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One of the big problems with litter is that the global big brands pump millions of pounds into promoting and advertising their products, they shift massive numbers of units, lots of profit is made, they all enjoy the spoils of their business and ultimately don’t care about the fact that their global brands are also creating massive amounts of rubbish!

The detritus from big brand produce litters every corner of this green & pleasant land and, quite frankly, we’re all tired of seeing it. And now to name and shame just one of these big brand polluters, one of these global litterers… one of Britain’s most popular alcoholic drinks…

FOSTERS LAGER

This scattering of Fosters Lager cans were littering a leafy area beside a path on a cycle home one night and every single one of those cans is a Fosters lager can. Now we’re not big fans of the mass-produced brands anyway, but for their mass-market by-products to litter our home town is not only rude & unsightly but it costs local taxpayers money too… somebody has to clean it up and that’s the council’s job.

Therefore your hard-earned pay, in the form of council tax, pays for street-cleaners and litter pickers to remove the trash.

So the point is this:

Shouldn’t mass-market global brands be contributing a good percentage of their profits toward cleaning up the by-products of their products? Should there be a litter tax whereby for every item of a certain brand/item that is swept up from public places there is a charge to the producer/manufacturer?

There are pros & cons to each solution but this approach would encourage corporate responsibility, stimulate social responsibility and make the world a cleaner place.

What do you think?

A few months ago Adnams brewery in Suffolk issued a new bottle design for their beers.

The new bottle has a revised label and states:

“Less glass in a bottle is more environmentally friendly. Adnams 500ml beer bottle is the lightest in the UK”

That’s very welcome news as the old bottles were based on an old 1920s Adnams design, which the new brown glass container also follows, but the old glass bottles were extremely heavy and used a lot of glass.

The new bottles are both good looking and, as mentioned, use a lot less glass, so that is a bonus for weight savings and recycling (think slightly lighter crates of ale to ship, less raw materials)
However, the question still remains: why do breweries not go back to the old idea of returnable bottles? Surely returning glass bottles (for a penny or 5) is better than collecting, smashing and re-making them?

US-based independent environmental group, The Blacksmith Institute, has published a list of the planet’s ten most polluted places.

The (alphabetical by country) list of the top 10 is as follows…

1. Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
2. Linfen, China
3. Tianying, China
4. Sukinda, India
5. Vapi, India
6. La Oroya, Peru
7. Dzerzhinsk, Russia
8. Norilsk, Russia
9. Chernobyl, Ukraine
10. Kabwe, Zambia

The report, first published in 2006, includes Russia & ex-soviet republics, China and India with Peru & Zambia listed, with an estimated 12 million people adversely affected in these 10 places, mainly form chemical, metal and mining industries.
This year Tianying in Anhui Province, China, is listed for the first time. Tianying produces about half of China’s total lead output. Lead pollution is extremely harmful, particularly to children, causing learning difficulties, lowering IQ, stunting growth, causing sight and hearing problems, kidney malfunction & brain damage. An estimated 140,000 people are at risk from the pollution in Tianying.

The other towns & cities listed in the report have other problems including:

• A lack of any environmental controls
• Mines leaking dangerous chemicals into the water supplies
• Pollution of industrial chemicals and heavy metals.

These most polluted places cause severe health problems with higher than normal mortality rates. The solutions to environmental damage and human suffering aren’t that hard to put in place, so why are these places still in operation?

Wasting water at work is not only environmentally unsound but can also increase a company’s costs and therefore affect their profitability.

This week sees Water at Work Week come into action and the Big Splash campaign aim to help companies reduce their water wastage/usage.

By joining the campaign UK companies get the opportunity to cut costs and lessen their effect upon the environment. In return they will receive cost-cutting tips, maybe gain a little publicity and, if particularly successful in saving water, they can even win an award for Excellence in Environmental Improvement.

Supported by a number of UK water companies you need to register your business’s interest in the big splash.

It’s very sad to know that Dame Anita Roddick died last night but when you look back on her life she made some great steps for the green movement.

Anita Roddick died at St. Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, West Sussex at 18:30 on Monday 10th September. The 64 year old green campaigner & entrepreneur died of a brain haemorrhage.

Although Anita Roddick may have eventually sold The Body Shop to cosmetics giant L’Oreal  she was a great entrepreneur and an avid campaigner. Don’t forget that her Body Shop was the first high street chain to say “No to Animal Testing”, she started the charity Children On The Edge and received numerous awards for her business, one that brought awareness of green issues into the public domain long before it became fashionable.

Here at Everything’s Gone Green we’re great proponents of real ale, especially local real ale. Our local brewery is the Hog’s Back Brewery in Tongham, Surrey, just a couple of miles down the road across the Hampshire border. They brew HBB (Hog’s Back Bitter), TEA (Traditional English Ale) and, last weekends favourite session brew, Hop Garden Gold.

The beauty of real ale when compared to the “global brands” is that breweries supply the local area, stimulating & supporting local economies, transport costs are drastically reduced and there is less money wasted on huge advertising campaigns which aggressively promote bland & tasteless “beers” which are more manufactured than actually brewed with the care and attention that real ale gets.

This month CAMRA, the CAMpaign for Real Ale, piped up and put forth the view that we totally subscribe to… “Drink Real Ale and Save the Planet!”

Why? Well they go a step further than just buying bottles of local real ale - they promote the fact that you don’t have to recycle glass by simply supporting your local pub and its line of local real ales. They also point out that transport costs are kept down and that local pubs with local brews keeps local economies strong by supporting local jobs.

What are you waiting for? Go find your friendly local real ale pub and demand a point of the finest local ale.