Save the planet

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

For some years now, hotels have been putting signs in bathrooms suggesting that you would help to save the planet if you reused your towels. It's usually, 'Chuck em on the floor and we'll change them but you'd be a really nice person if you hung them up and used them the next day,' I have no problem with that in principle for I do the same at home. But, do these hotels give you a discount for reusing towels? No, they bloody well don't! No doubt the laundry savings just go to boost their profits.

And now our supermarkets have jumped on the bandwagon by withdrawing plastic bags from the checkouts and making you ask for them, presumably in the hope that you might feel a teeny bit guilty and that they can reduce their costs. To be fair, Tesco do a nice line of strong jute shopping bags for a quid and I have 5 of them. They are much better than the plastic ones if you buy as much wine as I do.

Ireland was much less hypocritical. They just introduced a charge for plastic bags and consumption collapsed.