So as I've mentioned before, there seems to exist this peculiar idea that we can avert an environmental crisis by changing our shopping habits instead of cutting back on the sprees'. Now I'm as guilty as the next person of maybe spending a bit too much money on a Saturday afternoon in the town. Shopping. Is. Fun. And, to some extent, changing what you buy and where you buy it from does help, as I already mentioned in my post about buying fair trade and organic produce.
However, things can get taken to extremes. Websites such as www.ethicalsuperstore.com , whilst being invaluable to me for supplying the only fair-trade Earl Grey tea in existence (as far as I'm aware), also seem to make quite a healthy buck peddling some of the most dubious-sounding Eco-gadgets I've ever heard of. Take, for instance, the inflatable chimney pillow. It pretty much is what the name suggests it is. It's basically a giant bath pillow that you blow up and stick up the chimney to "allow ventilation, but stop unwanted draughts, debris, and noise entering your home." Don't worry though, if you accidentally forget about it and light a fire underneath it, it should "shrivel and deflate". Good stuff. But, wait a minute. I don't claim to have any knowledge whatsoever of the structure of your average chimney, but a vague memory of the fireplace in my grandparent's house tells me that usually, most chimneys have a sort of metal flap that closes over the fireplace to stop things like "unwanted draughts, debris and noise". Wikipedia has confirmed this suspicion of mine, and informed me that this metal flap is in fact called a damper. So, the magical wonderful inflatable chimney pillow is designed to do a job that you average conforms-to-industry-safety-standards fireplace does already? I smell a pointless product....
Another useless investment you might wish to make if you've a spare £229 knocking about is the "Multi Tech Intelli Pro Air Purifier". This contraption will "destroy air pollutants and bacteria" for you in your home. Presumably this gadget is aimed at those world-weary souls who, after years and years fighting the good fight trying to save the world by buying fair trade everything, have realised that the whole planet's still going to go to hell in a hand basket, but would rather not go themselves just yet. So, whilst still happy to consume away the planet, they remove one effect of their habits, air pollution, from their immediate vicinity and their loved ones, the rest of the planet can merrily choke on the fumes produced by their greedy shopping habits. Isn't it nice to know people haven't lost hope (or their hunger for More Stuff).
Shopping may be fun, but don't let Eco-friendly labels cloud your judgement into thinking that shopping is the answer to the world's problems.
xx
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Monday, 21 September 2009
Some good news for the Arctic...?
Believe it or not, it's September already. Tree leaves are turning brownishreddishyellowish gold; blackberries are appearing on bramble hedgerows and in fridges/lunchboxes up and down the country; and yes, no matter how much you hate it and how completely unnecessary it seems, the first of the Christmas adverts will appear on TV, probably around teatime on ITV.
Something else that happens at around this time of year, one which tends not to grab our attention in the same way that that overplayed Slade Christmas song might, is that Arctic ice stops retreating and starts replenishing itself. (er, what? I hear you mumble...). It goes something like this. The Arctic pole consists entirely of ice. Every summer, that ice melts, or retreats, due to the (comparatively) warmer weather. Every winter, this ice replenishes itself. This thawing-and-freezing pattern is completely natural in itself as different seasons bring different temperatures, even to the Arctic, etc etc.
What is not natural is the extent to which Arctic ice has been melting in the last few years. Boffins in white lab coats (not me, honest) have been measuring Arctic ice since forever, (well, 1950 or something), including its extent in the middle of each annual summer and its extent in the middle of each annual winter. So, when these boffins say that in recent years, the extent (the amount of ocean the ice covers) of Arctic sea ice in the middle of summer has decreased, there's a pretty sure chance they're right. However, this year, according to the boffins from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the ice in the Arctic didn't melt as much over the summer of 2009 as it had done in the previous two years. According to a BBC news article, this is due to two reasons: firstly, temperatures have been cooler this year, and secondly, it's been windier, meaning a lot of ice got blown about over a larger area than normal.
