Are you green enough?

How Green is Green? Above, packaging made from sugar-cane waste.

Am using the "free" wifi at a coffeeshop, waiting to pick up my daughter from school. All you have to do is buy a drink, and its a cool white coffee for me. Just got my time screwed up but thank god for free wifi at coffeeshops.

Yes, we have been made famous for the apparent successes achieved with The White Coffin campaign. "Apparent" because to many observers, and very rightly so, we still see many students and staff bringing food using polystyrene containers. And the use of plastic bags is still rampant. And now that there seems to be a problem with the supply of EcoPak, our canteen operators have resorted to use of plastic bags. I have written about this previously on this blog.

There are those who insist that we must provide an alternative before we implement any ban on certain types of packaging. I guess they are not ready to go cold turkey, cutting off disposable containers completely. To me providing an alternative packaging is the lowest of my priorities. But that is the tension you encounter and who is to say they are wrong.

And so what's the alternative now that EcoPak can't meet demand? Some one suggested a similar eco-friendly packaging made of sugarcane waste. To all intents and purposes, it is the same except this looks white because it uses a food-grade bleach. On the initiative of someone in authority, this alternative was sent for testing. Horrors, they discovered some toxic chemical, though they are not sure whether it is within permissible limits. As far as I am concerned, I don't care what the permissible limit is. It should be zero. And then some supplier proposed a paper-based packaging and this too "failed the test". We did send EcoPak for testing before launching the campaign and was told that there was nothing to be of concern even though there was some spike in the chart of some unknown substance.

So here's the crunch. How eco-friendly or health-friendly are all these products? I am told that these manufacturers have some secret formula which they don't devulge. So who's responsibility is it to make sure that we stay healthy? And friendly to Earth?

Maybe some of our green activist students have the answer. I now get alot of request to support student's greening activities - sometimes they just what to chat and get ideas, sometimes to give talks, often to get some funding. Great. But you might ask : are they just jumping on the bandwagon because it is fashionable? Put it another way, how green are they, in their lifestyle? Yes, there are students who have come to me wanting to implement some green project but admit they have no or little idea what sustainable development means. I tell them that the project will be a great opportunity to learn.

I asked Serene, a final year mass comm student, a little while ago when she came to chat with me in my office : How green are you? She and her 23 buddies are doing a project called "Kick off Green Generation". I wanted to know if there are more students who are green or leaning towards green compared to those who blatantly don't care. She thought for while and said "more are green". But yet we SEE only all those who openly and blatantly have no regard for the environment. We need to make a bigger effort to recognise the greens. One story Serene told me should inspire others. She and another friend was walking back to the hostel with another friend. This third guy was eating burger as they were walking. When he finished eating, he just threw the wrapping into the roadside drain. Serene and friend gave the guy, a junior, a big earful about not caring for the environment. They insisted that he picked up the rubbish but he refused. They persisted and eventually the litterbug succumbed to peer-pressure.

Yes, many don't care. But many more do. They are what Anwar Fazal labelled as Penang's infamous Keh Por Chee (or busybodies). We all need to be busybodies. We need to make it our business because we can't achieve sustainability by waiting for others to make it their business.

Serene has promised to write about her stories. Kumutha, if you are reading this, you promised to write too, remember?