Bag Limit
I link to a fair number of stories in the British Daily Mail. They usually have something or other that interests or amuses. Today, they have something just a wee bit underhanded going on, though. This is, quite frankly, a journalistic hit piece - and, it turns out, the Daily Mail has a financial interest in the reporting of the story.
The designer bag seen as the icon of a green rebellion against plastic carriers has suffered an eco-backlash.
It has emerged that the I'm Not A Plastic Bag creation of designer Anya Hindmarch was made with cheap labour in China.
The £5 re-usable bag was then sea-freighted thousands of miles to Britain, which will have generated carbon emissions.
The details have drawn criticism from environmentalists and MPs who say it risks bringing the green movement into disrepute……
…..Revelations that the bag is made in factories in China, where labour costs are a fraction of those in Britain, may embarrass We Are What We Do - the group behind the concept - together with the designer and Sainsbury's.
Here's the kicker in the tut-tutting piece decrying the Chinese-made bag:
By contrast, an eco-bag being offered to readers by the Daily Mail is Fairtrade certified and comes from factories in India, where staff are guaranteed good standards of pay and working conditions.
The suppliers of the cotton are guaranteed fair play and a fair price for their crops.
As a result, Fairtrade bags supplied from India generally attract a wholesale price which is around three times higher than those from Chinese producers.
Now, frankly, this is bag is also manufactured all the way across the world in India and didn't magically appear in Britain transported by the carbon-neutral fairy, did it? And the Mail selling one bag while trying to whack the other bag is pretty cheesy. Both bags are about pious posturing and feel-good-about-yourself, not about any realistic savings to the environment. Sort of like Al Gore and his gargantuan energy consumption being piously blessed away by the purchase of indulgences. (Which the makers of the first bag claim they have purchased to offset the sea voyage of the feel-good bags). Over the long run, if someone uses the bag - wherever it came from - long enough, they will have eventually saved some use of plastic. But only if they use it long enough (I have no idea how long that period is, I have no figures to work with). Will the use of the bag hit a break-even point? Maybe. But it it the salvation of the entire globe. You have got to be completely off your rocker to think so. It's a tote bag for heaven's sake.
(And, incidentally, tote bags have been around pretty much forever. I'll bet we have at least a dozen or so laying around the house used for various purposes, or gathering dust. There's that "used long enough" thing.)
Dumb Stuff, Environment, Media, World news | Gaius Friday, 27 April , 2007
By Quilly Mammoth, Friday, 27 April , 2007 @ 9:01 pm
Good one there, Gaius, excellent analysis. Why don’t they just grow hemp in The UK?
Better yet, they could all give $25.00(or about £18) to PBS and a grateful, washed up, far left, actor will send them one emblazoned with WHYY, WGBH, WNET or WXII! That way we continue to see vapid BBC productions, Biil Moyer ranting and The Antique Road Show.
Win-Win I say.
By Gaius, Friday, 27 April , 2007 @ 9:12 pm
Actually, they’d get to feel good and PBS would need less US taxpayer support. That’s a win-win-win!