Don’t get me wrong, I am all for Biblical conservation…but I’m fairly sure what we’re doing isn’t close.  There’s endless examples I could use to approach this, but I’m going for one that got me particularly annoyed…and I don’t annoy easily.

Let’s look at the ongoing process of banning plastic bags here in Australia.

On the surface, a noble gesture. And one I support in principle – I’ve been using green bags for 7 years now.  But does all the hoo-hah surrounding a ban really reflect advances in environmental policy when there is still so much waste being allowed?

A work colleague / friend / fellow cynic in my company’s IT department and I were discussing the bag thing last night, while working out what to do with respect to our printing technology requirements (bear with me here…I promise this won’t get too techy…cos I wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway, unless it’s accounting techy, in which case I could bore you so far beyond tears that the resulting dried up carcass would be worthy of a major Egyptian archaeological discovery…but that’s another story or 10).

Anyway…printing.

Me: “We can buy new printers for less than the replacement toners…where’s the eco-sense in that?”

Friend: “I bought 5 new printers for home last week as I needed a table for my printer as well as replacement toners. It was the cheapest way to achieve all that … but at least I didn’t use any plastic bags to get them home, so all is OK, right?”

What the????

It’s enough to make you cynical (oh…wait…)  I’m not even vaguely annoyed at my friend, by the way.  I’m annoyed at the fact this is the most economical option.

I understand the political system always has (and always will perhaps ?) use these tiny-yet-ultra-visible actions in order to pat itself on the back … plastic bags affect everyone, while the “printers are wasteful” lobby groups don’t have a lot of traction just yet.

(Note I’ve deliberately not talked about good corporate citizenship here either…feel free to open that discussion in the comments, if you care).

When it all comes down to it, please be assured that I love the earth, and take my role in looking after it in accordance with God’s word seriously (ie: I’m not anti-green…but I could well be anti-the-world’s-view-of-being-green).

I guess I’m just not sure if these moves of good intent ever really lead to change.  What do you think?

Are symbolic gestures ever effective?