Last night I told a colleague who is a fantastic Corporate Social Responsibility consultant that most of the CSR managers I'd encountered had no real budget to speak of, no authority within the company to change behaviour and business practices, and they were bundled into the marketing/PR department so their main function was to find green aspects of the business they could use to promote the companies image.
He said, that was "old school CSR", and modern thinking is to have the role at the top of the managerial chain, directing business practices. That sounds much better but I'd like to see how it works in practice?
CEO We're going to build our new widget in the 3rd world where they can do it for a 10th of the price.
CSR No, because there are no reliably enforced standards for preventing child labour, pollution and energy inefficiency.
CEO Oh, OK well then we can't afford to make the new widget. We can all go home early today.
(Incidentally Old School CSR would have said Great, I'll issue a press release on how we are stimulating the developing world's economy.)
The thinking behind CSR is historically marketing driven. The idea is that people like to do business with companies whose values they admire and respect. And the role of of CSR is to communicate those values, so fundamentally it's packaging, rather than improving business practices.
There is a fundamental dis-juncture between the corporate world whose purpose is to make money, and the CSR objective of making the world a better place.
Sure there are some ways to do both, but most of the time these two objectives require actions in polar opposite directions.
This Green Economy I keep hearing about from Boris, Gordon and Barak (Mayor of London, Prime Minister of the UK, and goal keeper for planet earth's soccer team) sounds so far like old school CSR, putting green "look at me" stickers on existing policies that have an element of greenery to them. There isn't yet a coherent "everything we do must be sustainable" ethos, informing every policy.
I've always fancied my self as a Marx-like figure, inventing radical new political ideology, which is at first ridiculed and misunderstood, then adopted through revolution, and corrupted so that in 100 years from now I'm remembered as the architect of a completely failed ideology. But I'm more of a hippy than a communist, so I've come up with a manifesto for happiness which will remove our dependence on capitalist structures, and lift us into sustainability.
"Contributing to society" is a phrase which is synonymous with being economically productive, and code for having a job which contributes to your own personal wealth, and consequently to the wealth of society. Wealth, of course as we all know, leads directly to happiness.
But the Contentism approach is to take the direct route to happiness, so the role of government under the Contentism Manifesto is to make people (not wealthy but) happy. With policies that stimulate the Happiness Index, rather than the economy.
Actually the Contentism Manifesto is for individuals, not political parties. It's about downsizing consumption, aspiring to work less, rather than earning more on a personal level. Freedom by cutting domestic overheads, rather than earning more. It's admittedly a bit of a slackers charter, but it's not about smashing the system or defying the capitalist machine, it's about working just enough, and valuing free time or happiness rather than money as the measure of wealth.
OK so I am confusing my radical new ideology with anti-consumerism a bit, and the hippy mantra that you can only find happiness when you throw of the shackles of your possessions is a load of budhist fundamentalist crap, maaahhn.
Driving a sports car at 100mph down the motorway is an experience that makes a lot of people happy, and films look great on a 52" plasma. But owning a sports car, worring it's going to get keyed by a drunk eco-vandal or stolen, writing the check for the insurance, paying for the fuel, and getting points on your license for speeding, these are all things that make most people unhappy.
The worst of it though is that the guy next door has a bigger plasma, and he's miserable cos his neighbour has a faster car. There's never a ceiling where you think, that's it, I've made it. I don't need any more stuff, or any more promotion, or any more pay, which is a pity because reaching that point feels fantastic.
Maybe retired people get it. Suddenly you aren't allowed to work any more, you know there is no chance you are going to get any richer, and you think, this is my lot now, and when you look at it you think "Its alright, I'm off to play golf".
Pity it takes 65 years to get to that mindset. Contentism says bring it on now, lets all take an early retirement attitude. It doesn't require an extreme commitment, because fortunately Contentism is scalable, it doesn't need a critical mass to become effective. A bit of Contentism is a bit good. Try it.
