fanboygeeks

What a waste...

Why do shop assistants still put items in carrier bags without asking me if I want one?  I despair at the vast amount of collateral I gather if I ever go to McDonalds, and at my local baker's the assistant smiles mockingly with recognition at me when I buy a cake saying "you don't want a carrier bag do you".  Surely we're all aware these days of the impact that needless waste has on our environment. 

What I just don't get, though, is that training staff to ask "would you like a carrier bag" instead of assuming is an opportunity to (1) save your business the cost of the carrier bag (2) demonstrate to your customer that you care about the environment, both local and worldwide, and (3) encourage people to recycle their old carrier bags.

What brought this on was reading a post about packaging on Seth Godin's blog.  A watch purchase led to a ridiculous amount of accompanying packaging.  I couldn't resist sharing a photo I took of the packaging that came with the watch I bought my wife for her birthday in November.  A pound and a half of wood, plastic cloth, cardboard and paper.  The vast bulk being completely unnecessary.  Surely all of the brochures at least could be online?

Seriously, as opposed to making products more luxurious, I see the waste and it turns me off.  Not a good feeling to create in a prospective customer.

Stu

Only "fairly" ethical?

While filming in a bank in the city last week, I happened upon a Cafe Joe vending machine offering "premium drinks, ethically traded".  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure...

Anyway, what caught my eye was a particularly poor piece of typography and design.  Check out the picture here and see if you made the same mistake that I made - "Fairly ethically traded".  "Fairly ethical"?!  What does that mean?  Do they only rip off the coffee growers a little bit, or do they only rip off every second farmer in Ethiopia?

Of course, taking a closer look, the logo actually says, "Fairly and ethically traded", which isn't so bad.  But, did no-one else in the client/designer/manufacturer chain notice what I and every single person I've shown this to noticed?

Stu ;-)

The reporting of "Green"

Boeing are unveiling their new 787 "Dreamliner" long-haul jet on Sunday.  Their PR machine is doing its best to laud it as an environmentally-friendly aircraft.  Apparently it burns 27% less fuel than its equivalent aircraft - for example an Airbus A340.

Excuse me.  An environmentally friendly aircraft?  Why do we allow corporations to say the words "environmentally-friendly" and "aircraft" in the same sentence without shooting them down?

Linked to the "story" of the Dreamliner launch on BBC Online was a "story" from April of Virgin Airways ordering 15 of the Boeing planes.  The headline was "Virgin orders 'green' Boeing jets".  For supposedly the greatest news organisation in the world, that surely ranks up there with the most ludicrous oxymororonic headlines ever published.

On a round trip from New York to London, according to the calculations of the Edinburgh Center for Carbon Management in Scotland, a Boeing 747 spews out about 440 tons of carbon dioxide every time I fly to New York.  If I knock off a quarter of that, by what stretch of the imagination is that "green".  Just because Boeing and Virgin's PR companies kid themselves that their aircraft are fueled by water and oxygen comes out of the exhaust, it doesn't mean that's true.

I'm getting bored saying this every week - the BBC really must stop their journalists writing up stories by copying and pasting from PR handouts.

Stu

Airline Environment Madness

The news is buzzing today with talk of the British Mediterranean Airways "ghost flights" from London Heathrow to Cardiff.  The Sunday Times yesterday revealed that the airline, a British Airways franchise, has been flying two empty Airbus flights per day since October last year in order to keep the Heathrow landing slots they would have otherwise lost when their service to Tashkent in Uzbekistan was cancelled.  In doing so, each trip has pumped 5.21 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Landing slots at Heathrow are highly sought after and are known to be worth up to £10 million.  The landing slot policy, in which 80% of its allocation must be used in a six month period is known as "Use it or Lose it".  Only short-terms exemptions are permitted.

I thought of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when reading this:

Arthur Dent's home is about to be knocked over by a bulldozer.  His alien friend Ford Prefect needs to take Arthur down the pub to tell him that the World is about to end, but Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozer...

