George Monbiot refers to the young women sentenced last week to two years and 20 months respectively as climate protesters (As the waters rise, a two-year sentence for throwing soup. That’s the farcical reality of British justice, 1 October). Perhaps a term we now need to use, after the disproportionate sentencing witnessed over the last year, is “prisoners of conscience”. I find it shocking that both major parties in the UK think it is acceptable to have prisoners of conscience in our jails.
Rosalind Trantor
Batheaston, Somerset
• Your excellent exposé (Most soft plastic collected for recycling is burned, campaigners say, 1 October) says incinerated plastic is “burned for energy”. While this is a technically accurate term, burning waste “for energy” is worse than coal in terms of emissions. Any energy produced as a byproduct of incineration is dirty energy. The term is a form of greenwash. You should avoid it.
Ann Jones
London
