Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Mmm, lovely green oven

We need a new oven. Boring, not very rock and roll but the old one is shagged out. We really do need a new oven. The door won’t close for a start and I can’t fix it.

But how ‘green’ can we be when we buy a new one? Excitingly, all the relevant ovens in the Homebase catalogue have a green rating of 'A' or 'B'. Brilliant, we can choose any one of ‘em and it’ll be at the top or next to the top of the green-ness tree! We can do our bit by buying more stuff. They’ve even got a nice logo and name ‘Ecohome products that don’t cost the earth’. ‘Don’t cost the earth!’ Wow, these marketing people are clever eh?

Well that’s nice. Clearly 'A' will be the most greenest oven ever. It’ll be a Greenpeace tree-loving oxygen- breathing friend of the earth - the ‘more you buy the longer the earth will survive’ oven. Course it will.

The truth of course is a little different. It turns out that rating ‘B’ is the second worst on the green rating shitometer. This is of course because the range goes not from 'A' to 'E' say. Oh no, that’s just what you unsophisticated uneducated types might expect. It actually goes from ‘A++’ through ‘A+’ and A and stops at C. So, even by the people who want to sell you stuff’s standards 'A' is middling at best and 'B' is a bit shit.

Maybe these ovens need building up due to low self-esteem? Either that or it’s a con. Just give everything a rating that sounds good or at least OK and carry on buying the planet to a crisp. A fan assisted one. In a handcart. A handcart made in natural woven flax in Indonesia by flooded out orphans. Just keep buying and we can all die quickly.

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