BUILDER: Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?

FORD: Can we for the moment assume that he hasn’t?

BUILDER: (sighs) Well, then?

FORD: And can we also assume that he’s going to be staying here all day?

BUILDER: So?

FORD: So all your men are going to be standing around all day, doing nothing.

BUILDER: Could be.

FORD: Well, if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you don’t actually need him to lie here all the time, do you?

BUILDER: What?

FORD: (patiently) You don’t actually need him here.

BUILDER: (considering) Well, no, not as such.… Not exactly need.…

FORD: So, if you would just like to take it that he’s actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?

BUILDER: (going along with it) That sounds reasonable.…

FORD: And no sneaky knocking down Mr. Dent’s house while he’s away, all right?

BUILDER: (deviously) The thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind!

Could British Mediterranean Airways and Heathrow Airport not have come to a similar arrangement?

Stu ;-)

Ethanol - dirty fuel, starving peasants

You may have seen the holamun2 video (below) in the last couple of weeks about how Mexicans may starve because corn is now being used to make ethanol as a gasoline additive/replacement, instead of being used to make corn tortillas, a food staple, particularly for the poor.

Here's the worst irony, though, quoted from Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma":

"The way we grow corn in this country consumes tremendous quantities of fossil fuel. Corn receives more synthetic fertilizer than any other crop, and that fertilizer is made from fossil fuels — mostly natural gas. Corn also receives more pesticide than any other crop, and most of that pesticide is made from petroleum. To plow or disc the cornfields, plant the seed, spray the corn and harvest it takes large amounts of diesel fuel, and to dry the corn after harvest requires natural gas. So by the time your “green” raw material arrives at the ethanol plant, it is already drenched in fossil fuel. Every bushel of corn grown in America has consumed the equivalent of between a third and a half gallon of gasoline.”

So, we use up fossil fuel to create corn, to turn into ethanol, which we can then pretend is a green fuel.

When are we going to stop looking for replacement carbon-based fuel to burn, and just cut down our energy use?

Stu

Passing on the environmental cost of air travel

As I've discussed before, I'm a big air traveller.  Until I decided to become Carbon Neutral, I'd always stressed about how I'm contributing to Global Warming.  I know I'm not unique here but what can the average traveller do, frequent or infrequent, who share these concerns?

Millions of people book flights online these days, particularly on the budget carriers like easyJet and RyanAir.  When booking flights online, we're used to the additional costs that get added such as additional baggage, as well as the other optional services like insurance, car hire and hotel rooms.  So, why can't another item be added - CO2 offset.  This optional cost would be very easy to calculate and per individual would be very small - at best 1% of the flight cost.

By making this fee optional, no-one could complain about it, it would have an obvious environmental benefit, and it would ease a lot of guilt! Oh yes, and it will make the transition to an inevitable mandatory tax easier...

Here's why it won't happen, though: airlines would be in-effect acknowledging the link between CO2 emission and Global Warming.  And that won't happen for a long time.  Shame that the clever people who advertise airlines couldn't be tasked with finding a clever way to overcome this...

Stu

Carbon neutral for 2007!

After spending Christmas in New York and Florida, flown to Scotland and back this weekend for my sister's wedding party and having already booked my next New York trip in April, I've decided that I can't continue to obsess about the environment when my carbon footprint is as big as the Jolly (not so) Green Giant.

My wife discovered a website called Carbonfund.org that enables you calculate how much CO2 you're responsible for and offset it by supporting renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects.  The cost for my not inconsiderable contribution to polluting the upper atmosphere this year: £60.

Considering my average yearly travel will at least include 3 or 4 returns to New York, a return to the US west coast, a trip to Eastern Canada and a good half dozen return trips within the UK and Europe I think that £60 is a small amount to pay to help lift the guilt from my shoulders, as well as make up for my part in Global Warming.

So, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week responded to a call to cut down his international travel as "impractical", it really was a missed opportunity.  Blair went on to say, "I personally think these things are a bit impractical actually to expect people to do that...It's like telling people you shouldn't drive anywhere".

