Not a drop of common sense on bottled water

Harrogate Spring Water | Google’s new chip | ‘Busybody’ fines | Justin Welby’s speech | Old Etonians

You report (9 December) that Harrogate Spring Water – owned by the multinational Danone, the world’s second-largest producer of bottled water – is planning to cut down a wood planted by schoolchildren in order to expand its bottling factory. Net result: more plastic bottles, fewer mature trees to extract carbon from the atmosphere. Bottled water is unnecessary when tap water is available. Environmental crisis, what environmental crisis?
Julia Wood
Duns, Berwickshire

 How sad – but how telling – that one of the first uses thought up for Google’s new quantum computing chip should be “the creation of new drugs” (Report, 9 December), rather than, say, how to abolish poverty and homelessness.
Pete Lavender
Nottingham

 Re your article (‘Busybody’ fines up 42% in 2023 in England and Wales, report shows, 6 December), while some of the reasons cited for these fines are unreasonable, I’d be delighted if more councils penalised people who litter, spit and leave dog mess. I’d actually encourage my council to report on “busybody” fine statistics publicly as evidence of their effectiveness.
Naomi Bowler
Bristol

 It seems that Justin Welby, in his self-pitying farewell in the Lords, forgot that it is not the shepherd of the flock who is meant to do the bleating (Report, 6 December).
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, London

 Re Justin Welby’s farewell speech in the House of Lords, why is it that so many Old Etonians seem unable to read the room?
Nigel Gann
Lichfield, Staffordshire

Cover photo: Harrogate Spring Water, which is owned by Danone, is planning to cut down a wood planted by schoolchildren. Photograph: Alamy