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Sunday, 10 May 2009
Feculence
In honour of the newest sponsor of the Mission:Emission expedition, Separett (www.separett.com) I am writing this blog whilst perched on the toilet.
Ever since reading the Humanure Handbook (www.humanurehandbook.com) I've been really interested in the concept of waterless toilets. Historically it was Thomas Crapper that came up with the idea of a water based flushing toilet during the Victorian era, and thanks to the British Empire it spread around the world. But before that we were quite happily crapping into dry toilets.
There's a massive amount of water used to flush our faeces down the drain, and like so many waste products excrement can be a useful resource for making compost, or as a source of sustainable energy when put through biodigester.
For a while I even joined a yahoo group about composting toilets. It's amazing how much traffic there was on the group, and the powerful emotional attachments people form with their composting toilets.
Put simply, if you subject your dung to a combination of warmth and aeration for about 12 months, all the pathogens in it die, and then you can use it to fertilise food crops. If you can't wait that long, then you can use it fertilise plants that wont re-enter the food chain after a few months.
The Separett toilet we'll be fitting to the bus works by separating the solids from liquids, thanks to a cleverly designed seat. It's then much easier to deal with each separately.
The urine is sterile and can be disposed of by diluting and spraying on soil. Whereas the solid waste (I love how many euphemisms there are for faecal matter) is dried by a continuous stream of air, which also takes the smell away.
Apparently composting toilets don't smell! And in my limited experience of them they really don't. I had a considerable movement at last years annual meeting of the www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk forum, near Beaconsfield, and subsequently spent quite a long time examining the longdrop design of that one.
Certainly the smell was better than traditional cassette or chemical toilets used in campers, which reek of the blue chemical they use to break down the excreta mix.
Building one in a vehicle is more of a challenge because of the space they take up. There are plenty of people that have put them in canal boats, were the "liquid waste" can be pumped overboard, but they are a relatively rare thing in camper vehicles.
In a true composting toilet you add a bit of carbon after each use. Something like shredded paper or sawdust for instance. This prevents the nitrogen in the caca reacting to form ammonia which smells, and it also allows the pile to trap oxygen.
The Separett system is slightly different, in that the stool dried rather than composted in the toilet, and when it's full you dump the contents into a compost heap, or into a sewage system. By the time you empty it, the contents are predominantly toilet paper, as the bio-matter dramatically decreases in volume as it dries.
I'll need to install a grey water tank for the waste liquid from the sink and shower, and mix the peepee in there, but in practice we'll probably only use it for number ones if we're also doing a number two too.
Now I have to perch the laptop on the sink while I clean up. Excuse me.
Ever since reading the Humanure Handbook (www.humanurehandbook.com) I've been really interested in the concept of waterless toilets. Historically it was Thomas Crapper that came up with the idea of a water based flushing toilet during the Victorian era, and thanks to the British Empire it spread around the world. But before that we were quite happily crapping into dry toilets.
There's a massive amount of water used to flush our faeces down the drain, and like so many waste products excrement can be a useful resource for making compost, or as a source of sustainable energy when put through biodigester.
For a while I even joined a yahoo group about composting toilets. It's amazing how much traffic there was on the group, and the powerful emotional attachments people form with their composting toilets.
Put simply, if you subject your dung to a combination of warmth and aeration for about 12 months, all the pathogens in it die, and then you can use it to fertilise food crops. If you can't wait that long, then you can use it fertilise plants that wont re-enter the food chain after a few months.
The Separett toilet we'll be fitting to the bus works by separating the solids from liquids, thanks to a cleverly designed seat. It's then much easier to deal with each separately.
The urine is sterile and can be disposed of by diluting and spraying on soil. Whereas the solid waste (I love how many euphemisms there are for faecal matter) is dried by a continuous stream of air, which also takes the smell away.
Apparently composting toilets don't smell! And in my limited experience of them they really don't. I had a considerable movement at last years annual meeting of the www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk forum, near Beaconsfield, and subsequently spent quite a long time examining the longdrop design of that one.
