Down the Bog

I was listening to an interesting debate on the radio a couple of days ago regarding supermarket plastic bags. I know that over in the UK aswell as here in Canada that there are efforts being made to do away with the one-use bag and encourage shoppers to utilise more robust and reusable bags to carry home their shopping.

Where we normally do our grocery shopping the supermarket charges 5 cents per bag but we’re quite bad for remembering to take any bags with us so rather shamefully we normally end up paying out for half a dozen. We have in fact bought a couple of the strong reusable bags but as I say we’ve yet to discipline ourselves into remembering to taken them with us and two is not enough anyway. Reusable bags do make sense though because for one thing the handles don’t break and you can actually get your shopping home in them and they’re good for the environment.

Supermarket plastic bags are not biodegradable so they normally end up on landfill sites for a long, long time so it makes sense to find a better way. However just as some people refuse to recycle their rubbish by sorting out the plastic and the cardboard for collection (where local authorities have such collections) so supermarkets dare not take a first step of not having plastic bags available for fear of losing customers who can’t see the bigger picture and just want endless plastic bags for their shopping.

Still, it was a very interesting discussion on the radio and it got turned slightly on it’s head by a guy coming on the line to say that if we really want to sort out global warming (By the way I’m not completely convinced of global warming but I do believe in looking after the world we live in) then we should all become vegan because cows are one of the largest producers of methane gas through their burping and…ahem…farting. Get rid of all the cows and you’ll drastically reduce the amount of methane gas in the atmosphere which will reduce the greenhouse effect of warming up the earth.

Well, it’s a thought isn’t it. I read earlier today that the amount of cows on the earth has doubled over the last forty years so perhaps the cow population is playing it’s part in causing global warming. Sheep also have a responsibility in this and would probably have to go too.

So what would we prefer? A cutback in cars, industry, airplane travel and free supermarket bags or maybe just give up eating meat and start to eat lots of veggie burgers and drink soya milk shakes.

I don’t know what to make of all of this you know. But as far as the cow thing is concerned here you’ll find a clearer explanation about the farting, burping animals that need to fart and burp a little less.