We got involved with our partner integrated marketing agency Marketing Team Direct to build the new re-plenish website using our Contented content management system and WordPress blogging platform.

Visit the site or read what the BBC had to say about it to find out more.

But the news is better, if you head to the info at Amazon, it explains that they’re working with the manufacturers to get this boxes ‘right off the assembly lines’. Nice.

Which then begs the question why the manufacturers don’t package all their stuff in this way. Presumably they’d start bleating about their products needing to be attractive and compelling in shops or something.

1. To meet global energy demands today (let alone in the coming decades) we would need 20,000 new nuclear power stations, and there simply isn’t enough Uranium around to supply them with fuel – i.e. not sustainable
2. Uranium mining and refining emits more carbon than it saves for all but the very purest of ores – i.e. not a low carbon energy source

It’s a pretty convincing and damning article and makes a farce of this government’s energy policy. Read the abridged version here:

http://www.depletion-scotland.org.uk/jb_nuclear.htm

and the full version here:

http://www.after-oil.co.uk/nuclear.htm

Lawson HIS had a good usable site (which presumably had good SEO since they were high up in Google’s results), despatched the goods quickly and were great all round. The icing on the cake was that the packing in the box was shredded cardboard rather than polystyrene beads or those plastic bags of air. OK, we’re not going to save the world this way (I appreciate the irony of the fact that the products I was using were eco baad) but they’re doing what they can which is to be recognised. Good work folks.

I was still trying to work out if I was brave enough to pick it up and bin it (the answer would almost certainly have been no) when a lady in the queue went for it instead, passing it back to the driver with a polite “You’ve dropped this”.  He began by denying it, at which point other passengers (not me, I was still, um, weighing up my options) chimed in and pointed out he had.  A colleague with a clip board, presumably his supervisor, calculating that the driver was not going to get away with his denial, decided on a different tactic.  “There aren’t any bins on the buses and there aren’t any bins outside the buses, so we have to use the street.”, he said.  There was some more outrage from the assembled passengers, and more belligerent shoulder shrugging from the offender and his boss, before they left the scene remarking that “There’s more important things than litter!”.

The public spirited woman remarked after they’d gone that she was glad she’d made a stand, and I was glad she had too.  However depressing the littering act and subsequent attitude had been, it was refreshing to see a member of the public, braver than I, standing up for us all and the city we live in.

Just in case anyone from TFL fancies educating this BAD bus driver and his idiot supervisor, he was driving the 211 (bus number 9816) and was disembarking the bus at Waterloo at 9:20am on Tuesday 29 April 2008.

This week Doug Stewart, CEO of Green Energy UK got in touch to put me straight on a few things. Read his email here…

Doug’s email:

Dave

I am obviously sorry to have lost you as a customer and am pleased to note that there was no negative experience that had caused the switch.

Fiona brought your comments and blog to my attention and while I am sure she will reply to the blog, I was moved to write to you and enclose the last newsletter that I fear may not have got to your desk.

In it we were at pains to point out that all the energy we have been buying for the last two years is green, we buy no brown energy either through our PPAs (Power purchase agreements) or on the markets. And 70% of the energy in PPAs is from generators who were not in existence when we started the business, so we address the supply side of the equation as well as the demand.

All the energy we buy is green, some pale some deep but all green. And we only supply electricity not gas. The article on page 1 and 8 of the newsletter give the reasons and thinking behind that and I wanted to assure you that we too put our money where our ethics and values are.

The 2006/7 renewable obligation was 6.7% and our pale tariff had 20% renewable and 80% green in it, so it makes a significant difference. We like to think it offers a green option to a wider and broader church of consumers rather than being a soft option – any difference is a start!

I hope you can take the time to read the highlighted pages of the newsletter and would like to thank you for your support while you were a customer.

We would welcome you back if you ever feel the need to change.

Kind regards,

Doug

Doug Stewart, CEO
green energy UK plc

Essentially Green Energy UK’s “pale tariff” has 20% renewable energy, not the 10% I asserted, and 13% higher than their statutory obligations. Furthermore the remaining 80% is what Doug describes as “pale green” electricity.

If, like me, you’re a bit confused by the term “pale green”, the newsletter tells us (eventually) that this means the electricity comes from Combined Heat and Power (CHP) stations. These are coal or gas powered stations that make use of any excess heat to heat local homes and businesses : a much greener way of burning fossil fuels. I think “pale green” is a slightly misleading description of this : they are after all, still burning fossil fuel. However, as far as I can make out, the Green Energy UK “pale green” tariff produces less than half the amount of CO2 per kwh than normal tariffs.

Doug also points out that they are investing in renewable energy suppliers and that 70% of their suppliers are in existence as a direct result of investment or demand from GEUK.

So it seems that my figures were a bit out, and certainly GEUK’s “pale tariffs” are not faking-it as many “green tariffs” are. GEUK also seem to be making great strides to increase the percentage of renewable electricity that they provide.

In a ‘My Electricity Provider is Greener Than Yours’ slanging match I think I’ll still win with Good Energy, but maybe I wrote this lot off a little too quickly. I certainly can’t fault their (ex) customer service.

I’m feeling really bad about myself again.

In the intervening period I spoke to an energy trader who told me that my conscience-saving move was no more than that : something to make me feel better about myself.

The disappointing truth about the vast majority of green energy suppliers, or green tariffs you can get from the big names, is that the government forces energy companies to buy 10% of their energy from renewable resources anyway. What a lot of “green tariffs” are doing therefore, is selling green electricity that the energy company would have had to buy anyway, at a higher price to conscientious/gullible individuals. The impact on energy markets of the consumers’ choice is exactly zero.

Green Energy UK are not quite as bad as all that. The worst you can buy from them is a 10% tariff (i.e. matching their legal requirements) so the fact that we were on a 100% tariff presumably means they were having to buy additional green electricity on top of their mandatory 10%.

But fear not, don’t go and burn your insulation or smash your double glazing yet at the futility of it all… into this quagmire of deceit and green wash rides the white knight of energy suppliers, Good Energy.

Good Energy only supply 100% green tariffs. All of a sudden your consumer power means something – every watt of greener than green electricity you buy from Good Energy is purchased on the energy markets and really does make a difference.

It may be argued that getting a 100% tariff from either Green Energy UK or Good Energy has the same effect, but when we moved office this time around we decided to choose a company that puts its money where its values are and doesn’t offer a soft option.

And yes, we’re feeling really great about ourselves again.