Early morning “eco-grab-bag”
Well folks, today’s installment of truth for the masses is a smattering of small, but collectively annoying pieces of liberal thought. I hope you enjoy them.
First out of the box is the label on my Deer Park water bottle. How, you might ask could that possibly qualify? Today, it’s the “Be Green’ label on the back. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of all this “green” thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good chance to protect some nature and promote healthy ecosystems, but the things that people are doing now to “be green’ has become ridiculous to the point of embarrassment. Deer Park decided that they would reduce the size of the label on their plastic water bottles to use less paper. Good for them. How the heck do you need a lot of paper anyway? Could it be the extensive ingredient list that is contained in your standard bottle of spring water? Perhaps a legal disclaimer stating the dangers of drowning in half a liter of your product? Nah, just easier to see on the shelf, probably. So Deer Park has made a decision that will undoubtedly save it a pile of money in paper and they want to spin it as a ‘green decision’…
Horsecrap.
The bottle says that the smaller labels save the equivalent of 30,000 trees in a year. Ok, but what does that mean? Are we to believe that these smaller labels will result in lower numbers of evil, axe-wielding, backhoe-driving maniacs riding around in the pristine, old-growth forests of the world? (By the way, nobody cuts down old growth hardwood for paper pulp. They grow entire plantations of PINE TREES to use for paper.) Pine trees are one of the fastest growing trees in the Southeast (where I live) and are an ideal renewable resource for use in the making of paper. So are we actually ’saving a tree’ with these smaller labels? No, not really. The trees that would be saved have already been planted and will require harvesting whether they are used or not. It may affect the future planting of trees (by preventing the planting of the same number of trees). In fact, a reduction in the consumption of paper will really have the net effect of ‘unsaving’ somebody’s job. Less demand for paper means less sales on the retail and wholesale levels therefore, less manufacturing, less harvesting and less planting. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that part… these chainsaw toting demons RE-PLANT the trees.
So, really the effect of using less paper is to have an overall negative effect on the economy. Now, I toodled around the internet and found a few websites that make claims of massive global tree destruction because of the global paper industry, but most of the information seemed a little on the vague or useless side.
For instance:
Industrialized nations, with 20 percent of the world’s population, consume 87 percent of the world’s printing and writing papers. (Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme, Keynote Address UNEP’s 7th International High Level Seminar on Cleaner Production, 29-30 April 2002)
This quote was taken from Green America (Formerly Co-opAmerica)’s website. So, the people with the technology and the economies that drive the entire globe use more than their fair share of paper? SO WHAT? Why is this even a noteworthy fact? Of COURSE industrialized nations use more paper. There isn’t much use for a ream of neon yellow astrobright paper when you live in the Serengeti…unless you can find a way to stick it on the lions that might otherwise eat you for lunch.
Here’s another winner:
Global production in the pulp, paper and publishing sector is expected to increase by 77% from 1995 to 2020 (OECD Environmental Outlook, 2001, p.215)
Now, before I even tackle the substance of the quote, let’s look at the source. OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The tagline at the top of the page is “For a stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy”. Oh geez… there’s that word again. Fair.
That combined with the fact that the owners of the site and the server are both French is enough to make me second guess the validity of the statement. But, we will parse it anyway. 77% eh? Why the hell is publishing in this category? Doesn’t publishing mean the distribution of information? Books? Education? Commerce? Why, yes it does. Are we double-counting the pulp used to publish these various pieces of info? The whole idea of categorizing an end product use with a raw material statistic is a little misleading and innacurate, don’t you think? Would they categorize corn, maize and Fritos in the same way? How about Rice, Soy and General Tso’s Chicken? I think you get my point. The world can expect to become more knowledgeable in the future as information is distributed and shared with new groups of people that have to this point not been able to collect or absorb such knowledge. That’s good, isn’t it? At the same time, how much paper DOESN’T get used any more by the industrialized nations of the world because of email?
So you see, the end user and the reason for that paper use aren’t considered, just the gross number.
So, don’t worry about the trees, save the people. After you read this, print it and hand it to a friend. Tell them to copy it a couple times and hand it to a couple of their friends. It’s all for the good of the economy!
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