age of 15, becoming captain three years later and has been the most regular player on several occasions. She is also one of the captains of the national squad, which she joined in 2013, and a great ambassador for women's football.

Water is an invisible ingredient in thousands of products we consume every day. For example, producing a single cup of coffee requires around 130 litres of water. Similarly, manufacturing a basic cotton T-shirt can consume between 2,000 and 3,000 litres of water throughout the supply chain, depending on the origin of the cotton, irrigation methods and manufacturing processes. These figures show just how dependent modern life is on water, even when we cannot see it. This impact can be understood through the concept of the water footprint, an indicator that measures how much freshwater is used to produce the goods and services we consume.

At the tender age of 18, she upped sticks and went to the United States to combine her Aerospace Engineering degree with a professional sporting career. Now she is the first female Spanish footballer to be selected for the soccer DRAFT in the United States, allowing her to play in the highest category whilst taking part in her second World Cup with the Spanish team.

Living without plastics is possible. At least it is in Aberporth, a small tourist village on the west coast of Wales. Its 1,100 inhabitants have reduced their consumption to make their village the world's first plastic-free community thanks to Plastic-free Aberporth, an initiative led by local resident and filmmaker Gail Tudor.

Sand is, after water, the most sought after natural resource. It is an essential component in the manufacture of electronic devices and glass, and it is also used in bulk in construction. Rapid population growth and the mass development of cities have turned this material into a scarce commodity and a very lucrative business has emerged in trading sand. The theft of sand is a real threat to the environment.

Human activity and global warming are accelerating the extinction of species. As progress continues towards the necessary transition to a decarbonised and environmentally responsible economy, protecting the planet’s biodiversity and its natural ecosystems is more important than ever, especially in so-called megadiverse countries. These are territories that concentrate an extraordinary richness of species and a high degree of endemism – meaning species that exist nowhere else in the world. However, it is important to draw a distinction: a country may host many species and be highly diverse without reaching “megadiverse” status if it does not also meet this high level of biological uniqueness.

Wind energy is produced by transforming the movement of air currents into electrical energy. To harness the wind produced on land, enormous wind farms are built capable of extracting maximum power from this clean, renewable resource. Let us explain how it works.