What should we do with our rubbish-strewn roadside verges? Treasure them.

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>Roadside verge in the Peak District


Wild common spotted orchids grow in a roadside verge in the Peak District near Sheffield.
Photograph: Deborah Vernon/Alamy Stock Photo

In a ditch by a burger van on the A142 near Ely, Cambridgeshire, lives one of our rarest plants. It is the last natural home of fen ragwort, which shows its yellow flowers each summer despite being assailed by discarded coffee cups and the occasional burning car.

It’s the rarest of many plants for which roadside verges have become a last refuge. The fact that rubbish-strewn verges are home to more than half Britain’s flora – 809 species, according to the charity, Plantlife – is a stark sign of how we have trashed our environment, destroying 97% of wildflower meadows since the 1930s.

But we should cherish and celebrate this amazing, accidental habitat. Many verges are fragments of ancient meadows. Chalky motorway embankments are a machine-made flowery downland, while even the despondent-looking brown edges of regularly salted main roads have been adopted by coastal plants, such as Danish scurvygrass. For the 17 million people who commute by road, verges represent their best chance of encountering nature.

But Plantlife says many verges are neglected or cut far too early in the year. Some, of course, must be trimmed for road safety but verges are where wildlife and austerity are in perfect harmony. Everyone wins from a flower-friendly verge – from cash-strapped councils to the rare black hairstreak butterflies enjoying the blackthorn deliberately planted beside the M40.

The government and councils can save money by managing verges for wildlife – ideally only cutting them in late summer, or even sowing yellow rattle, a small flower that parasitises grass, so reducing growth. Burnley borough council has saved £58,000 a year from wildlife-friendly verge and park management.

This stuff is popular – 81% of the public back calls for councils to reduce cutting of verges and parks to help bees and wildflowers, according to a recent Friends of the Earth and Buglife poll. So if you happen to be an apparatchik currently rushing to write a manifesto for a struggling mainstream political party, a commitment to creating 100,000 miles of roadside reserves would be a cheap and imaginative dash of colour.

Bottom feeders

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>Three Limaria hians on the surface of a flame shell bed.


Three Limaria hians on the surface of a flame shell bed. Photograph: Graham Saunders/Scottish Natural/PA

Very visible verges are easily co-opted into conservation. Less easily enjoyed marine life is out of sight, and out of mind. This month, a fishing boat twice visited the Loch Carron reef east of Skye. Marine experts report its dredger – which ploughs the seabed – has devastated a reef of rare flame shells, a beautiful mollusc that nests on the seabed. Such fishing destroys itself by obliterating the natural nurseries that raise young scallops. Most stupidly, it’s still completely legal.

Waste of energy

<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station


Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. Last week Britain experienced its first full day without generating any electricity from coal since the industrial revolution. Photograph: David Davies/PA

Perhaps I imagined it, but the chilly wind in Norfolk felt particularly invigorating on Friday, the first working day since the industrial revolution that Britain was not powered by coal at all. From coal generating around 23% of electricity in 2015 to nothing for a day in 2017, and nothing all year by 2025, when Britain’s last coal power station must close, is a miraculous and hopeful transition.

The government has (temporarily) decimated the solar industry by prematurely cutting its subsidy. New-generation nuclear is expensive and dangerous. Meanwhile, importing gas and burning wood – biomass – is filling the breach. Turning waste sawdust into fuel is a neat idea if small-scale and derived from local, replenishable forests. Importing it from North America on diesel-powered ships is less clever.

If we can quit coal, we must quit dirty diesel too, but millions of new electric cars will require even more clean electricity. Ultimately, there’s only one technofix: work and live more smartly, by consuming much less energy.