Fun loving Global Cooler Frances Pollitzer is avoiding throwaway packaging for one whole week to save a planet. Here’s how she’s getting on.
Wednesday
It’s the first time I’ve had a clear head since the weekend. Any other post-hangover morning I might don my hood and drink a huge over-priced smoothie – sending a message to the world that I’m not ready to be spoken to yet. Instead, I’m buying a pineapple.
For the third day running I’ve got a knotted-up carrier bag up with me and the nice middle-class queue in my local supermarket look on aghast as I take my one pineapple and unpackaged apples out of the new plastic carriers the checkout girl insists on filling (one bag for the prickly beast, one for two apples) and rummage around for my own crumpled bag.
I leave with a warm glow of eco-smugness and more money in my wallet than if I had bought a smoothie. But later after I’ve eaten too much pineapple I get a funny feeling in my throat. That’ll learn me.
I once worked with a secret hippie – good job, no hairy armpits – who wouldn’t order a coffee until she had been assured it was Fairtrade. That night, inspired by her eco-spirit and despite my furry mouth, I ask the barman what the bar’s recycling policy is. From my own pint-pulling days, I know many bars don’t bother to separate card, plastic and glass from the waste that heads to landfill.
It would otherwise have been two pints of tap water for me but this place serves juice from individual Britvic bottles not Tetra Pak containers. Awesome – because Britvic reuse and recycle their bottles while empty Tetra Paks usually end up in landfill or incinerators, unless you foot the bill of posting your washed and squashed cartons back to the company.
I decline straws – waste of plastic and a respected French dermatologist once told me that drinking through straws is a major cause of mouth wrinkles.
Thursday
Normally I’d exit yoga, take a right and embark on a dictionary-perfect display of ‘multitasking woman’ by walking down the street drinking a take-away hot chocolate from [insert name of cash cow farmer-squeezing coffee chain of your choice here] while using the other hand to hold my mobile phone to my ear.
Today I take a left, enter a Polish coffee shop and drink from a mug while reading the paper. It’s more relaxing, better value and the front of my t-shirt is able to escape unscathed. (If I never eat or drink on the go again I could start wearing white!) I also discover that a group of ravens is called an unkindness.
A thoroughly enjoyable packaging-free morning.
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[…] Diary of a Planet Saver: The Final Entry September 4, 2007 at 4:12 pm Global Cooler Frances Pollitzer avoided throwaway packaging for onewhole week to save a planet. Find out how she got on in this her final entry in the Diary of a Planet Saver. […]
Pingback by Global Cool » Diary of a Planet Saver: The Final Entry — September 4, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
Why not invest in a foldable plastic crate instead of using carrier bags at all? You’ll get a full week’s shopping in one or two of these, and they won’t roll around on the way home shedding their contents all over the boot of the car. They can also be re-used hundreds of times without developing holes or the handles breaking.
Comment by Damo — September 12, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
I love reading this crap. You begin by talking about money you have in YOUR pocket. Really you are just mad because you are not the one who is running the business that makes all the money. Secondly you are a person who tries to impress others. You add in the bit about straws adding wrinkles to your mouth. If you were really for the environment the averted waste would have been enough. Thirdly you attack the cash cow farmer. How nice when I assume you have never been to an actual farm. If you are refer to a farmer who is worth more than a million dollars then you are attacking most of the farmers in the US. Way to be for the cause though, however miss guided your intentions are.
Comment by Lyndon hawkins — September 18, 2007 @ 12:53 am
TO the person who ‘loves reading this crap’, maybe you should look at the positives of what is actually being done instead of calling these intentions ‘misguided’ and pointing out the insignificant inset comments. Try looking at the bigger picture and appreciate something that goes against the common way of living. Give it a go and then write your own blog about it!
good work to those who can actually achieve things like this, if the world was full of people like you it would be a better place.
peace xoxo
Comment by Jess — September 19, 2007 @ 9:26 am
How exciting, my first hate mail…
First off thanks Damo for your suggestion. I don’t actually drive (public transport all the way for me) but if I ever do pass my test and get a car, a plastic foldable crate will be my first investment.
Now to Lyndon…oh where to start! You kindly give me so much material to chew up and spit back at you!
“You begin talking about money”. Ok, let’s start there. In the past I have worked with hugely knowledgeable people, e.g. from government or Friends of the Earth, whose enviro-speak is so littered with doomsday predictions, percentages and lists of facts that their audience is alienated by the sheer weight of information coming at them. I don’t want to be a member of the great unheard.
Instead, I take inspiration from the Stern Report (2006), know of it? The former head of the World Bank concludes that by spending just 1% of government funds on tackling climate change now we could avoid environmental consequences that will otherwise cause the world’s economy to shrink by 20%. Despite decades of noble campaigning by the best enviroheads in the charitable world governments and leaders had kept their fingers stuck firmly in their years until Nicolas Stern translated climate change into economic terms.
Yes I talk about money, and wrinkles, and going out. No I am not trying to impress anyone; I am simply translating ‘the future of this planet’ into words people listen to.
(PS: don’t you think if I was trying to impress I would have crossed my fingers behind my back, moved to an eco-lodge and written lies about home-growing mung beans)
Secondly, you say I “attack the cash cow farmer”. A simple rereading of my blog will tell you that I am attacking the “cash cow farmer-squeezing coffee chain”. The state of modern farming is tragic (Google my name and “vital statistics” to find a short, interesting article I have written on the subject). In India 6 farmers a day commit suicide, in America and the UK dairy farms have halved in number over the past decade, worldwide the food supply chain is constructed by private companies’ economic greed – not consumers’ nutritional needs – and has led to a stunning loss of biodiversity that ignites agricultural diseases. If we didn’t get all virtually all our eggs and chicken from one breed, bird flu wouldn’t have been able to rear its head and cluck threateningly in our direction.
I admit it, I am mad- but only at the world’s limited regard for the environment. And I am using this energy to try and communicate to as wide an audience as possible how easy it is, and how fruitful it can be, to care about the world around us. Energy is wasted in attacking others (say, through, comment boxes…) when it could be spent thinking up solutions, like saying no to packaging.
Thank you Lyndon, I enjoyed that.
Comment by Frances — September 19, 2007 @ 2:32 pm