Isn’t it great when big corporate firms suddenly decide that they are all concerned about the environment, climate change, CO2 emissions etc? Well, yes and no! Yes it is good if a company decides to run a proper initiative, but not so great if they send an email out at Christmas to say that they are not sending any corporate Christmas cards to client as they want to do their part for the environment. Yeah right, if these companies want to do something then perhaps they could be looking at specific on-going environmental policies, not a half hearted attempt to save money in the guise of environmentalism. OK, so you want to send e-cards instead of real Christmas cards? Either use the money for environmental promotions or just say, ‘we’re sending an e-card this year and the money we save is being donated to charity.’

Mustn’t grumble about the news that Coca Cola are slimming down their iconic glass coke bottle by 20% to reduce waste. Obviously this has a big impact on the environment, and probably saves Coca Cola some money too, which is a double bonus. My question is why do so many companies have so much packaging all of the time, why don’t they follow Coca Cola’s lead and do the same, helping the environment, reducing their long-term packaging costs and getting good press in the process?

To be fair, I prefer a nice smoothie to soda as I’m a health freak, but that aside, we need to see more multinational companies take a lead so well done to CC for this at least.

Sometimes you just feel that there is little point in even hoping that the human race will be able to run the planet economically without using up all the earth’s resources and turning it to a polluted hell hole. I figured that I could turn the following headlines into various posts and expand on them further, but I can barely be bothered today.

News on the wire is that the US Environmental Agency report that ‘BP PLC violated the Clean Air Act by making several unapproved changes at its Indiana oil refinery, significantly boosting emissions.’ Well that’s just great…

A plethora of reports in this week’s New Scientist (go buy it!) highlighting problems with the Kyoto, draining bogs in Sumatra to grow palm oil for bio-fuel releases carbon dioxide into the environment, up to 30 percent of what could be saved by the bio fuel in the first place. What great economy that is! Honestly if these people would engage their brains instead of their greed just for a second maybe just maybe…

What else? New Scientist again, this time highlighting another silly nuclear power station being built in Bulgaria, experimental blah, blah, blah, on a fault line??? Yeah, I have a nice little paragraph from the Bible which is quite apt (I’m not religious so don’t get any ideas) for all of you who think building this nuclear power plant is a good idea:

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. (translate Wormwood loosely into Ukrainian, if you’re bored)

And I don’t mean that God warned us, I mean that we’ve been warned through coincidence, history and what should be common sense.

The Greenpeace ‘Guide to Greener Electronics‘ has been released and gives a big slap to Nintendo for ‘being first global brand to score zero across all criteria’. You’d think you would have to go out of your way to score zero, so it’s a disappointing result for the company. At the other end of the scale Sony Ericson, Samsung and Sony are the top three this year, so for us eco-types it’s looking like we should be asking for a PlayStation 3 from Santa instead of a Wii. In all seriousness I would have liked a Wii but with all the banging on about consumerism I’ve been doing, and now hearing the eco-credentials of Nintendo it’s something I’m going to have to cross off the list. Shame.