Certainly the smell was better than traditional cassette or chemical toilets used in campers, which reek of the blue chemical they use to break down the excreta mix.
Building one in a vehicle is more of a challenge because of the space they take up. There are plenty of people that have put them in canal boats, were the "liquid waste" can be pumped overboard, but they are a relatively rare thing in camper vehicles.
In a true composting toilet you add a bit of carbon after each use. Something like shredded paper or sawdust for instance. This prevents the nitrogen in the caca reacting to form ammonia which smells, and it also allows the pile to trap oxygen.
The Separett system is slightly different, in that the stool dried rather than composted in the toilet, and when it's full you dump the contents into a compost heap, or into a sewage system. By the time you empty it, the contents are predominantly toilet paper, as the bio-matter dramatically decreases in volume as it dries.
I'll need to install a grey water tank for the waste liquid from the sink and shower, and mix the peepee in there, but in practice we'll probably only use it for number ones if we're also doing a number two too.
Now I have to perch the laptop on the sink while I clean up. Excuse me.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
The Canary
This week I met with one of the world's most respected and influential leading scientific experts on Arctic Sea Ice, and I suggested a study which may reveal that the mechanisms causing the shrinking ice extent are not directly linked to rising global temperatures.
It appears that the thickness of new ice, formed since the last summer (First year Ice), may have grown as thick this winter as it ever grows in it's first year. The analysis on this is still being done, but my preliminary look at comparable data seems to suggest it may even be thicker than usual. This would suggest that the factors causing sea ice retreat may be seasonal, and only acting in the summer. In simple terms, the ice grows as much as it always has done in the winter, but in the summer something is causing it to disappear faster. This in turn implies that the ice retreat is not caused (directly) by global rising temperatures, because that's a mechanism which you would expect to find happening all year round, not just in the summer.
The most likely causes of a more rapid summer melt are hydrographic rather than atmospheric. That means currents, which are either bringing warm water into the Arctic Ocean to melt the ice or, currents which are sweeping the older thicker ice southwards where it melts (or most likely a combination of both).
So where have these currents appeared from? Some think they are cyclical currents which appear every 60-80 years. Others suggest they are currents caused by global warming.
If all this turns out to be true, and the scientists concur with the interpretation of the results (hugely unlikely) this will be a phenomenal discovery, that the depletion of the Arctic ocean sea ice is not directly linked to rising global temperatures. Climate change deniers will seize on it, and this will be regurgitated and misrepresented in every debate for the next 5 years until someone publishes a further finding.
There are other explanations for this observation that First Year Ice grows consistently (if indeed it is observed). It seems that this year the sea ice extent will make a slight recovery on last year. This is great news and implies that the decay is not linear (resulting in zero ice conditions in about 4 years) by subject to cyclical factors which could prolong the inevitable zero ice condition for about 30 years. It's also strong evidence against the "tipping point" argument.
Another explanation is that thinner ice grows faster, so regardless of conditions the ice will always tend to a first year thickness of about 1.5m-2m at which point it insulates itself against the cold and further growth.
Even if it turns out that climate change is not directly responsible for the very visible decay of the Arctic Ocean, it doesn't undermine the fact that most scientists agree that the planet is experiencing man made climate change, and that it's effect is accelerating. New positive feedback mechanisms of releasing greenhouse gases are being discovered at an alarming rate, most notably methane release from the arctic seabed as it warms.
Of course I'm pleased that the Arctic Ocean ice may not be as threatened as previously thought, but I'm more concerned that this will be seized on to demotivate efforts to take action on emission reductions.
The real questions are;
how effective will the world's attempts at emission reductions be, and
how bad will the consequences of climate change be on human life.
Answers to follow...
It appears that the thickness of new ice, formed since the last summer (First year Ice), may have grown as thick this winter as it ever grows in it's first year. The analysis on this is still being done, but my preliminary look at comparable data seems to suggest it may even be thicker than usual. This would suggest that the factors causing sea ice retreat may be seasonal, and only acting in the summer. In simple terms, the ice grows as much as it always has done in the winter, but in the summer something is causing it to disappear faster. This in turn implies that the ice retreat is not caused (directly) by global rising temperatures, because that's a mechanism which you would expect to find happening all year round, not just in the summer.
