When is graffiti ART, and when is it VANDALISM?

It’s art when the “artists” cleans up after themselves.

Calling all graffiti ‘artists’…c’mon people…get with the program!!!

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wasteman

I went to throw my daughter’s school uniform in the wash the other day and felt something in the pocket. She had eaten her snack and brought the empty glad bag home. I know this sounds ridiculously simple, perhaps even bleedin obvious…but trust me…it’s not!

If I could, I would give her one million house points for her effort.

I see a lot of TV’s placed out on the street but this one takes the cake.

Can you believe this?

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wasteman

This packet of spinach  is, or is trying to be, the greenest product I’ve seen in ages. It  is literally covered in green messaging. Here is a list of the messages written all over this product:

1. Organic in conversation (whatever that means??)
2. Compostable packaging
3.Australian certified organic
4. ‘What do I do with the bag’ ie information on what can be done with the empty bag.

Yep! This product has tried really hard to be green. 

The only problem is I found this empty packet on the footpath just blowing about in the breeze outside the local primary school.!!

I had to laugh..

I’d cry otherwise..

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wm

I went to Target the other day and was very impressed when I read the note on the bottom of my docket.

“Plastic shopping bags discontinued nationally from 1 June 2009″
“Wow!”, I thought. “How amazing! What on earth are people going to do? How on earth are people going to cope?” I wondered.

“Good on you Target”, I said to myself. Finally someone is taking a strong stand…and trust me…a strong stand is desperately needed. The problem with shopping bags is that we just don’t see them. How, I don’t know. I mean how is it that we can miss 6 BILLION BAGS PER YEAR. Where do they go??

Anyway…back to Target…
As soon as I arrived home I went straight to the Target website to check this out and, lo and behold, things were not quite as fantastic as first thought. 
Target are NOT discontinuing plastic shopping bags, they are replacing them with alternatives,  and this is why Target are only getting HALF a pat on the back from the Wasteman.

Stay tuned. I’m going to investigate these so called ‘compostable’ shopping bags. I’m not totally convinced.

Here’s a couple of links for you

http://www.target.com.au/html/aboutus/compostablebags.htm

http://www.bpiworld.org/    (biodegradable products institute – just further proof that there is an institute for absolutely everything!)

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Apologies for the size. For those who are having difficulty reading the text this is a story about unwanted presents (mothers day and christmas). This is what it says in the circled bit:

“Australians wasted $1billion on unwanted  christmas goodies”. 

Shameful! Sorry, but there’s simply no other word to describe it.

Let’s think of some other way to show our love on these special days. Somehow the idea of showing love has been distorted into us believing that’s it’s all about what we can give materially. It’s not!!!

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wm

The good new is the messages are starting to mature. We still need a national approach to educate consumers about the packaging that products come in:

        What the packaging is made of.
        What can be done with it once we don’t need it any more. 

The bad news is that the ‘environmental packaging information’ continues to be relogated to the ‘arse’ end of the packets

The message shown above on the tee vee snacks is interesting for a few reasons:

1. I’ve never seen the ‘be green’ text before
2. It diferenciated between the two different materials that make up the packaging ie paper and plastic (often packaging          contains more than one type of material)
3. It explains that the ‘carton’ is recyclable.

Unfortunately it dosen’t tell us what to do with the plastic other that to ‘dispose  of thoughtfully’. I can’t stand the ‘dispose of thoughtfully’ message.

I want more information, and I want it on the side of the package. I want the ‘what to do with the package’ messages to be as big and as prominent as the ingredients text.

Here is a link to a recent episode of Insight from SBS television. Definitely worth a look.

http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/64#watchonline

wasteman on the lookout..

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Here’s a couple of examples of what I am beginning to term ‘environmental accreditation overkill’. This is the ‘heart tick’ gone mad. 

Accreditation, I always thought, was supposed to help the consumer make some sort of informed decision regarding the purchasing of one product over another, especially when the two products in question bare very little difference.

Now days, it seems they’re all jumping on the bandwagon and  as far as I can tell, all we have  is a cronic watering down of the messages and  a whole lot of confusion. The only people doing any good out of all of this is are the graphic artists who are being paid good money to come up with ‘groovy’ looking symbols. You have to admit, they are groovy!

Do we actually have an environmental accreditation ‘stamp’ that  consumers can both understand and trust?

Sometimes the ‘wastegods’ are just looking out for you. I found this grilling saucepan in someone elses hard waste literally ten minutes after having a discussion about the best way to cook three chops. It’s in perfect condition. Go figure. 

It never ceases to amaze me what some folks will throw away.

You know what I say…I say it’s just too easy (and cheap) to throw stuff away. If a hard waste collection cost, let’s say $500,  we’d think twice about throwing anything away. Better still, we’d think twice about buying it in the first place! 

Do you agree?

Send me some photos of the treasures you’ve found on the street. Best photo will win a wasteman t shirt!

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wm