Creeva’s World 2.0

We were dis­cussing our car­bon foot­print size over at the SWG Forums, and some had this com­ment on Amer­i­can consumptionism:

What i find funny is how much exces­sive pack­ag­ing we produce.

think about beer…i like think­ing about beer.

if you goto a liquor store, you have the option to buy 6 packs and 12 packs.….…..but also 18 packs, 20 packs…8 oz..12 oz..18 oz…24oz..

like we really need all those options. heres an idea.….if you want a 18 pack.…buy a 12 pack and a 6 pack. we dont need all the extra machin­ery, mate­ri­als, exces­sive labor to cre­ate 18 packs..20 packs..

and with less mate­r­ial cost to pro­duce that product.….mabey the com­pa­nies could pay thier employ­ees bet­ter , and mabey even lower the cost of beer (WOOHOO).

mabey im just dumb think­ing this way.….…i dont know.

I was think­ing on this and replied this back:

The­o­ret­i­cally a 12 Pack and 6 pack would use the same amount of pack­ag­ing — actu­ally 6 packs are less eco­log­i­cally friends because the plas­tic has a longer bio-degradable time then card­board and since it requires oil to make plas­tic much more harm­ful for the environment.

Going fur­ther — it takes less card­board to cre­ate 1 24 pack ver­sus 2 12 packs I believe (mar­ginal but a small dif­fer­ence) even if I’m wrong with that it does take more energy to make the card­board for 2 12 packs ver­sus 1 24 pack — while at teh very least is just one cut­ting machine cut­ting one more piece — it’s still an envi­ro­men­tal impact if you fig­ure in in the energy mul­ti­plied by the num­ber of 12 packs produced.

Now since glass is more recy­clable and comes from a renew­able resources — glass bot­tles would be much more envi­ron­men­tally friendly and since it takes less energy to make a larger bot­tle then mul­ti­ple smaller ones it is bet­ter to pur­chase 40 oz. bot­tles then 16 oz. bottles.

If you tru­ely want to be envi­ro­men­tally friendly you would pur­chase your beer only in a refill­able keg — this way you are always re-using the pack­ag­ing for your prod­uct (beer) and not wor­ry­ing about glass, plas­tic, alu­minum, or card­board fill­ing up the land­fills. Sim­i­lar to the peo­ple that carry can­vas bags to the gro­cery store you would be doing your part to help save teh environment.

And that folks is how you show your wife, friends, and fam­ily that your doing your part by buy­ing beer by the keg instead of buy the can. Iron­i­cally you will also save money this way also.

BTW — if you home­brew you would have to take into account the amount of energy it takes to drive to teh store and back trans­port­ing the same amount of beer that you are brew­ing since you’ll prob­a­bly x2 x3 times the amount of energy that the large com­pa­nies use since they make it in bulk enough that it would be a much smaller car­bon impact for them to make the same amount of beer then you can at home.

Please send pay­pal tips for help­ing you win this argu­ment to buy beer to creeva (at) gmail (dot) com

I made a sec­ond post to fol­low up the sec­ond part of what he had said:

 BTW — Higher Wages for Employ­ees or cheaper — choose one

Actu­ally what am I say­ing — once a price rises to a cer­tain level and htey expect a cer­tain amount of profit the price never drops and if it did the gov­ern­ment would raise the sin tax to compensate.

Com­pa­nies on aver­age are pay­ing their employ­ees less on aver­age (account­ing for infla­tion) then just 10–20 years ago — wages are not going to increase — they will rise in sec­tors — but pay rates across teh board will remain or drop — if the wage of the worker both­ers you pur­chase from smaller com­pa­nies that treat their employ­ees bet­ter — me?  I shop at wal-mart — so take that from my pre­vi­ous statement.

Beer is never again going to be any cheaper then it is today — and you will be able to say that the next day and the next day — as infla­tion goes up this con­stant will remain true — another rea­son I’ve given you to drink as much as you can today — also remem­ber to be envi­ron­men­tally friendly and only drink form kegs.

More tips for jus­ti­fy­ing your alco­holism can be sent to the address in the pre­vi­ous post.

So I have now giv­ing you the reader a rea­son to buy beer now and buy it by the keg.   You can always say that you are try­ing to help the envi­ron­ment and sav­ing money — a win win for you.