Dispatches from the War on the Environment

Recently we have been treated to the spectacle of members of the government front bench joyfully fondling a lump of coal, with Deputy Prime Minster Barnaby Joyce displaying an expression of such manic lust that your first instinct is to check that there are no sharp objects within his reach.

But while big attacks on the environment like this grab our attention, a termite-like army of smaller attacks quietly undermine us.

Here are some that have recently come to my attention:

Battery Bullshit

At first glance one would think these were the "World's First Recycled Batteries". (In itself a strange claim since lead-acid batteries have been recycled since approximately forever.)



but read the fine print...

 

Energizer are presumably claiming a dubious World First in producing alkaline batteries with an incredible "4% of total weight" being made from recycled ingredients. Can you contain your excitement?

Bear in mind here that a large portion of the world's steel production is (and always was) from recycled steel, as it's much cheaper to melt down scrap steel than smelt it from ore. So it's possible the metal casing and end caps of the battery already contribute a substantial amount towards this 4%.

Toilet Paper Scandal Redux

On reading a recent article in Choice Magazine, it turns out that I was too generous in my post "The Great Toilet Paper Scandal"

I had assumed that the paper labelled as "made from 100% recycled paper" did contain at least contain 30% of recycled paper as per the FSC certification.

It turns out that even this not necessarily true; the 30% requirement actually applies to the entire production run (of an unstated but probably fairly large number of products) covered by the FSC certificate. It is actually possible that the paper itself contains no recycled paper, as long as other products in the same line contained proportionally more.

I know many people don't think this is important ("who gives a shit" is one of the extraordinarily witty comments I've heard), but this is a product that everyone uses every day and none of it can be recycled. There are 24M people in Australia, if a toilet roll lasts a person 6 days on average, that's 4M rolls being flushed daily. Which is a lot of trees.

Garbage Bag Garbage

It would be fair to assume that recycled plastic, like recycled paper, is of lower quality than the virgin article. Since a garbage bag is intentionally something that's going to be disposed of in landfill, it's surely something we want to make out of the lowest quality of recycled materials, or out of something that bio-degrades, or preferably both.

So how do the supermarkets respond to this challenge?



Coloured and Scented garbage bags of course!

Looking in one small suburban Coles, there were eight different types of these abominable things being sold.



Of course none were made from recycled materials and all were non-biodegradable. They were however apparently recyclable - which I'm sure is a useful property for something that is intended to be disposed of in landfill.

(Finally) A Reason to Fly QANTAS

Virgin, until now my second least favoured airline, are asking me to "Celebrate our new partnership with EnergyAustralia".

 

That name sounds familiar...

Apparently they're in the planet killing business:

"Energy Australia, responsible for the Yallourn coal-fired power station in Victoria, is the worst offender at number one with a 20.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent gases."

Congratulations, Virgin, you've regained the hotly contested place of my No. 1 least favoured airline by teaming up with Australia's equally hotly contested No.1 polluter.

Even Environmental Organisations Are At It

It is sad that even an organisation like the Australian Koala Foundation is willing to resort to Greenwash tactics. They are selling these signs.

And they write:

"Protect your trees for koalas!  Bright yellow to stand out, made of degradeable polypropylene - lasts for years but will eventually breakdown and return to the earth.  Attach to your tree with a small tack or nail, or tie it on."

"Degradable" is not the same as "biodegradable"! It just means the stuff breaks down into small pieces. Small particles of polypropylene are in fact a considerable environmental problem; they end up in the sea where they're ingested by plankton and enter the food-chain. Recently, cosmetics containing polypropylene micro-beads have been banned for this reason.

OK, these signs are few in number and will ultimately (probably) end up in landfill where they won't do much harm, but, really, an environmental organisation should know better than to be party to this sort of misinformation.

Also, it's not clear why the signs can't be recycled. Polypropylene (recycle code 5) is definitely recyclable.

