Marketing madness: do we really need plastic incentives?

There are so many marketing gimmicks which involve unnecessary use of plastic. Here are just two:

1. The drink measuring cup:
Today if you buy a bottle of Schweppes tonic water you get a cute little measuring cup with it - made of plastic. And when you buy another bottle of tonic water you get another cute little measure, and then another and another ... It doesn't say what kind of plastic the cute little measure is made of. But even if it is easily recyclable, what are we supposed to do with more than one? The marketing people think it's such a good idea that it's their TV ad campaign as well.

2. The cream pot lid:
If you buy a pot of cream from Tesco it comes with not one but two plastic lids - double the environmental pollution on a pot of single cream. Sure, it's very convenient to be able to close the half-used pot securely, but then what do you do when it's empty? It doesn't say what kind of plastic either of the lids is made from. And what do you do with the next one - and the one after that?

Send us your examples as comments below.

The middle third of the world

A third of the world has a national global footprint around the average (between 3.0 global hectares down to 1.6). 33 countries have this footprint, ranging across the globe and accounting for around 33% of the world's population (among the 150 countries reporting for the footprint statistics).

They are as follows (footrint in global hectares per person):
Bulgaria 3.0
Croatia 3.0
Ukraine 2.9
Belize 2.8
Lebanon 2.8
Mongolia 2.7
Serbia and Montenegro 2.5
Malaysia 2.4
Mexico 2.4
South Africa 2.4
Iran 2.3
Venezuela 2.3
Argentina 2.2
Bosnia Herzegovina 2.2
Chile 2.2
Macedonia 2.2
Brazil 2.1
Romania 2.1
Uruguay 2.1
Bolivia 2.0
Costa Rica 2.0
Turkey 2.0
Paraguay 1.9
Mauritius 1.8
Uzbekistan 1.8
Cuba 1.7
Jamaica 1.7
Panama 1.7
Syria 1.7
China 1.6
Dominican Republic 1.6
Jordan 1.6
Mauritania 1.6

What can we learn from them - are there skills and ways of life which we should respect?

Incidently, the other two thirds are not evenly spread: one in five of the world's population is in the top 'third', with a footprint above 3 global hectares per person, whilst almost half (47%) of the world's population has a footprint of 1.5 global hectares per person or less.

(Data from WWF/reported in 2005, collected in 2002)