The most likely causes of a more rapid summer melt are hydrographic rather than atmospheric. That means currents, which are either bringing warm water into the Arctic Ocean to melt the ice or, currents which are sweeping the older thicker ice southwards where it melts (or most likely a combination of both).
So where have these currents appeared from? Some think they are cyclical currents which appear every 60-80 years. Others suggest they are currents caused by global warming.
If all this turns out to be true, and the scientists concur with the interpretation of the results (hugely unlikely) this will be a phenomenal discovery, that the depletion of the Arctic ocean sea ice is not directly linked to rising global temperatures. Climate change deniers will seize on it, and this will be regurgitated and misrepresented in every debate for the next 5 years until someone publishes a further finding.
There are other explanations for this observation that First Year Ice grows consistently (if indeed it is observed). It seems that this year the sea ice extent will make a slight recovery on last year. This is great news and implies that the decay is not linear (resulting in zero ice conditions in about 4 years) by subject to cyclical factors which could prolong the inevitable zero ice condition for about 30 years. It's also strong evidence against the "tipping point" argument.
Another explanation is that thinner ice grows faster, so regardless of conditions the ice will always tend to a first year thickness of about 1.5m-2m at which point it insulates itself against the cold and further growth.
Even if it turns out that climate change is not directly responsible for the very visible decay of the Arctic Ocean, it doesn't undermine the fact that most scientists agree that the planet is experiencing man made climate change, and that it's effect is accelerating. New positive feedback mechanisms of releasing greenhouse gases are being discovered at an alarming rate, most notably methane release from the arctic seabed as it warms.
Of course I'm pleased that the Arctic Ocean ice may not be as threatened as previously thought, but I'm more concerned that this will be seized on to demotivate efforts to take action on emission reductions.
The real questions are;
how effective will the world's attempts at emission reductions be, and
how bad will the consequences of climate change be on human life.
Answers to follow...
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Zen and the Rust of Carbon Counting.
When you do any kind of mechanical work on a vehicle it becomes a conversation between you, the designers of the vehicle, and other people that have worked on it in the past.
To repair something you have to interrogate the vehicle to understand how it was supposed to work, lots of looking, wiggling and muttering, "why have they done that?" and "why did they do it that way?"
The next step is to come up with a solution that bypasses or replaces the problem. A "fitter", as opposed to a "mechanic", is someone that can diagnose the broken part, remove it and replace it with a new one. That's what you find in modern dealerships.
However when you are in the middle of nowhere and you can't replace it with the a new part, you have to recondition it or fabricate the part, and again you have to have a dialogue with the designer by looking at the vehicle and asking what does this part really do, why has it failed and how can I make sure my home made part will work properly and last as long as possible.
This conversation happens in an internationally spoken language that transcends borders. But confusion arises from someone who has bodged a repair in the past that hides the original design. It's like another mechanic talking over the designer.
In truth, anything short of replacing the part with manufacturers spares is a bodge. Every other solution is a compromise constrained by time, tools, know how and materials, but some bodges are better than the original design. The true measure of how good the repair is, is how long it lasts compared with how long you expect it to last.
In Namibia I tied up a cracked leaf spring with a bit of nylon cord. It was the key leaf that was cracked, so effectively the front axle was held on the car with a piece of string. By rights it shouldn't have lasted long, but actually we clocked up over 1000km until we found another leaf to replace it. In absolute terms using string to hold your wheels on is terrible bodge, but in practice it was a great bodge because it worked well and lasted longer than expected.
The bus body was custom made by coach builders so there are no original replacement parts, everything has to be redesigned and fabricated from scratch. The front wheel arches on the bus are repaired now, and we've used 2 small sheets of steel, about 8 grinding wheels, and a reel of welding wire.