If the Prime Minister was serious about environmental issues, he should have, like Conservative Leader David Cameron, long ago started off-setting his personal travel.  It wouldn't have cost much, it would have been marvellous (much needed) PR for him and more importantly it would have provided opportunities to promote carbon neutrality scheme, which would have been expanding upon at great length by our hungry media who have hours of airtime, acres of newsprint and millions of pixels to fill.

Instead, a Number 10 spokesman later said that Mr Blair WILL offset emissions from his holiday flights - a begrudged, face-saving gesture from a spin doctor.  However, the Prime Minister's own website records that he only offset himself and not the other 4 members of his family, "Asked to clarify whether the Prime Minister was offsetting his own travel, or that of the whole family, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that it was his personal travel, but the PMOS was not going to get involved further".

The British Government has a plan in place to be carbon neutral, but not until 2012.  As a frequent business traveller the Prime Minister could have, as a result of this publicity, led the way in encouraging individuals and businesses alike to take personal responsibility for their carbon footprint.

Sadly, our Prime Minsiter has revealed that his environmental credentials don't stand up to scrutiny.

Stu

Hysterical Europeans and Global Warming

“Out of 925 recent articles in peer reviewed scientific journals about global warming, there is no disagreement. Zero."

"Since the 1990s, 57% of articles in newspapers and magazines press question the evidence of global warming."

So Al Gore enlightened us in "An Inconvenient Truth".

There's no ambiguity there.  The issue of Global Warming is being repositioned to the public as a debate, through the PR of corporations with vested interests.

Do you question that?

Yesterday, Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint attacked European attitudes to global warming, describing climate change as "way, way in the future, with a high degree of uncertainty".

"Europe seems to take a political position that some people might describe, not me of course, that some people might describe as quasi-hysterical, that the sky is falling."

"We think they should deal with it in a step-by-step, rational way and not play much Chicken Little."

BBC Online reported that Mr Jolissaint was speaking at a private breakfast at the Detroit Motor Show where the chief economists of the "Big Three" US car firms presented their forecasts for auto industry sales this year.  Most of the audience - which was mainly made up of parts suppliers - apparently nodded in agreement with Mr Jolissaint.

Still question it?

Stu

ps  It's Chicken Lickin Mr Jolissaint, not Chicken Little.  Chicken Little doesn't rhyme.  It's Henny Penny,  Foxy Loxy, Cocky Locky, Turkey Lurkey, Loosey Goosey, Holey Moley and Chicken Licken.

Technology empowering the Developing World (2)

The $100 laptop is almost ready to ship, with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand all set to be receiving them this summer.

Since it's inception, may people have said, "I'd like a $100 laptop too", but the concept is for children in the Third World to benefit from the Linux-based machine.

However, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) group has come up with a novel marketing plan to enable people to buy one: buy two, get one: buy two, get one - you get one, and a child in the developing world gets one.  The buyer will then get the email address of the recipient child that they have effectively sponsored.  Google will be providing tools to enable the children to publish on the Web.

With corporations lining up to exploit Third World countries as a new source of cheap labour, I get a kick out of the notion of an African child saying to Nike, "no thanks, I don't need your sweat-shop job, I'm a web designer".

Stu ;-)

Water on Mars!

Yesterday, an excited rumour started spreading in the science community (and quickly the web community) that NASA was about to confirm an astonishing discovery on Mars.  And boy they didn't disappoint.

The best evidence yet of flowing water has been discovered on Mars.  Not frozen stuff on the polar caps, not frozen deposits deep underground, but flowing surface water.

NASA showed comparative photographs from 1999 and 2005 taken by the Mars Global Surveyor that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

"The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," said Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "They have finger-like branches at the downhill end and easily diverted around small obstacles."

Sadly, the Mars Global Surveyor has not communicated with Earth since November 2, suggesting that it's suffered a power failure.  Both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Opportunity Rover have been unable to contact it either.

Stu ;-)