The latest advertisement on UK television for a KFC "meal" (how anyone can describe rubber chicken, batter and a spoonfull of coleslaw as a meal I'm not sure) not only encourages people to eat a meal of dubious nutrition, but patronisingly tells us that by throwing all the packaging - boxes, large plastic bucket, plastic wrappers, cutlery and napkins - in the bin we can contribute to a "mum's night off"!

What about encouraging the use of regular plates and cutlery and the kids giving mum a night of by doing the washing up? Not only more sustainable but contributing to a society where youngsters are encouraged to be helpful people instead of lazy morons, contributing to a rubbish mountain.

It seems I'm not the only one fed up with this advert, J at Future's Green has also written on the subject: KFC advert.

Whilst this is not crime of the century it is annoying to hear the government constantly proffering the idea of more taxes on the individual to encourage environmental responsibility whilst allowing retailers such as KFC to run an advertising campaign which actively encourages an irresponsible lifestyle. As the largest proportion of our "carbon footprint" is indirect (created in the production of items before we purchase them) it is quite irritating that the government puts the onus on policies that restrict the freedom of individuals instead of forcing companies to make changes such as not providing frivolous amounts of disposable tableware.

If you should wish to be a busy body and complain to the buffoons at KFC here is their UK office number : 08457 532532 or, as J suggests, you could complain to the advertising standards agency : www.asa.org.uk

Last year I wrote an essay on Waste managment in the UK for college, and I was thinking about this issue again the other day.

Much is made of recycling, everyone seems to be getting on the bandwagon; lots of supermarkets now have plastic bag recycling bins and the bins for glass are now ubiquitous.

I recently read some interviews with leading business people questioning them on their "green" credentials and all of them said that they recycle, as if this made up for all the other activities they might be involved in.

What worries me is that the recycling message seems to have become the dominant force and that other ways of dealing with waste have become sidelined.

The waste management hierachy (left) indicates that the best way of dealing with waste is to reduce it; i.e. don't make it in the first place. Second on this list is to re-use; milk bottles delivered to the front door in the UK are a good example of this; an interesting article on the Daily Pinta is on J's blog.

In fact, recycling is third down the list in the ideal way of dealing with waste, but it is firmly number one in the public's eye. This indicates that we are far from the problem of the massive amounts of waste we create, and consequently the large amounts of CO2 that are emitted in the production of this waste.

In the absence of governmental incentives for industry to reduce waste we should try to do what we can; use reusable shopping bags, buy produce at the market where items are not overpackaged and reuse things like jam jars to grow seeds in etc.

I have written on previous posts about how I always (well nearly always) use my reusable shopping bag when I go out. When I mentioned this to my grandmother, she just rolled her eyes and said that she'd been a "green" in this particular way since the 1930s. I guess that these sort of bags were (and maybe still are) the norm for older people, but younger generations are used to having plastic bags to put their plastic bags in.

I recently had to virtually fight with a shop assisstant to prevent them from putting my newspaper in a plastic bag. The assisstant looked at me like I was mad.

I hate plastic bags!

However, Jon and Shawn have taken this to another level with Plastic Bags are the Devil.com. They are attempting to increase awareness of the problem of plastic bags by selling stylish, reusable canvas bags. No doubt they are intending to make a bit of money for themselves as well, and why not? If there is one thing that has the potential to bring environmental ideas to a mass audience, it is the power of the economy - most people seem to live their lives by it. Not only will using a canvas bag benefit the environment in terms of reduced waste and carbon emissions, but $5 of the price of these bags will be donated to The Conservation Fund. If plastic bags are the devil, then perhaps canvas bags can be our saviour?

Working in a supermarket drives me mental! Not only is the work sensationally dull, but the amount of waste created makes me mad. It's very stressful.

I don't believe it!

One box this evening was particulaly irritating. It was about 50cm square by about 40 cm high and made of some of the thickest, densest cardboard I've ever encountered. Inside was a myriad of folded cardboard seperating just four frying pans from each other, apparently to ensure that they didn't get scratched. However, it would appear that these frying pans were particularly prone to damage as they were also covered in a layer of plastic and each had a collar of cardboard around the neck, for what purpose I don't know. The amount of packaging that these frying pans require would make you think they were made of particularly fragile glass, not stainless steel. I weighed the resultant mess at 1.25 kilos; how ridiculous, all this rubbish just for four frying pans which once upon the hanger were free to smash into each other anyway!

What really gets on my nerves about all this is that not only is the cost of all this crap passed on to the consumer, eliminating nearly all of it would have almost no effect upon our lives whatsoever, whereas the benefits to the environment are great, both in terms of reduced rubbish to dispose of, but in terms of reducing the CO2 emissions created in the manufacture of such useless items.

I get so annoyed at the UK government waffling on about sticking so-called "green taxes" on travel to stop us polluting in aspects of our lives that would effect us to quite a large degree, when they could tax wasteful amounts of packaging out of existence and achieve similar reductions in CO2 emissions with very little effect on our lives. Not that I'm against encouraging people to think more before taking flights that are often not needed, just that there are so many other ways in which the government could cut CO2 emissions by providing real leadership instead of relying on crisis management taxation which imposes restrictions upon freedom of travel.

Of course, people shouldn't have the right to frivolously go careering around in planes contributing wildly to global warming, but governments do have the responsibility to explore the methods of reducing CO2 outputs that are the easiest and least disruptive to people's lifestyles, before stuffing taxes on travelling around when it is these very same governments who have encouraged us to lead lives which require so much travel. In this respect the UK government is about as much use as a clockwork orange.

All this from a box of frying pans.

I told you that working in a supermarket was stressful.