trulyresponsible.org

Having tried surfing a few times, I’ve come to learn that getting onto the wave and actually riding it takes time.

I suddenly feel that what I’ve been doing over the past few years has been positioning my self in the water to ride a wave of something new.

Some of that is articulated here http://rightsideup.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/02/personcentric_s.html this article mentions something I’ve been doing with our customers, and provides a link to what Marks and Spencer are up to.

Some of the highlights of the M&S survey are:-

* 87% said retailers have a responsibility to ensure that products they sell are manufactured in a fair and humane way.
* 52% said they are more concerned by issues relating to ethical sourcing e.g. working conditions in factories, than they were 5 years ago.
* 31% said they had decided not to buy an item of clothing because they felt concerned about where it had come from or under what conditions it had been made.
* 78% said they would like to know more about the way clothes are made e.g. the conditions in the factories where they come from and the use of chemicals in their manufacture.

All this makes sense to me. It feels like the wave is coming. Bring it on.

At long last I’ve had a reply from Next - re the belt I was given for Christmas.

I was going to phone them up at lunch time today to find out why that hadn’t responded.

I’m impressed by the response, even though it took a long time. I’ve asked for a bit more clarity around one of the points. Full details of the response can be found in the “Clothing” section under “Next leather belt”.

http://www.trulyresponsible.org/clothing/next-leather-belt/

I’ve heard back from Philips on the battery disposal issue. The jist of what the response says is that there is currently no law concerning how batteries should be disposed of and that they were unaware of any forthcoming legislation in this area. After just a few mins of searching I turned up this Draft EU Directive which should be adopted by mid 2006.

http://www.letsrecycle.com/equipment/Battery_Directive_Council_Text.pdf

The letsrecycle.com website is well worth a visit.

http://www.letsrecycle.com

Some interesting information from there

Battery recycling is a relatively new field for the UK. While we recycle more than 90% of our lead acid batteries — those used in vehicles — just 4% of the non-lead acid waste batteries produced each year in the UK are recycled.

This means that of about 25,000 tonnes of waste household and industrial batteries generated in the UK each year, just 1,000 tonnes is recycled.

See Philips section for full transcript of their response to me.

I heard on the radio this morning that there has been another case of Dioxins being found in our food. This has led to more than six hundred and fifty farms in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany being put under surveillance after dioxin was found in pig meat.

Now what I find interesting is how on earth chemicals like this end up being fed to animals in the first place. When one starts to look at it in more detail it becomes a bit scary. Apparently the Dixon contamination came about because we feed our farm animals fat extracted from the bones of other animals. The extraction process uses some sort of acid and the acid was contaminated. At the plant that makes the acid 2 filters that filter out the dioxins were both broken for 3 weeks and production carried on and the acid was still used to extract the fat.

What the heck are we doing feeding pigs with food that is made from other pigs? Why do we have to do this, how has it become a viable and acceptable practice?

We import 100s of 1000s of tons of pig meat from these places that seem to think this is an acceptable practice. Do you know whether or not you are eating sausages made from pigs that were fed on the fat of other pigs. Here in the UK apparently we no longer do this, but is that a volunatary thing or by law? Supposedly here in the UK we only feed vegetarian diet to farm animals - unless you know differently of course.