The energy costs of the repair and the materials are obviously a lot less than producing a new bus, but how does it fit into my 2 tonne budget? Well, I'm hoping I can cover some of carbon costs with savings from the indirect effects of my actions.
The bus was destined for the scrap yard, so the indirect consequence of my activity (a phrase which will no doubt make regular appearances on this blog) is to save it from being broken up and crushed. That would have taken up a lot of energy, and it might have created the demand for one more new bus so preventing that is good. On the negative side it also would have provided some second hand Merc parts, which might have prevented the demand for new parts being manufactured.
Like ripples in a pond, indirect effects radiate out forever but are almost impossible to predict accurately. There are lots of 709D parts in commercial breakers so I'd say its a safe bet that supply for second hand parts outweighs demand and always will, so not scrapping this bus won't create a demand for new parts.
To quantify my indirect effects, I need to compare them to a reference point (aka base case). Indirect effects are all relative; any actions trigger either more or less indirect emissions compared to what would have happened if I'd chosen a different set of actions. If I choose a set of actions that cause less emissions, that's a saving which I am responsible for so I can add it to my 2 tonnes annual budget.
The problem with this is that other people might be out there indirectly saving the same emissions and they may be more responsible for the saving than me, so actually I can't really be sure that I'm responsible for the saving and so I can't really add the saving to my budget with total certainty.
That leaves me with 2 options, either ignore indirect effects completely when carbon counting, or factor in some sort of uncertainty percentage for the savings and costs, so for instance I only get say 30% of the indirect savings I make and only have to pay out 30% for the indirect carbon costs.
How do you chose the percentage? Well by this stage it's all so woolly you might as well pick a number at random. No wonder no one trusts carbon offsetting any more.
There's a lot to be said for ignoring indirect effects. The primary benefit is that it forces the owner of the indirect emissions to be responsible for them. Biofuels have been criticised because of the indirect effect of sustainably grown agrofuels. The argument goes like this; even if the oil is produced in a sustainable way, it creates a demand for whatever was being grown on that land before and that demand is met by another farmer who invariably isn't growing it in a sustainable way.
I don't jump to the defence of the biofuel industry for the sake of it, but it does strike me that the second farmer is to blame here, not the biofuel farmer. By including indirect effects, the biofuel farmer takes the blame for the other farmer. But by ignoring them, the blame points to the unsustainable farmer, which seems fairer because the problem is not agrofuels, but agriculture. The counter point is that there isn't enough land left for the other farmer to do anything but unsustainable farming so that leaves us all a bit paralysed.
Except not in my case, because there are enough scrap yard buses to meet global demand.
So after all this I think the fairest way for me to count my carbon is to do the following:
I'll be responsible for 30% of the indirect costs and savings, unless it's indisputably clear that there is no other third party involved in which case I'll be responsible for it all. I've chosen 30% because I personally feel that the principle of ignoring indirect effects has merit in about 70% of cases.
I'm making the repairs to the bus in such a way that they should be good for at least 3 years. This bus lasted 18 years before I rescued it, so I'm claiming back 1/6th of the carbon cost of manufacturing it against the refit, because by recycling it I'm eliminating the demand for a 3 years-worth of a new bus.
I also think it's fair to spread the carbon costs and savings of the refit over 3 years.
Now I have to find out the carbon cost of a grinding disk, a 1991 mercedes bus, and how much energy the welder uses and hope my bodges last longer than expected.
To repair something you have to interrogate the vehicle to understand how it was supposed to work, lots of looking, wiggling and muttering, "why have they done that?" and "why did they do it that way?"
The next step is to come up with a solution that bypasses or replaces the problem. A "fitter", as opposed to a "mechanic", is someone that can diagnose the broken part, remove it and replace it with a new one. That's what you find in modern dealerships.
However when you are in the middle of nowhere and you can't replace it with the a new part, you have to recondition it or fabricate the part, and again you have to have a dialogue with the designer by looking at the vehicle and asking what does this part really do, why has it failed and how can I make sure my home made part will work properly and last as long as possible.
