PLASTIC SINNING

The latest Guardian Weekly reported a study showing Coca-Cola is the world’s largest plastic polluter. They’re not actually, rather it’s their customers who leave their plastic bottles lying about.

The reason Coca-Cola is top of the pops is simply its popularity.

Count me out. One of the numerous factory jobs I had in my teens was at Coca-Cola’s Petone plant. One was allowed to drink as much as desired. Back then Coke came into the luxury category and I’d never tasted it. So for 3 days I gorged and I’ve never been able to touch the stuff since.

But here’s my point. The Guardian Weekly, now in glossy magazine format, arrives in a plastic wrapper.

I don’t doubt its owners would be delighted if say 4 billion of the world’s population subscribed and further, they could expand it to a daily. Were that to happen and they persisted with the plastic wrapper I imagine they’d surpass Coca-Cola on the plastic sinning front.

Incidentally, if readers are surprised at my readership, I’d point out that it no longer flogs the old ultra-left line of its parent, the daily Guardian newspaper. It’s actually a damn good read with what might be described as a liberal central pitch, perhaps akin to The Listener.

The (legitimate) concern about plastic was a central theme to my recently published novella “Modern Society”, poking fun at the bullshit underlying so called installation art.