treehugger.com

When I was first asked to write with a link to an environmental blog, I knew that I would be annoyed with whatever I found there. While I do agree that in today's world we need to do what we can to protect the environment, I think that some people take it a little far. My dread got even worse when I stumbled across a website called treehugger.com. I skimmed through the posts with such titles as "Building the World with FlexForm Natural Composite Material," "Drink Soda Pop? You're Drinking Bisphenol A (BPA)", and "Uberstix, World's First Planet Positive Toy. But Are There Contenders?" just to name a few. The title that caught my attention the most was, "Nobody's Innocent When an Organic Smoothie Emits More CO2 Than a Coke." So I chose this post to do for the assignment. I was pretty shocked from the get go with this one because I was led to believe that anything organic was a tree huggers favorite. I always assumed that these people preferred all natural everything and organic this and preservative free that. So when I saw that they had gripes with something organic, I was intrigued.

The post starts off with the facts. A 330 mL aluminum can of Coca Cola emits 170 grams of CO2, while the subject of discussion, Innocent's 250 mL passion and mango fruit smoothie, emits 209 grams. OH MY GOD! First of all, half the people who read this probably drink the stuff simply because it is called innocent and the word organic appears on the label. Secondly, they probably all stopped drinking it after reading this because it emits a wopping 39 grams more CO2 than Coca Cola, and environmentalists worst nightmare. Like I said in the beginning, I am the first person to admit that we need to try to take steps to protect the environment. Okay, Coca Cola can are bad for the environment, but now ORGANIC smoothies aren't allowed either?

The post gets even weirder in the second part where it is explained that Innocent is looking for investors to become an international company. One of the company's that was interested was Coca Cola because they like the idea of supporting something "ethical and organic." Hmm.... this doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe Coca Cola will be able to help these people out a little in their packaging.

The other thing that I had to call into question after reading this post was why? Why in a world at war and in a huge economic crisis are we worried about 39 extra grams of CO2? Maybe I'm wrong, but even environmentally there are probably better things to worry about than a soda can versus a smoothie bottle. Fuel emissions. Natural gas depletion. The Oil crisis. Call me crazy but this is a little bit ridiculous.