Environmentally friendly
I love it when Big Business tries to do the right thing… there just always seems to be something a little bit off in the execution. This year, the company I work for decided to start a green initiative, and to kick it off, everyone in our 1200-employee facility got a tote bag and a travel mug. Which would have been great, except the travel mug was made in China, and I highly doubt it’s phthalate- or BPA-free. I threw it away - it wasn’t even recyclable! They could have done better, I think - even Nalgene bottles would have been better.
The bags are also made in China, but at least they fold up to a small, portable size - I’ve already taken mine to the grocery along with my Envirosax.
Now if we could just get them to buy into telecommuting as part of this green initiative…
3 Responses to “Environmentally friendly”
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My company had thousands of employees volunteer in the community, which was great. They were worried we’d have a bunch of plastic water bottle trash, so they gave everyone reusable plastic bottles, except they were that crappy opaque kind with the hard plastic straw like from 10 yrs ago. Of course everyone wanted something for free, though as the guy in the cube in front of me said, Oh, we have a box full of those at home in the basement, but I’m not sure where they are so I’ll get the new bottle.
Then someone from our dept organized to bring bottled water ANYWAY. And no one bothered to take their reusable bottles with them that day.
I did not get the bottle (nor the T-shirt) because I knew I would not use them. It was really silly all around, and also depressing.
When I get stuff I don’t want (assuming I didn’t have a chance to deny receiving it in the first place) I give it away on Freecycle or at Goodwill… I have way too big a guilt trip to throw it out. Anyway, I started saving all plastics and they can go to Indy Recycled Fiber, who takes all the other numbers for recycling.
I agree, the execution leaves something to be desired in the greening of the U.S. Mostly I don’t think consumers -get it- so they just grab more junk and fill up their houses with it and don’t actually use it to change any already wasteful practices.
What is Indy Recycled Fiber? How do you get your plastics to them? We have curbside recycling, but they only take number 1 and 2.
Karen
Karen, check it out here: http://www.deitchley.com/blog/2008/08/05/813/
The link for where to recycle stuff in Indy is at the end of the post.