This conversation happens in an internationally spoken language that transcends borders. But confusion arises from someone who has bodged a repair in the past that hides the original design. It's like another mechanic talking over the designer.
In truth, anything short of replacing the part with manufacturers spares is a bodge. Every other solution is a compromise constrained by time, tools, know how and materials, but some bodges are better than the original design. The true measure of how good the repair is, is how long it lasts compared with how long you expect it to last.
In Namibia I tied up a cracked leaf spring with a bit of nylon cord. It was the key leaf that was cracked, so effectively the front axle was held on the car with a piece of string. By rights it shouldn't have lasted long, but actually we clocked up over 1000km until we found another leaf to replace it. In absolute terms using string to hold your wheels on is terrible bodge, but in practice it was a great bodge because it worked well and lasted longer than expected.
The bus body was custom made by coach builders so there are no original replacement parts, everything has to be redesigned and fabricated from scratch. The front wheel arches on the bus are repaired now, and we've used 2 small sheets of steel, about 8 grinding wheels, and a reel of welding wire.
The energy costs of the repair and the materials are obviously a lot less than producing a new bus, but how does it fit into my 2 tonne budget? Well, I'm hoping I can cover some of carbon costs with savings from the indirect effects of my actions.
The bus was destined for the scrap yard, so the indirect consequence of my activity (a phrase which will no doubt make regular appearances on this blog) is to save it from being broken up and crushed. That would have taken up a lot of energy, and it might have created the demand for one more new bus so preventing that is good. On the negative side it also would have provided some second hand Merc parts, which might have prevented the demand for new parts being manufactured.
Like ripples in a pond, indirect effects radiate out forever but are almost impossible to predict accurately. There are lots of 709D parts in commercial breakers so I'd say its a safe bet that supply for second hand parts outweighs demand and always will, so not scrapping this bus won't create a demand for new parts.
To quantify my indirect effects, I need to compare them to a reference point (aka base case). Indirect effects are all relative; any actions trigger either more or less indirect emissions compared to what would have happened if I'd chosen a different set of actions. If I choose a set of actions that cause less emissions, that's a saving which I am responsible for so I can add it to my 2 tonnes annual budget.
The problem with this is that other people might be out there indirectly saving the same emissions and they may be more responsible for the saving than me, so actually I can't really be sure that I'm responsible for the saving and so I can't really add the saving to my budget with total certainty.
That leaves me with 2 options, either ignore indirect effects completely when carbon counting, or factor in some sort of uncertainty percentage for the savings and costs, so for instance I only get say 30% of the indirect savings I make and only have to pay out 30% for the indirect carbon costs.
How do you chose the percentage? Well by this stage it's all so woolly you might as well pick a number at random. No wonder no one trusts carbon offsetting any more.
There's a lot to be said for ignoring indirect effects. The primary benefit is that it forces the owner of the indirect emissions to be responsible for them. Biofuels have been criticised because of the indirect effect of sustainably grown agrofuels. The argument goes like this; even if the oil is produced in a sustainable way, it creates a demand for whatever was being grown on that land before and that demand is met by another farmer who invariably isn't growing it in a sustainable way.
I don't jump to the defence of the biofuel industry for the sake of it, but it does strike me that the second farmer is to blame here, not the biofuel farmer. By including indirect effects, the biofuel farmer takes the blame for the other farmer. But by ignoring them, the blame points to the unsustainable farmer, which seems fairer because the problem is not agrofuels, but agriculture. The counter point is that there isn't enough land left for the other farmer to do anything but unsustainable farming so that leaves us all a bit paralysed.
Except not in my case, because there are enough scrap yard buses to meet global demand.
So after all this I think the fairest way for me to count my carbon is to do the following:
I'll be responsible for 30% of the indirect costs and savings, unless it's indisputably clear that there is no other third party involved in which case I'll be responsible for it all. I've chosen 30% because I personally feel that the principle of ignoring indirect effects has merit in about 70% of cases.
