GO green! Or, cutting the carbon footprint one oxygen molecule at a time.

Most of us know what lobbyists are, and they don't always get a very good rap.

But it's about time each of us becomes a lobbyist to reduce our individual carbon footprints.

You know those huge cereal boxes or the potato chip bags you buy which are only about half full? They always print the disclaimer which reads, "Product is filled by weight and not volume. Some settling may occur during shipping". There are many products which habitually come in oversized containers: Most medications, your new mouse, toys, and on, ad infinitum.

I've been irked by this for years because it's an obvious marketing ploy on the part of manufacturers to make their item look bigger, and thus better, than their competitor's brand. As if the statement "product is filled by weight..." is supposed to allay the consumer that it was 'OK' to get fooled by the size of the packaging. Presumably, it follows that it's then OK to ship the product in that ridiculously large container.

But now my ire is even more pronounced by these practices of manufacturers, oblivious or uncaring about their impact on climate change or the economics of petroleum.

To illustrate: Over a month ago I bought some multi-vitamins my doctor recommended I try. I looked over the ingredients list on each of several different brands, and chose the one I felt was the best bang for the buck. When I arrived home, I opened the paper carton containing the plastic bottle of tablets. I then opened the plastic bottle and looked in. There, lying in the bottom of the bottle, were the 60 tablets I'd paid for, taking up less than 20% of the space inside that bottle.

Now, I've been putting up with this nonsense pretty much all my life. But this was the last straw! "Product is filled by weight" (or number) be damned. I sat looking at this (relatively) huge amount of plastic sitting on my desk ironically masquerading as a bottle of cure, and thinking, "Oil dependence? Carbon footprint? Climate change? What are THEY thinking?"

What ARE they thinking? Where is the responsibility in this blatant overuse of a petroleum product? And that's not the end of it.

The oversized plastic bottle is packaged in an oversized paper carton. These oversized cartons are then shipped in unnecessarily larger cardboard boxes. This means that it takes more diesel trucks/ships/trains to ship the products than should be necessary, burning more fuel than is necessary.

That $700 billion being transferred overseas isn't JUST about buying petroleum for fuel. It's also about fueling our addiction to "bigger is better" in the form of big plastic medication bottles, big plastic chip bags, big plastic and/or paper packages for small electronics, and transporting huge boxes of mostly packaged empty air all over the country and the world.

So I wrote a "friendly" email to the company I bought the vitamins from. Or, maybe it wasn't so friendly... I reminded them to try to keep abreast of current events, and to please let me know when they wised up some, because at that point I might consider buying their product again.

And, at the moment I hit 'send' for that email, I became a Green Lobbyist.

Perhaps it's time we all became individual lobbyists. I’m not saying we can or should do without plastics entirely. I’m saying we need to be more realistic and responsible about those plastics.

Compose and save a generic letter on your 'puter, restating all the obvious detrimental effects of over packaging. The carbon footprint, the dependence on foreign oil, climate change, and anything else you can think of. Say that you'll refrain from buying product 'X' in favor of product 'Y' because their product 'X' is abusing not only your intelligence as a consumer, but that it is also encouraging dependence on expensive foreign petroleum. Or, if you can't do without the product, at the very least tell that company, "Shame!”

Then, every time you buy and open a package which is only a little bit product and a whole lot o' empty air, you can plug in the offending company's name and shoot it through e-space.

If everyone in Pickens' Army were to do this every single time such a package were opened, it shouldn't take long before most manufacturers toed the line.

And... you get to feel better about all those year's worth of pent up frustration reading those 'filled by weight' disclaimers.

Hugs,
Teri K.