Monday, May 28, 2007

Spinning is tops

A report on something I was present at, and had a rather different take upon.

WI flexes muscles over excess packaging

I was there when this speech was made, and examples of 'gratuitous packaging' were paraded, which lead to the now infamous 'Banana Metaphor'.

Because, in the spirit of my own education and informing the public, I asked why a cited pack of bananas was indeed so wastefully wrapped in plastic. It seemed odd to go to the expense of doing so if it was not necessary.

Considering that meetings had been held with everyone from Gordon Brown to Terry Leahy by the WI, I was a little perturbed that despite the leap to high-profile criticism, no one seemed to have tried to find out why, or derived a satisfactory answer.

Those my question generated from the floor ranged from protection from organic rotting gases to preventing food waste from singletons dropping from hands and being deemed consumer unacceptable. Both potentially environmentally sound, if true, I’d hazard, but I am still unsure as the very industry that handles this seemed to have differing explanations in justification.

One statistic, also needing confirmation, that did strike me was that food waste represents 95% of total vs. 5% from packaging, and hence one wonders why more effort should not be devoted to reducing this first?

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