Aha, I hear you say. So the Arctic didn't melt as much this year because temperatures have been cooler? What happened to this so-called global warming thing that everyone's got their knickers in a twist over? Well, on the surface it does seem a bit confusing. Two things to bear in mind are that, firstly, 2007 and 2008 were reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad years for Arctic ice melting, so it wouldn't take much for things to get better, and secondly that even though the ice didn't melt as much this year, at its minimum the ice covered 24% less ocean than the 1979-2000 average. So, things aren't as bad, but they're still bad. What will be interesting to see is how much the ice melts next year. This will show us whether or not this year was a fluke cold year and the ice-melting trend is still rapidly downward, or whether in fact things aren't getting as bad as quickly as 2007 and 2008 suggested and Arctic ice is not melting as fast as first thought.
But it's still melting.
xx
Something else that happens at around this time of year, one which tends not to grab our attention in the same way that that overplayed Slade Christmas song might, is that Arctic ice stops retreating and starts replenishing itself. (er, what? I hear you mumble...). It goes something like this. The Arctic pole consists entirely of ice. Every summer, that ice melts, or retreats, due to the (comparatively) warmer weather. Every winter, this ice replenishes itself. This thawing-and-freezing pattern is completely natural in itself as different seasons bring different temperatures, even to the Arctic, etc etc.
What is not natural is the extent to which Arctic ice has been melting in the last few years. Boffins in white lab coats (not me, honest) have been measuring Arctic ice since forever, (well, 1950 or something), including its extent in the middle of each annual summer and its extent in the middle of each annual winter. So, when these boffins say that in recent years, the extent (the amount of ocean the ice covers) of Arctic sea ice in the middle of summer has decreased, there's a pretty sure chance they're right. However, this year, according to the boffins from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the ice in the Arctic didn't melt as much over the summer of 2009 as it had done in the previous two years. According to a BBC news article, this is due to two reasons: firstly, temperatures have been cooler this year, and secondly, it's been windier, meaning a lot of ice got blown about over a larger area than normal.
Aha, I hear you say. So the Arctic didn't melt as much this year because temperatures have been cooler? What happened to this so-called global warming thing that everyone's got their knickers in a twist over? Well, on the surface it does seem a bit confusing. Two things to bear in mind are that, firstly, 2007 and 2008 were reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad years for Arctic ice melting, so it wouldn't take much for things to get better, and secondly that even though the ice didn't melt as much this year, at its minimum the ice covered 24% less ocean than the 1979-2000 average. So, things aren't as bad, but they're still bad. What will be interesting to see is how much the ice melts next year. This will show us whether or not this year was a fluke cold year and the ice-melting trend is still rapidly downward, or whether in fact things aren't getting as bad as quickly as 2007 and 2008 suggested and Arctic ice is not melting as fast as first thought.
But it's still melting.
xx
Sunday, 13 September 2009
A quick guide to rainforest alliance fair-trade certified organically grown this-product-was-not-tested-on-animals domestic bleach
As can be proven by the response of pretty much every government the world over to the economic crisis and impending recession, the best solution your average free-market economy can come up with when faced with a problem is to throw money at it and hope it goes away. Similarly, when we as a society were first alerted to the fact that our consumption habits may well be not only wrecking the environment but making poor people in poor countries poorer, our best solution was not to buy less stuff but to make the stuff we bought eco-friendly, people-friendly and planet-friendly. What do you know, apparently you can shop your way out of a crisis.
