totally out of the blue i know, but was just killing time on facebook and found my way here, these are my thoughts on the issue..

Companies ultimately exist to make a proft for the shareholders/owners, and this is not going to change any time soon. any other objectives are secondary (except for a few rare cases) and are usually done either:
- with the ultimate goal of making more money (e.g. having a “green image” to attract a certain kind of customer).
- or to the extent necessary to stop anyone (regulators, protesters etc.) from intervening with their main objectives.

I agree that this isnt really satisfactory though, but if you want a company to do something that isnt financially in it’s best interest (e.g. pay more tax, pay the staff more), you have to change the laws/regulations.

An interesting case is the body shop, it is one of the few examples of a highly succesful company with “environmental issues” as a core concern, but in 2006 it was taken over by L’Oreal which has a history of animal testing. why? because it was in the best interests of the shareholders.

by the way, as a general rule i hate blogs with a passion, i even hate the word blog, so you should be honoured that i commented!!!!

cheers

Sam

FWIW, you can avoid the need for third-party modules to be installed manually by building your application with py2app instead of Xcode.

http://www.undefined.org/python/#py2app

py2app will automatically locate all third-party modules imported by your application and include compiled versions in your application bundle, and can even include a stripped down Python interpreter if you want for maximum portability. I build all my Python-based apps (ASDictionary, etc) with it - it’s a great tool.

HTH

has

p.s. If you use setuptools/easy_install to install Python modules on your own system, make sure you use the latest py2app from svn as the older version on PyPI isn’t egg-aware.

I’m not a chemist and don’t know if there could be any negative impact on your health from this but it got me thinking about this post and the one before it. In the steve-world-order would fizzy pop companies be made to pay for the addition of fluoride to our water supply? Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, ties in with the something-for-something ethos.

http://www.thermos.co.uk/products.php?prod=186767

which is ideal.

As far as Tesco goes you could have them award Clubcard points for bringing bottles back.

BTW Cai, Denmark isn’t in the eurozone - their currency is called the krone.

Ok I like your idea, and I think the milkman could play a part in delivering it to your door. Trialing this in the Mumbles would be ideal.

But I’m gonna (in the best CS style) mash your idea with Dave’s notes and something I saw in France.

Instead of getting a nice clean bottle every time, you take your bottle back to the shop where they have a machine to fill it back up.

This makes a nifty marketing scheme too. You put an empty glass bottle on every bodies door step with a little note inside. The note tells them to bring the bottle to ‘local shop’ and they can redeem one free bottle of tasty tasty juice. using the note as a sort of coupon. hopefully they get hooked on tasty tasty juice and keep coming back for more.

i have mixed feeling about this subject, i can understand the reasoning and logic, i just don’t think it’s our (i’ll class myself as a non-chav) duty to perform natural selection. i tend to think you’re suggesting a sort of social conscience based scale for implementing the stringfellow-world-order, it seems this would be even more difficult to implement and govern than the candian IQ based system. do people only get to keep their babies if they put the recycling out last night for example?

What I didn’t realise was, the milk man gave you a discount if you gave him the bottle back. So point 2 isn’t a totally new concept for this country, it’s just not widely adopted. I guess your local newspaper shop doesn’t want the hassle of sending plastic bottles back to coke-cola.

I wonder if your street litter census would show a grater number of plastic bottles discarded than glass bottles? normalising the results against sales figures.

talking of glass bottles, wine bottles must be a nightmare. in france you take the empty bottles back to your favorite wine shop and they fill them back up for you. why don’t we have that here?

i think you’d have a hard time charging corporations for the actions of their customers, but using people on the dole to clean the streets isn’t a bad idea.

Even if you don’t wholly commit yourself, everything you do adds up. I’m vegetarian because I don’t like people killing animals (or land/resources being used to farm them). And sure, by myself that may not make much different. But add that to the 3 million other vegetarians in the country, and that makes a bit of a difference (at least, I like to think so). Apparently the number of vegetarians in the UK has doubled in the last 10 years. So things are improving, right?

As for not buying things from evil companies - again, everything stacks up to some extent. If the Body Shop doesn’t fit in with one’s ethical viewpoint, then one should simply shop elsewhere. Maybe… Lush, for example? The more people who shop conscientiously, the better.

I think on the whole, things are improving at the moment, anyway. I think we’re coming past the ‘let’s use everything we can’ ideology in a lot of places, and starting to realise that we can’t continue like this. Big companies are starting to put good recycling policies in place; places are trying to cut down on packaging; energy saving lightbulbs are being used more and more… Take a look at Tesco’s Greener Living website to see what they’re doing: http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/what_we_are_doing/default.page? - some pretty neat stuff! It’s all encouraging. And the more people/companies that start doing this kind of thing, the more will follow, I think.

I’m not sure what the ’solution’ is to people who don’t care, or who don’t care *enough*. I guess just to hope that by changing *our* actions, and by companies changing theirs, that these people either do get inspired, or at least that there’s less choice of bad crap for them to choose from. At Lush, we get quite a few … less desirable types come in, and whilst they almost certainly come in for the smell and the pretty colours, I can’t help but hope that our ideologies will rub off on them to some extent, and mould their brains a tiny bit. But even if it doesn’t, they’re still buying good things instead of bad things!

So what should *we* do? At the end of your post, you present your choices as a bunch of polar opposites. But they’re not. As I said, I think the key is compromise. And I think everything we do helps. For starters, I really think you shouldn’t worry at all about ‘pissing people off’. Why should you? You believe in something that is right, and good - don’t let anyone make you doubt what you believe in. Please note that I say this in relation to your beliefs about being green, which we know is a good thing to do. These comments do not apply to beliefs, like mass religion - people should pick those apart as much as they like

My parents, whilst doing a fair chunk of their shopping at Sainsbury’s, buy the majority of their fruit and veg (and a bunch of other stuff) from smaller shops, or local farmers. They also grow their own veg. They recycle pretty much everything they use, or stick it in the compost. They’re down to about one black bag a week, now, and every striving to get it lower. They use eco-friendly cleaning agents (washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets, washing power, etc). And they’re vegan. They do have a big 4×4… I’m hoping that’ll change, but we’ll see. Anyway, on the whole, it’s very inspirational, and it’s something I’d like to aspire to. And I think that, then, is where you can make a difference – inspire others. And, I think this shows that it’s not one or the other - you can live a green life and love at the same time

Do what you can. Change lightbulbs. Plant plants. Recycle. If you want to eat meat, eat meat - you can perhaps try and make a more conscientious decision about where you get that meat from, perhaps – that’s something, at least. These things all help, but I think one of the biggest differences is in supporting this cause, and telling people about it. Telling people is one of the best things you can do to help create change. Don’t worry about annoying people. Be disruptive. Inspire people.

I think that’s about it! Phew, that’s the longest comment I’ve ever written, ever. Maybe let’s finish with an inspirational quote, eh? You may have heard this before

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.”

Sorry, cuill.com AKA twiceler goes 403.

e.g. given real URS site.com/foo and site.com/bar twiceler is looking for site.com/foo/bar

I wonder what they think they are looking for.