The 'Eco-Mentalists' may have a point...

We've all seen the developing news about the country being put in drought and of course, we've all been heavily rained on at least once since the drought orders were put in place!. When it was announced that parts of the country would be placed in drought, I just assumed they would stay in drought until Christmas, but no.

Today it was announced that parts of the UK would be taken out of drought, including Birmingham and almost all of the south-west of England. All this comes just under a month after these places were actually put in drought! What's the point of taking time to make the decision to put the country in drought and then to take the drought orders away in certain places? The first places in the UK that went into an official drought were parts of East Anglia and Lincolnshire. Not just that, but it's only been 2 months since the first major drought order was put in place and this was in places such as London and the Isle and Wight.

I'm no eco warrior but I know that you can't just have a drought in one place for less than 2 months and expect things to improve instantly, the reservoirs, rivers and lakes must be given time to fill up and the only way to do that is if the drought is kept up for a long time.

Another eco warrior based point I'd like to make is about the amount of packaging that is still on food, on an average food shop in Sainsbury's you will encounter products with excessive amounts of packaging, for example a pack of 4 apples has a polystyrene tray and a cellophane wrap. Why is all of this actually needed? Another example is from a multipack of a well known chcoolate bar beginning with T, this has the foil wrap you'd expect on a standard bar, but also a long cardboard tray. Why?

From what I've said it sounds very much like I have turned into a tree hugger, but no, I am just trying to understand why the products we buy everyday have a ridiculous amount of packaging. However, could there be another side to why all this packaging surrounds food. Since environmentalist groups have campaigned about big companies using more recyclable packaging, food still has the huge amounts of packaging it had before, but is now recyclable. So are companies just using recyclable packaging to please the eco warriors and to say that they use more recyclable packaging than before? Maybe.

What I do know is that it will take some time before food starts to have less packaging and our recycling bins stop overflowing.

TB 2012.