I quote below from a most amusing piece by Craig Emerson published today in The OZ I suggest that it should be compulsory reading for all Latte Sippers because he enunciates very clearly the problem of following the Green Religion if you want to actually do the right thing for the environment.
Recycling, we are told, is a good way to do our bit saving the environment. Anyone questioning the environmental benefits of recycling is branded a heretic. In some cities, up to 80 per cent of glass collected for recycling actually ends up in landfill because the cost of separating the different colours of glass is too high. But we feel good.
As director-general of the Queensland environment department in the early ’90s I inquired into the life-cycle benefits of container deposit legislation.
Glass bottles destined for reuse need to be many times the thickness of those that are melted down or disposed of in landfill. We discovered that by the time account was taken of the energy and water costs of collecting, transporting and washing the bottles, reuse of bottles was bad for the environment. We dared not release the results of the study for fear of being howled down as environmental vandals.
Recycling of some materials makes good environmental sense but of others it does not. Recycling proposals should be evaluated on the basis of good scientific evidence and not pursued simply because they make us feel good.
Consumer magazines such as Choice have begun to expose as greenwash the claims companies make about their products in an attempt to cash in on environmental ignorance.
A bottle of air freshener is claimed to be biodegradable, but only the cardboard packet is. Products are promoted as being CFC-free, a true but irrelevant claim since all CFCs were banned in the late ’90s. Some items are said to be made from renewable forest products, as if some species of trees are non-renewable.
Free-range chickens and organic fruit are good. But watch out for the next innovation: free-range fruit. Can you imagine the advertisement featuring dancing fruit trees all singing in harmony: “give me land, lots of land ‘neath the starry skies above, don’t fence me in.”
And remember, when you’re told a product is 90 per cent fat-free, they’re really telling you it’s 10 per cent pure fat.
Despite suggestions to the contrary I do care very much about our environment, I do practical things like reuse and refurbish many of the accoutrements of our modern life, I refuse excess packaging when I visit the fine Scottish restaurant, heck I even read most of the papers online to save the trees that would be used to make the paper.( the fact that they won’t deliver here is incidental, Honest 
) However lets all be real about what is actually good for the environment and what is just pretence.
Treading lightly on the planet Comrades
Cheers!
Filed under: Domestic life, Ethical questions, Green Hypocrites, Leftism, Living with Nature, McDonalds, Political Correctness, Popular Culture, Renewables | Tagged: Craig Emerson
What is the “excess packaging” you’re refusing at Maccas, Iain? Is it the the paper wrappers around the burgers themselves? And how do you do that? – they’re pre-wrapped before you even order.
And I can’t imagine anyone saying, “Just put my fries direct lyon the tray and give me a glass for the Coke, not a paper cup.”
Or do you just mean you reject the brown paper bag they put your take-away order in?
My regular Maccas has taken to putting all orders into paper bags , when you are eating in and boy does it annoy me! because the bag is used fro all of the 5 seconds it takes to walk from the counter to your table, Utterly pointless waste of paper bags that is.
Maybe they’re just cutting back on the amount of plastic trays they use? After all, paper is bio-degradable and a renewable resource, whereas platic is made from oil.
plastic trays are washed and reused Ray, paper bags are simply thrown away
Macca’s is a disaster.
The stores are ugly and blot the landscape, as they destroy any local character in small shopping villages and homogenise our country into a bad US clone.
The child workers are exploited and learn robotic Orwellian work practices (would you like fries with that, have a nice day!).
The food is poison and should never be fed to children if you want them to grow up healthy. Adults are wise to stay clear of high fat, high sugar, high GI food as well.
The Government should add an Alco-pop type of tax onto this kind of fast food, say about 200%
Parents who ‘reward’ their kids with a Big Mac need to be sent to a re-education camp for a year or two.
How predictable Craigy
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, only a Luddite would want to pickle our street scapes in a sort of anti-change aspic.
Young workers learn the value of team work, good hygiene, good manner (often for the first time in their lives) and the value of a dollar earned as opposed to a dollar extracted from mum, dad or Centerlink.
Yawn! In moderation, all fast food has it’s place for growing children and adults as well.
Commissar Craigy I note how quickly you revert to the tenants of the totalitarian left when it comes to the proletariat
“beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
If you think Macca’s adds to the Australian aesthetic Iain, you need you eyes checked.
“Young workers learn the value of team work, good hygiene, good manner (often for the first time in their lives) and the value of a dollar earned as opposed to a dollar extracted from mum, dad or Centerlink.”
There are much better jobs and bosses to teach our kids these things Iain, jobs where you aren’t selling crap to idiots. Macca’s train brain dead automatons that learn how exploitation works by following the Macca’s training ’system’.
“Yawn! In moderation, all fast food has it’s place for growing children and adults as well.”
Yawn Iain, what a lot of crap! Macca’s is available everywhere.
When I see groups of kids hanging out at the local fruit shop or having their Birthday celebrations in a slow food, locally owned cafe that sells real quality food, then you might have a point about moderation.
Unfortunately we have far too many kids eating this junk and becoming fat and sick to confirm your moderation claim. Fast food is not consumed in moderation, it is, as I said, everywhere and dominates the desire of kids who are told it’s okay to reward yourself with junk.
“Commissar Craigy I note how quickly you revert to the tenants of the totalitarian left when it comes to the proletariat “
Thank you Comrade. Now off to re-education before your children become slaves to capitalistic greed and die an early ,sick and painful death.
Perhaps 6 months working for a ‘Friends of the Earth’ co-op would be a good start followed by 6 months working as a liposuction technician.
My point being of course that the aesthetics of our street scapes is subjective and that for some haters of any kind of “fast food”, not unlike your self Craigy, any building that has a commercial purpose is an anathema.
Utter Rubbish Craigy! Have you ever worked in fast Food? do you have any first hand experience of the way that young people are trained in that industry? Or are you just basing these claims of leftist prejudice?
While I would certainly not suggest that anyone do a Morgan Spurlock and try to live on it, byt moderation I mean that fast food should be eaten occasionally, and that would apply no matter how many outlets are out there. as for your slow food cafes they are far more likely to give you food poisoning through poor hygiene than any fast food franchise on the model used by MacDonalds.
Firstly I am suggesting that any takeaway food , consumed in moderation (that means infrequently) does no harm to anybody. You will find no nutritionist who disagrees with my proposition. The fact that there are many sellers of the food does not contradict my position, nor does the fact that some people who live in the city are immoderate in their consumption. Finally the nutritional pyramid model of eating suggests that it is entirely appropriate that certain foods be used for reward or celebration, once again in moderation.
Because I live in a rural circumstance my children have few opportunities to eat fast food of any description so they are learning that it is a treat, but I actually hope that they do learn to be a success in the pursuit of capitalism but that they also learn that the persuit of “more” for it’s own sake is ultimately rather empty and pointless.
“by moderation I mean that fast food should be eaten occasionally, and that would apply no matter how many outlets are out there.”
You are ignoring the fact that the reason we have so many fast food outlets is that people don’t eat it in moderation. It is way too convenient and cheap. The only way to fix the problem is to educate our kids that it is addictive, overly convenient junk, that is best avoided.
“as for your slow food cafes they are far more likely to give you food poisoning through poor hygiene than any fast food franchise on the model used by MacDonald’s. “
True Iain, when you process and cook the living Jesus out of food, then deep freeze it only to reheat it in a vat of boiling fat or on a red hot, greasy hot plate, there is very little chance of contamination, and very little nutrient left either. If you cook a piece of fresh fish on a grill so it’s nice and soft you MAY get food poisoning. I know which one is better for me and tastes better though.