The Great Toilet Paper Scandal

Consider this: Paper made from fresh wood is higher quality than that made from recycled paper. [My understanding is that the fibres get broken down into shorter lengths during the recycling process, thus making the texture worse, and in addition, contaminants (dyes etc.) get introduced, further reducing the quality of the product.] Recycled paper made from paper that had previously been recycled is presumably going to be lower quality again.

Since there is no possibility of recycling toilet paper after use, it would surely make sense to make it out of 100% recycled paper, thus removing lower quality paper from the recycling stream. Virgin paper - whether made from responsibly sourced wood or not - should be preserved for uses where its higher quality is really needed, and where it can be recycled afterwards.

Surely, in these days where pretty much every product claims to be Green in some way or other, we should be able to find toilet paper made from 100% recycled paper.

Here is some.



But it's got freaking pictures of frogs printed on it!  

Are they deliberately trying to take the piss out of us?

OK, what about this? Woolworths "Eco" brand. It says "100% Recycled Paper". Pretty unambiguous.

 

But look at the fine print. Mix? What does this mean?

  

The FSC site tells us:

 

OK, so it's really a mixture, and what is "Controlled Wood"? The FSC site goes on to say:

"FSC Controlled Wood is NOT FSC Certification. Its purpose is simply to ensure the avoidance of wood in FSC Certified sources that come from the following unacceptable sources:

• Illegally harvested wood
• Wood harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights
• Wood harvested from forests where High Conservation Values are threatened
• Wood harvested from forests being converted to plantations or non-forest uses
• Wood from forests in which genetically modified trees are planted

It does not provide the full suite of investigation that is provided for by FSC Certification such as ensuring economic viability of the company or other issues in the Principles & Criteria. It is simply to help companies to drive change up the supply chain and encourage Forest Managers to become FSC Certified while proving market demand for FSC material.

The market for Controlled Wood is limited by the reduced ability to label the final product. In a Mix label product, a maximum of 30% of the product can come from Controlled Wood. Controlled Wood is only for trade between Chain of Custody Certificates where they are mixing it with FSC Certified or FSC Recycled Material. For more information about Controlled Wood in Australia, see this page http://au.fsc.org/controlled-wood.207.htm"

So up to 30% of the wood in this product - which is labelled "100% recycled" - may in fact be sourced from timber that is not even fully FSC certified, let alone recycled.

There is a license code (FSC-C109337) on the certification, so let's look it up. Not much to see: there are no documents lodged and it doesn't even tell us what is in the product. But it does say the original manufacturer is Encore Tissue (Aust) Pty. Ltd. [Note: the Encore site is current off the air for some reason, but can be found on WayBack Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.encoretissue.com.au]

On their main page, Encore claim to be "passionate about saving our environment" and that "Someone has to “speak for the trees” before we have none left". Fine words, but a deeper look is revealing. It tells us:

"Encore Tissue’s SAFE®, ICARE™ and EARTHWISE™ Brands are the only tissue products endorsed by Planet Ark.

...

Planet Ark supports a limited range of 'greener' products. Planet Ark supports these products because they have met with certain environmental standards. They must offer a more environmentally responsible alternative to the commonly used products that are on the market, while still being a good, quality product."

So this is actually one of their "greener" products and not actually endorsed by Planet Ark. Yet again, we scratch the thin layer of Greenwash and a much less palatable truth is revealed underneath.

And it's not just Woolworths doing it, but Coles too.



And interestingly they're using the same license code as well.

 

What appears to be happening here is that:

a) The FSC are having their arms twisted to provide a pseudo-certification just so that retailers can put an FSC logo on their product without it being fully certified.

b) Encore are also having their arms twisted to provide the cheapest possible product that can have this label applied to it. [Either that or they're lying about their green credentials, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.]

c) But even this isn't enough for the major retailers and they have to further misrepresent the stuff as being "100% recycled".

What is scary here is that both Coles and Woolworths are so confident that they can get away with telling full-on lies, that they will do this as a matter of course even for minor, unimportant (to them) product lines. To what depths do you think they will descend when it comes to something that might seriously threaten their profits?