Everybodys going green! It's great isn't it?

The tidal wave of 'green' continues to wash over the world of commerce. Whilst it is obviously great to hear of shifting attitudes and priorities, one has to wonder what the motivation is behind these recent announcements when the likes of Tesco, Walmart and BAE are getting in on the act.

BAE Systems - because 'lead used in ammunition can harm the environment' a new range of 'green' munitions are being developed including lead-free eco-bullets, quieter warheads (to reduce noise pollution!), smoke free hand grenades, and armoured vehicles with hybrid engines. Umm, environmentally friendly war?

Tesco and Sainsbury's are to start their own local veg box delivery scheme. With the impact that companies of this size have on the market, will the advantages of having small to medium sized suppliers now be lost? Can this new move really help to reduce food miles?

Walmart are making huge claims about their desires to go green. But can a trans-national company of their size really reduce their 'carbon footprint'?

Consuming responsibly is important. Supplying our shops with locally sourced materials is more important. But reducing the amount of waste we produce has to be the most important priority of all. Can the 'big-boys' with their huge appetite for resources really provide the answer?

Less waste equals less landfill equals less green house gases.

Greenpeace

'A staggering 80% of the world's original ancient forests have been destroyed or degraded. Today, many countries have lost their entire forest cover. Much of what remains is under threat from illegal and destructive logging'

'Every 2 seconds, an area of ancient forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed.'

The above 2 quotes are taken from a Greenpeace guide called 'The Paper Trail' produced to aid and inform the publishing industry of its impact on the environment. This publication was produced 3 years ago. I wonder how many millions of hectares of ancient forest have disappeared since then? The decisions taken by producers of books and newspapers are still so enormously important to our environment.

I gathered some new perspective on Project Freesheet today from a meeting I had with Belinda Fletcher @ Greenpeace. To talk to someone who is dealing with large organisations on a daily basis and trying to persuade them that they need to take more responsibility for the sourcing of the raw materials that produce their publications, gave me a glimpse of the scale of the challenges which are being faced by campaigners. Quite daunting if you ask me.

Have a look at this if you are interested - http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/flashmap.cfm

City Hippy article

Here's an article written on City Hippy. The comments at the end of the piece make for interesting reading. There is a question posed -

Philder said...
'Surely if we're talking green, the best approach would be not printing the thing to start with?'

City Hippy said...

'as long as they do print a crappy free paper for people to look at whilst shuffling to work, there may as well be a green page in it raising awareness and keeping the agenda in the forefront of people's minds.'

Herein lies an interesting point. How much influence can the general public have over the production of freesheets? At the critical point where they are faced with a choice - do we take the paper or not? - can we say for certain that if people did not take the paper less of them would be produced? No, of course not. So if print production numbers are not influenced by public 'take-up' then what is the driving factor behind freesheets? The Advertisers or The Publishers?

Thoughts?

International Freesheet War

It seems the freesheet war is gathering pace around Europe. I've just been looking at a number of blogs that are reporting increasingly aggressive behaviour from the continents newspaper manufacturers which is interesting in itself. But how many people are considering the environmental impact of this trend? I'm hoping that my new website will be of interest to all those people taking part in this debate, whatever angle they're coming from. And that's the point there are so many different angles aren't there. With so many different questions being posed about the social and environmental impact of these freesheets, do the public on their way to/from work have a say in this matter? Can they impact on the spread of these papers by simply not taking them? Or are the freesheets an inevitable business strategy?

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