By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
More disgrace for Gummer, who incredibly is still Chair of the Committee on Climate Change:
Tory peer John Selwyn Gummer is chairman of a firm that charges companies to use ‘meaningless’ and ‘misleading’ recycling symbols on their packaging.
The Green Dot logo appears on hundreds of supermarket products and is thought to boost sales, because environmentally friendly shoppers think it means that the product is recyclable.
But the symbol means only that the company has paid towards a recycling scheme, not that the product itself can be recycled.
The row is unwelcome news for John Selwyn Gummer, 79, who has been chairman of the independent Committee on Climate Change since 2012
And while the Green Dot scheme is used in dozens of countries across Europe, no such system exists in Britain. Companies only print the symbols on products that are also sold across the Continent.
Valpak, which regulates the logo in the UK and charges firms up to £295 to display it on their products, says in a document entitled Guidance On Use Of The Green Dot In Europe: ‘The packaging recycling system in the UK is based on the purchase of Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs), which are recycling certificates showing that a certain amount of packaging has been recovered/recycled.
‘This means that the Green Dot is a meaningless trade mark in the UK.’
The Green Dot logo appears on hundreds of supermarket products and is thought to boost sales, because environmentally friendly shoppers think it means that the product is recyclable
Last night, Laura Foster, Head of Clean Seas at the Marine Conservation Society, said: ‘Since the Green Dot is not applicable here, it is possible that some consumers might be confused by the appearance on packaging.’
The row is unwelcome news for Gummer, 79, who has been chairman of the independent Committee on Climate Change since 2012. Made Baron Deben in 2010, he joined Valpak in 1998, a year after he lost his job as Environment Secretary when the Tories were thrown out of office by New Labour.
He is currently being investigated by Standards Commissioner Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, after The Mail on Sunday revealed his family consultancy firm was paid more than £600,000 by ‘green’ businesses.
Gummer, best known for feeding his daughter a hamburger at the height of the BSE scare, has declared his chairmanship of the consultancy but never disclosed its clients. He denies any conflicts of interest or impropriety.
But consumer watchdogs are concerned about the transparency of ‘green’ symbols, with a Which? survey finding almost half of respondents mistakenly thought the Green Dot logo meant items were recyclable. Defending its fees in a statement on behalf of the firm and its chairman, Valpak said: ‘The money collected from the licence-fee payers covers fees paid to the Green Dot trade organisation and the cost of administering the licence.’
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 19, 2019 at 08:10AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 