Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Bottled Nige

After yesterday's lengthy excursus, a couple of snippets picked up from the 'news' ...

This crudely forged link tells the tale of a supposedly 'green' milk bottle -

http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/house_and_home/Reports/environment/Supermarket_recycling_initiatives_news_article_557_114865.jsp

Now, my own ecofascist council collects my plastic milk bottles under the pretence of recycling - and yet, according to this, the things end up in landfill. Why am I not surprised? A council's obligations in this matter, I believe, extend no further than collecting stuff 'for recycling', regardless of its fate. I don't see why they can't have 100 percent 'recycling' by simply giving everybody only green bins. That'd do the trick.
Meanwhile, some bright spark might work on designing a milk bottle that's easy to open and that pours where you want it, rather than all over the immediate vicinity (like those milk jugs you still find in hotels and tearooms, with a lip so narrow it can serve no useful purpose). Hang about - this particular design conundrum was solved many years ago, by the slender glass milk bottles that used to adorn the nation's doorsteps - and were recyced in the best, lowest-impact manner, by being collected and reused. What happened? I blame myself - I should have kept quiet about cow-juice.

There was a much more reassuring report somewhere, that a certain cheap Hungarian Merlot is the healthiest wine in the world, in terms of resveratrol content - the stuff that prevents heart disease, cancer, sobriety and all manner of other horrors. Being scientists, the cretins who came up with this finding failed to mention exactly which cheap Hungarian Merlot it was. Can anyone out there in the blogosphere track down this vital information? (and pass it on to me in terms of strict confidentiality). Santé!

7 comments:

  1. Nige, re the milk container conundrum - why oh why oh why has this become such an issue? I saw in the paper the other day a piece about Asda 'reinventing' the milk bottle , in the form of a cardboard container with a biodegradeable plastic inner bag 'to prevent leaks'. What I want to know is - Why the plastic bag? Why not cardboard milk containers like they have in Denmark and other such sensible nations, and which is used to contain goats milk and fruit juice in this country? They have a waxy lining that seems perfectly capable of preventing seepage. Or is goat's juice less likely to escape than cow's? Hmmm.
    Yours,
    Dr Hugo Z Hackenbush

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  2. Ah Doctor - good to have you back. And yes I'm sure we benighted Brits also used to have those waxy packs, before the coming of the all-conquering, unrecyclable Tetra-Pak (sadly, I think, a Scandinaivan invention?). The mind ambles fondly back to the days when chilled milk cartons would come thudding out of coin-in-the-slot machines on every street corner - blue they were - and then there were the brilliantly ingenious Jubbly cartons, contents liquid or frozen, according to taste (or lack of)... And the similarly packaged, shortlived Jungle Juice - anyone remember that one? Uhoh - here comes the nurse - time for my medication...

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  3. Well, I hope Nurse Ratchet is using a recyclable, plastic-bag-lined cardboard syringe…
    Dr H

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  4. Well, I hope Nurse Ratchet is using a recyclable, plastic-bag-lined cardboard syringe…
    Dr H

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  5. necessity!
    is the mother of invention...
    sadly, father unknown.

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  6. hmm, that is almost an accidental haiku - or more accurately, a senryu. clever people those japanese.




    except for su doku.

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  7. Forget the Hungarian Merlot, Nige - it's the Australian Red Heart that really does the trick! And at only £4.99 a bottle in Sainsbury's, it's heart protection at a very fair price.

    I can remember the days when you left your own jug out for the milkman by the way. And took your own cloth bread-bag to the grocer's... But that was in New Zealand long ago - perhaps it never happened here?

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