Look. I understand the business case for going green and all that shit. I don't have to like it.
Perfect "who gives a flying fuck" example:
Both of these are Peter Pan Whipped Peanut Butter. The bottle on the right is the old bottle that we've been buying ever since Con-Agra cleaned up its Peter Pan salmonella infestation, the bottle on the left is the new bottle my wife found at Wal-Mart last weekend. The sticker on the new bottle:
OK, dig it, 9% less plastic per ounce. Which, FWIW, is 9% less plastic, period. But it sounds better to say "per ounce", because Josephine Random Shopper will think, "gee, 9% less per ounce, and there are a lot of ounces, so wow, they got rid of a lot of plastic, didn't they."
But they did it at the expense of one ounce of peanut butter per jar -- the old jar held 14oz., the new only 13oz. So it's 9% less plastic for 7% less total peanut butter, probably at 100%+ of the old price (I didn't get a chance to compare).
We know this shit is going on throughout the food industry -- smaller packages, same price. (Look at ice cream sometime. Remember the big containers? They don't exist anymore, but the new smaller containers somehow cost the same amount of money.)
I'd personally rather pay more for the same amount we used to get, if that's what it takes. Giving me less for the same price is nothing more than a (failed) attempt to hide the fact that things are more expensive to produce. I don't want to feel better about their packaging at the expense of getting less product.
[The Judge] "A pure canard."
[Roy Hobbs] "What's a canard?"
[The Judge] "A prevarication."
[Roy Hobbs] "What's that mean?"
[The Judge] "A lie."
Like Roy Hobbs, we don't have to like it, or lie down quietly and take it. And we shouldn't.
