If I turned you off back there

[j4]

"On televisions, for example, we would like to see labels saying 'if you watch it, it will cost x pence per hour, if you leave it on standby, it will cost y pence'. Then you can present the environmental cost in monetary terms"

But that's not actually presenting the environmental cost at all, really, is it? Unless you add "WHICH MEANS that when you sink into drooling oblivion in front of the flickering forms of minor celebrities bonking in a bath of baked beans you are not only wasting the product of several thousand years of human evolution but also SYSTEMATICALLY RAPING THE PLANET and leaving it an UNINHABITABLE WASTE LAND, you selfish cretin." Really. Is it. I mean.

That's before we get to the question of how in the name of -- well, frankly, anything you care to name -- an electric toothbrush can be regarded as "essential".

I think I'm just in a bad mood today.

Comments

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that were me. btw I'm back in Ox now. Want tea some time?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ah, I wondered who it was. I'm still wrestling with the environmental consequences of drinking tea, so can I get back to you on that? (Tea in teabags comes in a cardboard box, which I can recycle, or could if Vale of the White Horse had cardboard recycling, but at least biodegrades eventually; loose-leaf tea comes in plastic bags, which I can't recycle, and biodegrades much slower if at all. Now if only I could buy loose-leaf tea by the scoop and take it home in a reusable bag of my own, though then there's the shoe-leather to think of, or the bicycle tyre rubber, and of course if I cycle I risk making a car overtake me which means it will do a slightly longer journey and use more petrol, and, oh dear.)

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

:-)

Isn't foil recyclable by some councils?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Yep (including ours). We can do foil, tins, bottles, plastic, batteries, windowed envelopes, all kinds of stuff, but not cardboard. Bizarre!

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

You need to bribe the tea+coffee guy in Cambridge market to defect to the other place ...

[j4.livejournal.com]

I thought he sold his loose-leaf tea in plastic bags? Though I'm sure he'd agree to put it into a pot or bag...

There's sure to be an equivalent in Oxford, I just haven't found it yet (but then I haven't really looked!).