I went to Edinburgh botanic garden today. The visitors' shops of such places are often nesting places for the monsters that spawn green tat.
Here I found the "biodegradable ballpoint pen". Pick it up and look at it: apart from the reassuring "planet loving" messages screaming out from its barrel, it looks and feels like a completely normal pen. And I'd be happy to bet that all its biodegradable parts are made from fossil fuels.
Is it really 'loving the planet' if you buy this fossil-fuel-plastic pen and chuck it away, rather than buying a (ten times cheaper) normal fossil-fuel-plastic pen and chuck it away?
I nominate this pen for the Hot Air Oscars consumer feel-good tat award.
7 comments:
I like the 'Hot Air Oscars' idea, it could be great for public awareness.
I really think you should consider changing the name though, you could cause yourself trouble.
Having a competition to come up with a witty name could help awareness even more.
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Would the most planet-loving ballpoint perhaps be the one with replaceable refill?
PS On the 1/10 of the cost issue however, I do seem to remember the entrance charges of the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens entrance charge as considerably less than 1/10that of the Cambridge Botanic Gardens...
How do you know it is fossil fuel plastic? Is it not possible it is made from corn starch?
I don't know, but I bet that they would have made a big fuss on the advertising if the pen were made from plastics from a bio source. So I am happy to bet a can full of greenwash-remover that it was not.
how about these guys for hot air http://failblog.org/2009/04/28/going-green-fail/?cp=2#comments
Shane
I recently encountered the word plasti-crap on another envrionmental blog which I think is wonderfully evocative of this kind of nonsense to the less couth cohort of your readers.
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