In India, how can gorgeous flowers offered in a temple or gathered to decorate a wedding be an environmental problem? Chhavi Sachdev discovers that the practice of disposing of the spent flowers, thousands of tonnes of the them daily, into rivers and lakes causes major pollution and literally suffocates waterborne life. The problem is made worse by the fact that the flowers are sprayed with pesticides in the field so are yet more toxic when discarded. But there ARE solutions - both to recycle the waste into treated compost and, in an innovative scheme, to dry the flowers for their colour and fragrance and make incense sticks - many millions of which are sold in India every year.

Presenter/Producer : Chhavi Sachdev UK Producer: Tom Woolfenden A Just Radio Production

Image: Piles of orange, yellow and red flower heads at market. Credit: Chhavi Sachdev

Frequent floods blight the poorest neighbourhoods of New Orleans but the residents are fighting back, one yard at a time. Physicist Helen Czerski joins the team behind the Front Yard Initiative as they strive to keep the Big Easy safe and dry, 20 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

When Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, the levees broke, 800,000 residents were forced out and 1800 people died. $14bn was spent on concrete and steel to rebuild the defences but the city still floods regularly.

This water isn't coming from the Mississippi River sealed behind the new defences, it's coming from the skies. Sudden, violent rainstorms are becoming more frequent and the city's low income districts have notoriously inefficient drainage systems. The water lands on concrete and asphalt and quickly overwhelms the drains.

The team behind the Front Yard Initiative is working, block by block, to help residents beat the floods by turning broken concrete into rainwater gardens. Native flowers and cheap, simple engineering are helping to transform neighbourhoods and attract new residents to the battered but beautiful home of jazz, gumbo and Mardi Gras.

Image: An example of a front yard made into a rainwater garden, pictured with the owner and team behind front yard initiative. Credit: Alasdair Cross

British Sikh engineer, Navjot Sawhney gave up his lucrative career to go and work in India, to use his skills to help solve problems for rural communities. While there, he became fascinated with the problems his neighbour, Divya, was facing while handwashing clothes, sometimes for up to three hours a day.

Broadcaster and journalist Nkem Ifejika finds out how Nav promised to design a hand crank, off-grid washing machine for his neighbour, to help her avoid the sore joints, aching limbs, and irritated skin she got from her daily wash.

Within two years of coming up with the idea, Nav had set up his own company, The Washing Machine Project, and trialled his first machine in a refugee camp in Iraq. From that first trip, over five years ago, the project has now provided nearly a thousand machines, free to the users in poorer communities and refugee camps, in eleven countries around the world.

Nkem hears how seven years on, Nav fulfilled his promise to return to India with a machine for his neighbour, Divya.

The Washing Machine Project is now partnered with the Whirlpool Foundation, the social corporate responsibility arm of the company that designed the first electric domestic machine over a hundred years ago, and together they hope to impact 150,000 people.

Nkem asks if a project like this can really make a difference, given that roughly five billion people still wash their clothes by hand.

Producer: Alex Strangwayes-Booth A CTVC production

Image: Navjot Sawhney sitting between two hand crank, off grid washing machines. Credit: The Washing Machine Project

Communication is a human right - but what happens when someone can’t speak for themselves?

Sean Allsop struggled to talk until he was eight years old, when he began to speak thanks to years of speech therapy. He explores the technologies and innovations helping people around the world who struggle to communicate.

We meet Richard Cave, National Advisor at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, as he introduces a patient and their family to voice banking, a method that preserves someone's voice before it's lost, using recordings to create a personalised synthetic version. He explains why having your own voice is a major part of your identity.

In the United States, we hear from people trialling a brain chip that turns neural signals into speech. It's still in its early stages, but how close are we to seeing this kind of technology more widely available for those who would benefit from it? A child-friendly robot made in Luxembourg is teaching children with communication difficulties how to express emotions and build social skills. And in San Cesareo, Italy, the simplest solutions can sometimes prove the most effective. The town has introduced AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) sign boards in public spaces, helping both users and non-users learn and connect.

Image: A student pointing at an image on an AAC sign board (Credit: Eleonora Vallerotonda)