Share the Message

2 August 2009 — Have you seen The Story of Stuff? It is a powerful website with a very simple message about reducing our consumption. One part that struck me the most is when Annie Leonard talks about how obsolescence is purposely inserted into the design of products so that they break quickly and you have to buy a new one within a few years. Remember your grand-mother’s blender that would not break, or that heavy fridge that lasted forever? Soon corporations realized that it was not a good long term strategy to build products to last, they needed their customers to keep buying. There needed to be some weaker parts inserted into the design to make the product break after a set number of years, thereby re-starting the consumption wheel.  Plastic plays that role… 

20 March 2009 — I have already mentioned that our little village of Wakefield Quebec started a community-based group to try and eliminate the use of plastic bags. Our goal is to launch a pilot project in May that would involve generating a lot of information aimed at customers to encourage them to reduce their consumption of plastic bags. We want the movement to come from customers rather than retailers who would have to force consumers into paying for the bags. So our town newspaper just published an article featuring us on the cover page, arm wrestling over plastic and paper bags.