Other stuff
I've been trying to remember to drink lots of water but it's been interesting - the hotel provides free bottled water at the back of the panel rooms. Isn't that nice? Except that the bottles are half pint bottles - that should be 300ml I guess but the quantity looks smaller than that. Last night I sat on my panel and watched the person next to me drink 5 or 7 bottles over the course of the panel. And all I could think was how all those plastic bottles would now go sit in landfill for the rest of time.
It's funny cause I was sitting in a panel on epublishing today and I watched a bunch of people sit there and discuss whether or not the book would be gone in 20 years and talk about all their electronic gear and this and that. And I kept thinking, wow but the whole world isn't like you. There are a lot of people who could never afford to live this way. And I did mention this at the end, when called on as the only person in the room who owned up to being a die hard print book fan to make the case for the printed book. And there were some people on that panel who didn't get that my point was a class/wealth one.
There's a lot of thoughtless waste here. All sorts of little things that I've started to notice - straws are served with your drinks in restaurants (I have a pet peeve of straws, they are an utterly useless device and then take a million years to degrade - what? You can't pick the glass up and sip from it?) and the straws are wrapped in plastic. I couldn't eat lunch at the restaurant today and so I had to have it "to go" and was given two styrofoam (though surely not?) containers and all sorts of extra bits and pieces. Now, I was excited when he gave it all to me, but as I ate my meal I became more and more guilty at the footprint of my meal - the containers, plastic cutlery inside a plastic shrinkwrap. Takeaway coffee cup with uht in little plastic cups (but omg! french vanilla flavoured!!!) and a bottle of ketchup - a glass bottle of 62g of ketchup. Cute but broke my heart at the footprint of it.
It's a bit depressing. But then on the other hand, actually there is so much room for tiny changes in lifestyle expectations that could make massive changes in footprint. What if this hotel provided glasses and water in jugs instead? What if I had been allowed to eat on crockery and use stainless steel cutlery etc? Maybe when the world finally wakes up and gets cracking, we will actually get a very steep change in direction just by making a few small changes to how we live? I mean, yeah, we need to make massive changes but maybe the low hanging fruit stuff really would make a difference if everyone did it - quick runs on the board etc.
It's funny cause I was sitting in a panel on epublishing today and I watched a bunch of people sit there and discuss whether or not the book would be gone in 20 years and talk about all their electronic gear and this and that. And I kept thinking, wow but the whole world isn't like you. There are a lot of people who could never afford to live this way. And I did mention this at the end, when called on as the only person in the room who owned up to being a die hard print book fan to make the case for the printed book. And there were some people on that panel who didn't get that my point was a class/wealth one.
There's a lot of thoughtless waste here. All sorts of little things that I've started to notice - straws are served with your drinks in restaurants (I have a pet peeve of straws, they are an utterly useless device and then take a million years to degrade - what? You can't pick the glass up and sip from it?) and the straws are wrapped in plastic. I couldn't eat lunch at the restaurant today and so I had to have it "to go" and was given two styrofoam (though surely not?) containers and all sorts of extra bits and pieces. Now, I was excited when he gave it all to me, but as I ate my meal I became more and more guilty at the footprint of my meal - the containers, plastic cutlery inside a plastic shrinkwrap. Takeaway coffee cup with uht in little plastic cups (but omg! french vanilla flavoured!!!) and a bottle of ketchup - a glass bottle of 62g of ketchup. Cute but broke my heart at the footprint of it.
It's a bit depressing. But then on the other hand, actually there is so much room for tiny changes in lifestyle expectations that could make massive changes in footprint. What if this hotel provided glasses and water in jugs instead? What if I had been allowed to eat on crockery and use stainless steel cutlery etc? Maybe when the world finally wakes up and gets cracking, we will actually get a very steep change in direction just by making a few small changes to how we live? I mean, yeah, we need to make massive changes but maybe the low hanging fruit stuff really would make a difference if everyone did it - quick runs on the board etc.