Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Recycled products for business gifts
I am back on my recycled goods band wagon this week. Visit this website for all things recycled www.ecopromogifts.co.uk baseball caps, T shirts, bags, sticky notes, desk accessories, pens, pencils and much more. I was surprised myself to see what could be made from old PET bottles. Why am I so stuck on recycled goods? Well the other day I read this in an extract from Jonathan Sachs new book. ‘Two men were walking along a beach where a great number of sea urchins had been washed ashore after a storm. The younger of the two was picking up the sea urchins and putting them back into the ocean. The older man asked why he was doing this when it was obviously a hopeless task; only a few could be saved. The young man replied that he realised this but saving a few was far better than saving none at all.’ This got me thinking about the environment and recycling and the argument that we waste more energy by recycling products than we do in extracting raw materials and making new stuff. Frankly I can’t believe that the energy expended in digging up aluminium ore, refining it and shipping the stuff half way round the world and then using it to make new drinks cans is less than the energy required to ship old cans to a local reprocessing plant for reuse. Am I being naïve or what? Isn’t it just a case of good old human selfishness, looking for an excuse not to do something a bit boring? Whatever, perhaps it is time we all took a long hard look at what we are doing to our planet, perhaps we should stop spending money on shiny new bits of plastic and metal and go for the second hand stuff instead. So the next time a business gift is required why not think green and go for a recycled product?