However, I don’t know if you noticed on your last trip to Tesco, but things have got slightly out of hand. Firstly, you’ve got your organic stuff. I reckon you can probably now find an “organic” version of almost everything Tesco sells, maybe with the exception of their electronics department and shoe polish. I use the term in inverted commas because not everything that says it is organic on the label is actually certified as organic by the UK Soil Association, who are the bunch of anoraks who sit around in fields with clipboards and thermos flasks and regulate the organicness of the fertiliser the farmer uses etc. etc. etc., so watch out. Then, you’ve got your Fair-trade-labelled stuff. This is actually the one label that you can trust fairly well; products bearing it, usually tea, coffee, bananas, sugar or chocolate amongst other things, will have been produced under reasonably humane, eco-friendly conditions, since to gain fair-trade certification, farmers, or farmer’s co-operatives, have to abide by pretty strict rules when it comes to things like health and safety and the right to a decent wage for workers, sharing out the profits in co-operatives and small producer’s organisations, and respect for the environment. Then, as anyone who was around in the 90’s when there was so much fuss about animal welfare will well know, you can usually get your hands on free-range eggs and free-range chicken, or, if budget is a major issue, chicken, eggs and (so I’m told) other meat products that bear the “Freedom Food” label, meaning the conditions in which said product was produced are monitored by the RSPCA. Presumably this means minimal chance of your dinner having lived for only a month, fed growth hormones, never seen the light of day or having spent most of its life treading all over the remains of the chicken with whom it used to share a tiny cage.
You can see where I’m going with this – we’ve already got four labels for four different ways in which food is produced. But hold onto your hats – a mysterious brand is invading a coffee shelf near you. This brand is known as the Rainforest Alliance – it’s the one that those purveyors of dubious coffee-flavoured water, sorry, I mean Starbucks, were championing for so long. A quick Google later and I am enlightened that the Rainforest Alliance “works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practises, business practises and consumer behaviour”. That’s nice and fluffy. But isn’t that pretty much what the Fair-trade Labelling Organisation do? Another few labels I’ve come across on my weekly shop are FSC, who make sure that the forest your bog roll comes from is sustainably managed, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a label to do with sustainably-caught/farmed fish and I’m not even going to get started on all the different eco-friendly labels that are popping up all over packets of Persil laundry tablets and bottles of washing up liquid.
My point is if anyone did ever want to shop a bit greener, they risk utter bewilderment and confusion when confronted with this minefield of eye-catching labels and slogans. I can only just about get my own head around it all and I’ve been trying to buy green for the best part of four years now. But what is worse, in my opinion, is that, even though there’s a plague of green labels out there, the non-green alternative still exists. People will still happily buy Nescafe’s cheapest, nastiest granules, often because it’s cheaper, sometimes because it’s their only option and sometimes because they really don’t understand where their coffee has come from.
In the case of coffee in particular, people who buy the cheap stuff over here are rarely aware that the farmer over there who grew their coffee for them probably works an obscene amount of hours per day, probably can’t afford to send his kids to school, will probably get injured by the age of 40 in a work-related accident and will probably die not long after as a result of the grinding poverty he is forced to live in, all because we would rather spend the 50p we saved in not buying fair-trade coffee on a packet of biscuits instead. This is not me being melodramatic and having a rant. If you do a bit of digging, it becomes clear how wildly the price of coffee in international markets has fluctuated since the start of the century, and if you do even more digging you realise that this is in part due to the big coffee companies such as Nestle effectively controlling the price of the coffee it buys to turn into those appetising looking jars of gravelly brown dust. If you really want to know more about the highway robbery that is the coffee-producing trade, Google the film “Black Gold”.
So no, sorry, the “someone else will just buy it instead” excuse won’t wash here. I know it’s bloody confusing and costs a bit more, but if everyone who said this actually stopped whining and bought greener products, we would all be able to sleep a bit better at night knowing that our breakfast won’t be impoverishing the third world, won’t be damaging the environment as much as it might have and that our eggs and bacon came from happy hens and happy pigs, and that we all stand a better chance of living happily ever after. The end.
