Offmessage

Two links doing the rounds of Twitter today bear a striking similarity; so much so that I was pretty sure I was going to end up at the same page when following the (un)fashionably shortened URLs:

• What the media’s not telling us about Somali pirates, and
• The world’s rubbish dump

What both stories tell are frankly horrifying tales of uncontrolled dumping of toxic waste of varying kinds in unpoliced waters.

Comment is hard; the degree of damage already done and the huge task of stopping it (even if anyone actually wanted to try) makes me just want to bury my head… How do you say? Stop the world I want to get off.

Coming firmly into the “you learn something new every day” category.  Bright Green environmentalism; environmental sustainability through technological change and advance. As compared to Light Green (personal lifestyle change) and Dark Green (socio-political change).

A few weeks ago there was a flurry of news and comment around the Soil Association’s proposal to remove the Organic marque from food that had been flown in to Britain.  At the time the Kenyans (among others) were rightly up in arms about the effect it would have on their economies. On the Today program a Kenyan representative very carefully pointed out that the environmental impact of heated glasshouse grown vegetables was much higher than that of food grown without heat and shipped in.

While this report at Riverford only talks about Spain/Italy and road freight, rather than Kenya and air freight, it does highlight the easy confusion about what is actually green.

It leads me to a gripe, too.  When did “Organic” stop meaning “grown without chemicals” and start meaning “meeting whatever random criteria public opinion has badgered us into”?  Like the Fairtrade movement the Soil Association should be very careful about diluting or confusing its brand.

I didn’t realise that Fairtrade products had to come from collective owned/operated farms and I didn’t realise that Organic meant more than no chemicals.

Confusion, obfuscation and brand overreach leads the consumer into a bewildering array of uninformed decisions; exactly what these marques were supposed to stop happening.

Oh.  And while I’m on consumer confusion…  WTF is with this advert for McCains Rustic oven chips?  Only showing 4 of the 5 traffic lights is downright misleading, and should be banned outright, right now.