Carriers
Posted: Mon 7 August, 2006 Filed under: Green, Sweary, Thoughts 6 Comments »First of all, it’d help if when you do the (supposedly greener, as you’re not driving to the supermarket, and they can do multiple deliveries on one run) shopping online, they don’t deliver everything in fucking plastic bags. Particularly when you end up with so many bags with just one bloody item in them. That’d help a lot more.
And why not “just” make bags that actually, you know, biodegrade? Rather than lasting for the next 150 years in a sodding landfill? Waitrose had them at least fifteen years ago, and they were photodegradeable – slight flaw, as on sunny days they did have a nasty habit of breaking before you got home – but still, it was done fifteen sodding years ago.
If Tesco (and all the others) were actually bothered, instead of just paying lip service to the entire Green thing, then they’d buy in degradeable plastic bags, or do a far better job of promoting their “bag for life” scheme. (which seems to have done a bit of a disappearing act of late) But as it is, well, it’s just a buzzword, a theme for the moment, and so long as they’re seen to be paying lip service to it, and so long as it doesn’t actually cost them a fucking penny, then they’ll be all for this kind of bullshit PR stunt…
You’ll Never Put A Better Bit Of Butter On Your Knife
Posted: Sun 23 July, 2006 Filed under: Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »One of the best print adverts I’ve seen recently is for Country Life butter. (Most people will probably best remember Country Life for it’s slogan that’s the title for this post, and the “buttermen” adverts)
The Ad points out that Anchor (their nearest rival in the market) is made in New Zealand, then shipped over in frozen containers across half the world. It’s a bloody good point…
Critical Mass
Posted: Tue 27 June, 2006 Filed under: Green, News 1 Comment »Nice to see that Critical Mass , a monthly event in London, has been judged to be lawful by the High Court, finding against the Metroplitan Police’s claim that it was an unlawful event.
The London ride is part of a worldwide phenomenon and has taken place on the last Friday of the month, every month, for the past 12 years, with riders gathering on the South Bank from 6pm.
But last September, before the start of that month’s ride, cycle police, who always accompany the cyclists, distributed a letter to participants stating the Critical Mass demonstrations were not lawful.
Water Butts
Posted: Mon 26 June, 2006 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, General, Green 2 Comments »A while ago, we bought a couple of water butts, in order to save some rainwater for the garden, and all that jazz. (In fact, we now have three water butts, including one that was getting used (and probably will again) for “grey water” – ie washing-up water etc.)
Anyway, out of the three we’ve got, only one has a tap that doesn’t leak. Turns out, two of them were supplied without all the parts for the taps, so they didn’t seal properly – we ended up fixing it with silicone sealant, but all the same, on one it still drips.
Eventually I got round to emailing Sankey, the people who made the butts in the first place, and asked about getting a couple of the missing nuts for the taps.
I got an email today (which had been filtered into “junk mail” because of the subject line – “Butt Taps”) saying they’re going to send out the spare parts. Woo, and indeed Yay.
Drip, Drip, Drip – Extra
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Green Leave a comment »Ah, I do like annoying people.
I’ve just emailed the following to Thames Water’s customer services.
To whom it may concern,
If, as your current news story puts it, “Approximately a quarter of all leakage is on customers’ pipes.�, that still means that three-quarters of all leakage is on TW’s side of the pipes.
How does a utility company justify selling people a product, and then telling them they can’t use it?
How does a utility company justify leaks that amount to the equivalent of 6.6 million people’s daily usage ( using the DFID’s estimate of 135 litres per person per day ) every day ?
I’m just interested to know.
Sincerely
Lyle
Should be interesting to see what they come up with…
Drip, Drip, Drip
Posted: Thu 22 June, 2006 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts, Weirdness 17 Comments »How on earth can a water company justify losing 894 million litres per day of water? That’s something like 675,000 litres per second.
Taking the assumption that a person uses about 135 litres of water per day, that loss is equal to the water supply for 6.6million people. Considering that Thames Water only supplies 8 million people all told, that’s a pretty fucking big loss, I’d say. In fact, if you take into account the people they do supply, as well as the amount they’re losing, if they were an efficient company, they could supply 14.5 million people. That’d make the shareholders happy.
So how come it’s the users of Thames Water who are penalised by drought orders and hosepipe bans, when Thames Water themselves are the biggest water wasters of all?
Packaging
Posted: Tue 20 June, 2006 Filed under: Getting Organised, Green 1 Comment »It’s good to see that at last a fairly large domestic organisation is starting to protest to supermarkets about the excessive amount of food packaging they use.
Yes, the Women’s Institute (WI) is going green! And about time too.
Food packaging has also been one of the goals of Generous.org.uk – another great resource for this kind of green information…