I'm making the repairs to the bus in such a way that they should be good for at least 3 years. This bus lasted 18 years before I rescued it, so I'm claiming back 1/6th of the carbon cost of manufacturing it against the refit, because by recycling it I'm eliminating the demand for a 3 years-worth of a new bus.
I also think it's fair to spread the carbon costs and savings of the refit over 3 years.
Now I have to find out the carbon cost of a grinding disk, a 1991 mercedes bus, and how much energy the welder uses and hope my bodges last longer than expected.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Soluuutions
I just watched the last episode of Michael Smith’s Drivetime, on BBC4. I loved the whole series but the last episode in particular really struck a chord. Michael really captures the emotional rollercoaster of hitching, and the joy of being on the road and journeying.
I also love his disdain for the language of corporate “solutions”, and the way the word rolls out of his accent with such contempt. Catch the whole series while it’s on the BBC Iplayer.
Bankrupt Stock
Tut, roll your eyes to the sky, shrug and sigh with me “the credit crunch”.
Two, yes TWO, of the companies that had agreed to support the expedition have gone into liquidation since Christmas, despite both being companies at the sharp end of the “green economy”.
One in particular has gone down the pan because of Boris Johnson’s decision to scrap the Low Emission Zone for smaller vans.
Obama’s talking about an economic renaissance driven by green businesses. And I heard Zac Goldsmith presenting the same argument at the New Energy Awards, but I don’t see how this is playing out in practice, with practical initiatives.
I can’t post more details about the companies because in both cases my contacts there have promised to try to sneak out the bits I need before the liquidator gets to do a stock check.
Please note; these bankruptcies are no reflection of the benefits available to sponsors supporting the expedition. In fact to find out about the massive exposure, visibility, brand association and sponsorship activation programme sponsors can expect from Mission:Emissions Expedition, contact me today.
Eco-Prefix
Every time I see the word “eco” used as a prefix, I brace myself with the thought that it's going to be utter crap. A lot of the time it is too. For instance I have regularly been described as an “eco-adventurer”.
When it’s used to describe products “Eco” tends to mean this version is less damaging than the non-eco one. I always jump to the assumption that the non-eco one must therefore be shamefully bad, and the Eco one can at best boast that it’s not as horrific.
The other thing that annoys me about the Eco prefix is when it’s used as a catch-all simplistic way of summing up complicated issues and totally blurring them in the process. For instance, an “Eco-Coal Fired power station” doesn’t produce harmful spent uranium rods. It’s a trite example but the point is that while some aspects of the eco-solution might be great, the prefix often ignores a whole realm of un-eco facets.
“Harmful” is another one. When I worked as a tour guide and I didn’t know the date of some battle or church I’d say it was from the olden days. It was a very effective fudge. Harmful how? Is it one of the harms we should be worried about, or is one of the trivial harms we can live with.
Anyway, I guess the fact that I’ve got to get back to working on my “Eco-Bus”, makes me an Eco-hypocrite, so far less harmful than a normal hypocrite.
When it’s used to describe products “Eco” tends to mean this version is less damaging than the non-eco one. I always jump to the assumption that the non-eco one must therefore be shamefully bad, and the Eco one can at best boast that it’s not as horrific.
The other thing that annoys me about the Eco prefix is when it’s used as a catch-all simplistic way of summing up complicated issues and totally blurring them in the process. For instance, an “Eco-Coal Fired power station” doesn’t produce harmful spent uranium rods. It’s a trite example but the point is that while some aspects of the eco-solution might be great, the prefix often ignores a whole realm of un-eco facets.
“Harmful” is another one. When I worked as a tour guide and I didn’t know the date of some battle or church I’d say it was from the olden days. It was a very effective fudge. Harmful how? Is it one of the harms we should be worried about, or is one of the trivial harms we can live with.
Anyway, I guess the fact that I’ve got to get back to working on my “Eco-Bus”, makes me an Eco-hypocrite, so far less harmful than a normal hypocrite.
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