xx
However, I don’t know if you noticed on your last trip to Tesco, but things have got slightly out of hand. Firstly, you’ve got your organic stuff. I reckon you can probably now find an “organic” version of almost everything Tesco sells, maybe with the exception of their electronics department and shoe polish. I use the term in inverted commas because not everything that says it is organic on the label is actually certified as organic by the UK Soil Association, who are the bunch of anoraks who sit around in fields with clipboards and thermos flasks and regulate the organicness of the fertiliser the farmer uses etc. etc. etc., so watch out. Then, you’ve got your Fair-trade-labelled stuff. This is actually the one label that you can trust fairly well; products bearing it, usually tea, coffee, bananas, sugar or chocolate amongst other things, will have been produced under reasonably humane, eco-friendly conditions, since to gain fair-trade certification, farmers, or farmer’s co-operatives, have to abide by pretty strict rules when it comes to things like health and safety and the right to a decent wage for workers, sharing out the profits in co-operatives and small producer’s organisations, and respect for the environment. Then, as anyone who was around in the 90’s when there was so much fuss about animal welfare will well know, you can usually get your hands on free-range eggs and free-range chicken, or, if budget is a major issue, chicken, eggs and (so I’m told) other meat products that bear the “Freedom Food” label, meaning the conditions in which said product was produced are monitored by the RSPCA. Presumably this means minimal chance of your dinner having lived for only a month, fed growth hormones, never seen the light of day or having spent most of its life treading all over the remains of the chicken with whom it used to share a tiny cage.
You can see where I’m going with this – we’ve already got four labels for four different ways in which food is produced. But hold onto your hats – a mysterious brand is invading a coffee shelf near you. This brand is known as the Rainforest Alliance – it’s the one that those purveyors of dubious coffee-flavoured water, sorry, I mean Starbucks, were championing for so long. A quick Google later and I am enlightened that the Rainforest Alliance “works to conserve biodiversity and ensure sustainable livelihoods by transforming land-use practises, business practises and consumer behaviour”. That’s nice and fluffy. But isn’t that pretty much what the Fair-trade Labelling Organisation do? Another few labels I’ve come across on my weekly shop are FSC, who make sure that the forest your bog roll comes from is sustainably managed, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a label to do with sustainably-caught/farmed fish and I’m not even going to get started on all the different eco-friendly labels that are popping up all over packets of Persil laundry tablets and bottles of washing up liquid.
My point is if anyone did ever want to shop a bit greener, they risk utter bewilderment and confusion when confronted with this minefield of eye-catching labels and slogans. I can only just about get my own head around it all and I’ve been trying to buy green for the best part of four years now. But what is worse, in my opinion, is that, even though there’s a plague of green labels out there, the non-green alternative still exists. People will still happily buy Nescafe’s cheapest, nastiest granules, often because it’s cheaper, sometimes because it’s their only option and sometimes because they really don’t understand where their coffee has come from.
In the case of coffee in particular, people who buy the cheap stuff over here are rarely aware that the farmer over there who grew their coffee for them probably works an obscene amount of hours per day, probably can’t afford to send his kids to school, will probably get injured by the age of 40 in a work-related accident and will probably die not long after as a result of the grinding poverty he is forced to live in, all because we would rather spend the 50p we saved in not buying fair-trade coffee on a packet of biscuits instead. This is not me being melodramatic and having a rant. If you do a bit of digging, it becomes clear how wildly the price of coffee in international markets has fluctuated since the start of the century, and if you do even more digging you realise that this is in part due to the big coffee companies such as Nestle effectively controlling the price of the coffee it buys to turn into those appetising looking jars of gravelly brown dust. If you really want to know more about the highway robbery that is the coffee-producing trade, Google the film “Black Gold”.
So no, sorry, the “someone else will just buy it instead” excuse won’t wash here. I know it’s bloody confusing and costs a bit more, but if everyone who said this actually stopped whining and bought greener products, we would all be able to sleep a bit better at night knowing that our breakfast won’t be impoverishing the third world, won’t be damaging the environment as much as it might have and that our eggs and bacon came from happy hens and happy pigs, and that we all stand a better chance of living happily ever after. The end.
xx
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