Green Rubbish

In case you didn't know it's National Meetings Week this week.

I've been sent a load of useful information about how bad meetings are for the environment and what you can do to make them better and they talk utter crap.

The 10 Top Tips for Holding Green Meetings lists the number one tip as:

"1. Save paper. Using new media and electronic technology can cut down your paper use. If your meeting is a large event, create a website for it offering electronic registration and confirmation; and advertise using the web and/or email. If the meeting is internal, try using a laptop or projector to conduct the meeting instead of printing out lots of copies of agendas."

So instead of using paper which can be recycled and comes from trees which can be regrown, use a laptop which is not only bad for the environment in terms of the way it was produced but uses electricity as well. Good tip!

They also quote a bunch of 'facts':

"A typical 5 day conference for 2,500 attendees will use 90,000 cans or bottles, 750,000 cups and 87,500 napkins (Meeting Strategies Worldwide, 2003)."

So they're saying that the average person at the average conference gets through 60 cups per day as well as 7.2 cans and 7 napkins... I can believe the napkins bit.

I'm a fairly green person. I recycle at home, I avoid using the car when I can walk, the car is a diesel and I stick it in neutral when going down hill.

But I can understand why people get pissed off with the green lobby when they quote bullshit statistics as facts.

Like 'a bus is better for the environment than a car'. Yes it is if the bus is full and the car only has the driver in it. But if the bus only has a handful of passengers in it and the car driver is giving someone a lift (a.k.a. car-sharing) then that isn't the case.

Whatsmore, if the bus is a bit old and you can see black smoke coming out of the exhaust then it definately isn't the case.

I don't get why environmentalists are so opposed to incinerators either. If rubbish (predominantly junk mail, food scraps and packaging) is burnt then the main emission is carbon. Carbon is then absorbed by trees and plants to make them grow so that they can eventually be chopped down to produce junk mail, food scraps and packaging.

It's carbon neutral, just like bio-diesel (which the government is determined to stop us from using - last nights Fifth Gear pointed this out extremely well) and bio-ethanol.

If we plant more trees then they can absorb more carbon. Dartmoor and Exmoor used to be woodland, lets get them back that way. Money taken in duty from these biofuels can be used to create and maintain these new forests across the country. Easy.