Be Excellent To Each Other

A BBC journo is giving up plastic for a month to try and prove a point about how much of it we as a society waste.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7508321.stm

Now, maybe it's me, but I think this is just about a total waste of time.

First of all, as the story itself says, loads of plastic goes into the landfill because most councils don't accept anything except plastic bottles for recycling. Which is not the fault of the consumer.

Secondly, she's not giving up plastic she's already got... which I can see being something of a cheat, as she could just use the hoard of carrier bags that is inevitably in her kitchen drawer. Besides, if you give it up, surely that means everything, regardless?

It all smacks of greenie beard weirdy 'let's go back to living like savages, because life was much better when it was ravage by disease and uncertainty'.

Anyone else think it's a bit (pardon the pun) rubbish?

People who complain about plastic packaging often don't do their homework. For example, less packaging in food would lead to lower shelf lives, and more waste, which is the opposite of what was intended.

Ah, but the article says that because they plastic is there to extend shelf life, quite often you'll end up buying stuff which won't keep for much longer and then you'll throw it out and be wasting food as well! WHERE WILL IT END?

Meh. It's a harmless idea that might make her appreciate something she takes for granted a little more. Doesn't have to have some poncey agenda.

I'm getting a hint of 'holier than thou' from the article.*

I know someone who will refuse a slice of chocolate cake, or a chocolate biscuit, if it isn't fairtrade. She even did this at a friend's wedding. Patronising treehugger.


* If it's actually CG in disguise, I will, of course, reconsider my position.

It does if she's a journalist writing on BBC News. Which she is.

If Com did this for instance, it'd be different.

She quite liked Tomb Raider:Legend though.

Only for a month? If plastic is that much of a problem, give it up entirely.

Read the title, thought it was about a woman obsessed with cosmetic surgery. Or shopping.

Food biodegrades, though, while plastic doesn't, and food is renewable where plastic isn't. I'm not sure they're entirely comperable.

I can't see how this article series is a bad thing, honestly. If she's trying to prove how much plastic we waste, then surely continuing to use the plastic things she does have (and so isn't wasting) isn't hypocritical? And surely it is a consumer choice whether to use disposable plastics or not if it's possible to live reasonably well without them?

Didn't channel 4 recently do something about a family that gave up oil (and plastics as a result) for a year?

I'd quite like to know how she's going to get anything written without a pen, or typed without a keyboard, mind.

Well she isn't though, she's not just buying any NEW plastic, you can bet she's stocked up on toilet cleaner for a start.

No, actually. It didn't smack of weirdyness at all - the article has a lot of good points.
From the quotes from the "stupid" woman in question, it appeared to be a reasonable attempt to explore just how much we rely on plastic, and why we should perhaps be a bit more careful with it because it is such a fantastically useful thing.


It's interesting how people have immediately fallen into the mode of calling her a hypocrite because she hasn't totally expunged all plastic that she might come into contact with ever again - which would be A) really stupid and B) completely missing any sort of point.

True, but the energy expended in growing/rearing the food, processing it and getting it to the shops will never be replaced. Throwing away food wastes more than just the food...

Surely that depends on the food you're eating? At least some of that energy is going to be from waste anyway, or from biomass. I didn't think of transport using oil as well, though; this is an excellent point.

I'm not sure I understand you here. Growing food takes energy. You must plough and sow the fields, manage the crops, deal with weeds and pests, harvest the end result - it all consumes energy. And don't forget the energy required to produce and distribute the products needed in this respect, such as insecticide, nitrates, etc. And animals reared for eating must themselves be fed, almost invariably with crops produced as described above. The exact energies required to produce the food will vary from item to item, but at the end of the day, it's all energy and effort.


Not to mention processing and packaging (even without plastic, goods must still be packaged in some way or another). A combined harvester requires fuel, as does the doo-hickeys for grinding the corn, baking the bread and wrapping it in whatever you use instead of plastic.

Let's hope she's on the pill.

Latex comes from plants, it's not an oil-derived plastic.

You being pedantic spoiled my joke. I hope you are happy now.

They come in plastic thingies though, so you win.

I am, as it happens, yes.

Almost as bad as that programme I keep seeing advertised where Callum Best has to see if he can live without sex for 50 days and 50 nights. As if his sex drive is so rampant that it's going to be the biggest challenge of his life or something, the useless, receding, orphaned cunt.

God, what a twat. If we want to stop him having sex for a couple of months, make him go to bed in boxing gloves.

Or keep him out of the papers for 6 months and watch the groupies and hangers-on drift away.

Leave Callum alone! His dad was a great soccer star, for a while, a long long time ago before he became a bum.

Yeah, and who's Callum going to leach on now daddy has finally drank himself to death?

I was going to ask who the fuck Callum Best was, but I just realised I've got some aftershave of his brand. I didn't buy it, and it smells rubbish. Avoid.

Who the fuck is Callum Best?

His own cock juice for this month.

He was the original drummer in the Beatles.

Callum Best Aftershave

I've just read his Wikipedia and noticed this, too:



Hah.

George Best's son. One of those people who are rich and famous for doing nothing other than reality TV shows and knobbing every bit of celeb totty going. Has the libido of two dozen rampant lions.

Then he became a wife beating liver stealing twat who should have died years earlier and whose death overshadowed the actually tragic death of a proper sporting hero in Richard Burns.

That is, surely, an incredibly long time for anyone? Isn't it? Yeah, he's a cunt, but that's still aaaages. I'm not sure I could go without anything I even had a remote fondness for for that length of time. That's practically infinity when it comes to, say, not eating fondant fancies.

Can he crack one off though, or is his Kojak on 24hr guard?

He probably can't remember how to do it anyway, what with all the sex he gets.
Look at me getting all grumpy just because I haven't had a bit for two months.

Pah. Pah! 50 days is nothing.