Nominations, please, for the Landfill Prize
Been given a particularly pointless Christmas present? Here’s a way of making sense of it. You can enter it in for the Landfill Prize, a genius idea set up by my colleague, Times writer John Naish. His book Enough, which looks at our voracious appetite for stuff, is about to be published.
As one of the judges, I can reveal that we will be looking for “the most pointless, frivolous, over-complicated and wasteful consumer objects of the last 12 months”.
One such contender that is sitting on a desk in front of me is the battery operated salt and pepper mill, sent in by a PR company hoping to impress. I hate it. It makes a noise like a power drill every time you season your sandwich and you are deprived of the opportunity to exercise thumb and middle finger when you grind your salt.
Oh dear, my parents have them at home and I love them! Having got used to using them over the holiday, now that I'm home and back to using my own "normal" mills I miss the electric ones!
Posted by: Emily | 9 Jan 2008 13:16:45
Does anybody know about this site ( http://www.earthlab.com ) ? I have seen other environmental sites with carbon calculators like yahoo and tree huggers, but I am wondering what the deal with earthlab.com is? I saw they also published a list last month of the top ten greenest cities ( http://www.efficientenergy.org/Top-Ten-Green-Cities-in-the-United-States ). Does anyone know if this site is better than the others? Fill me in!
I took their carbon foot print test and it was pretty interesting, they said that I put out 4.5 tons of carbon, does anyone know about any other tests?
Posted by: andy | 10 Jan 2008 01:27:45
What a brilliant idea for a prize.
My nomination is a gift from Mother-in-Law to my wife at Christmas which was a bright purple 'washing ball' thing made of pure synthetic oil-based nylon netting all stitched into a ball with floppy wings. It's a flannel or sponge substitute probably sold at Boots for £1.99 on a Buy One Get One Free offer. It's heading for landfill in the majority of homes but I have my eye on unravelling it and using the netting to store onions and shallots in the garage this summer.
It is awful.
Posted by: ClandonMan | 10 Jan 2008 14:15:16
Fear not, Emily. There is always room for personal ecological development. I look forward to hearing how you get on...
Andy - any chance your work for earthlab? Just a wild guess...
Clandonman - how truly awful - have you entered it officially at www.enoughness.co.uk
Posted by: Eco Worrier | 10 Jan 2008 14:34:20
Please Google ,"battery operated milk frother". This would be my entry as a totally unnecessary object.
Posted by: ron | 18 Jan 2008 11:16:49
Talking of books with an environmental message,
I can remember reading (American) Vance Packard's 'Wastemakers' in the 1960s.
It first alerted me to the deliberate way that consumption and waste were designed into products.
I think Ralph Nader took up many of the issues the book raised.
I don't know if it's still in print, unfortuneately I lost my copy some years ago.
It might be interesting to compare the environmental issues of those days to now, and check how things may have improved.
Posted by: John Gregory Flinn | 25 Jan 2008 17:25:36
Speaking of unnecessary consumer products I just must nominate the book you recommended above. Who on earth needs a whole book on "Cycling to work"? A "beginners guide" at that. So if you want to get home again you have to buy the sequel right?
Posted by: Mattias $ | 4 Feb 2008 13:50:43