The veal of vegetables

Baby carrots are the venison of the vegetable world. This is because they are not grown into such a convenient shape and size like baby corn is. Rather, a regular carrot is chopped, shaved and whittled down to a fun sized snack. A similar process is used in making veal, which is the tasty result of a calf being ripped from the beating womb of a cow. Such waste.

Annually millions of pounds of carrot shavings are then discarded into the streets creating traffic jams or toasted and made into non-caffeinated coffee substitute. Furthermore, a bag of baby carrots can cost the consumer $7.99 or more while a few bunches of carrots that the buyer would have to wash and cut themselves costs less than $5.

It is in Maryland that sales of baby carrots are the most brisk. This immoral act of environmental crime is ameliorated by the fact that for the most part anything sharp enough to cut carrots in the state of Maryland is typically used for preparing meth or stabbing neighbors, or both, usually in the same evening. Baby carrots are most appealing to children and it would be wrong to use blood-stained, meth-permeated knives to cut up carrots and then feed them to kids.

So already prepared carrot pieces manufactured in a smarter region and imported are preferable to warping another generation of Maryland spawn by getting them hooked too early on drugs and the taste of blood. It is better to delay the inevitable until they can be securely housed in a Super-Max prison jail instead of the rotating doors of Juvenile Hall. Somebody has to think of the children.

Mixed message

For a movie about the ruination of the environment, the makers of the 1971 giant monster flick Godzilla Vs. Hedorah certainly threw a lot of garbage into the water.

It's a trade off

I guess all that water that is saved using less soap washing clothes can be used to process the pulp to make all these paper tags hanging on bottles of laundry detergent.

BONUS: Don't forget the water saved in not nourishing all the trees that are cut down to supply the raw materials! It's a win/win!

- Found hanging on hundreds of bottles of laundry detergent in a local San Diego grocery store, May 2010.

Good For You and the Earth

Recently I received a number of on-demand printed advertisements along with the usual coupons I receive at the check stand of the store I regularly buy my groceries from. Here is a slightly manipulated actual ad that is generated from the coupon dispensing machines. As usual, I have removed the actual store name and logo and replaced it with a fictitious business name.

After paying for my groceries the coupon printer actually dispensed two of these ads along with my receipt and a couple of other coupons.

The printed advertisement from the store makes the claim that organic products are beneficial for the consumer and for the ecology of the planet Earth. This is an assertion that looks and sounds good and makes the consumer feel better about what they buy even though the term "organic" does not necessarily mean something is healthier to eat. It refers primarily to the required processes used to produce a product that is certified as organic in origin (which can be quite liberal in definition).

While the claim that organic products are superior to other foodstuffs may be true any environmental gains from organic farming must surely be negated by the obscene amounts of paper waste generated to proclaim said benefits.

The distance between the public relations claims of a company and their vendors committing to being 'green' issued from the rarefied heights of the Boardroom and the street-level reality can be measured by the the many miles of paper spam generated at the cash register.

Do the math: One 6-inch ad x an average 3000 customers per store x 2400 stores nationwide.

Related post: Waste Lots, Want Not.