Thursday 21 February 2013

Buying Coca-Cola Can't Help Polar Bears

Image Source: www.mrwallpaper.com & Buchanan

In recent months Coca Cola have been running an advertising campaign which states that they are helping the WWF to save the Polar Ice Caps, home of the Polar Bears. The implied message being, buy Coke and help save the Polar Bears. This is an outrageous claim which I find most offensive.

Coca Cola (and its many subsidiaries) are probably the world’s biggest user of aluminium cans. Aluminium is a metal which requires massive amounts of energy to produce. In fact the aluminium beverage can industry’s annual electricity consumption is almost 300 billion kilowatt-hours, or about 3% of the world’s total electricity consumption.

The energy required to produce just three aluminium cans is roughly equivalent to that of filling one of those cans with petrol and burning it. Imagine then the waste when in the United States of America one hundred million (100,000,000) aluminium beverage cans are sent to landfill, littered or incinerated every day.

When recycled each aluminium can has the potential to save enough energy to run a television for three hours. On a worldwide scale, the number of cans which are not recycled represents about 23 billion kilowatt-hours squandered each year. That is just under quarter of one per cent of the world’s total electricity consumption wasted.

(Sources; thegoodhuman.com, allgreenthings.com and reuters.com).

In addition to the pollution caused by energy production, every tonne of newly extracted aluminium results in four tonnes of toxic / caustic waste being dumped somewhere in the world.

Nice stats I hear you say, but what does this have to do with Polar Bears?

Given that manufacturing cans uses so much power it is clear that any industry using those cans has a significant role to play in global warming and as a result melting the ice caps. Without these huge tracts of ice it is impossible for the Polar Bear to hunt and consequently the Polar Bear population is shrinking. It is a sad fact that at the current rates of decline, Arctic ice may disappear by mid-century. If it does, the polar bear will follow soon after.

So far I have only touched on the cans in this introduction to my poem. a normal can of coke contains about 39g of sugar, a substance recognised as being a leading contributor towards obesity and diabetes. It is estimated that the US taxpayer pays around $190 billion annually on health issues relating to these two diseases. This figure equates to a fifth of the USA’s total health care budget.

What is clear to me is that buying more cans of any fizzy pop, will not only contribute to global warming and kill off the Polar bears, but will also increase the incidence of obesity and diabetes in the human race and end up costing taxpayers in the same way that tobacco has. With this in mind I find it galling that any fizzy drink manufacturer can claim that buying their product will help the plight of the polar bears, or indeed do anything good for our planet.

The following poem is a ludic poem, I hope you like it.

Buying Coca-Cola Can't Help Polar Bears

Coca is an ingredient in both chocolate and cocaine
and cola drinks rot peoples teeth and cause significant weight gain.
These products help drive the cost of healthcare through the roof
as people in the developed world satisfy their sweet tooth.
Governments, as cool as ice ignore the harm these drinks cause,
support for a government would melt if pop was rationed, to save jaws.
The multi-national companies who make and sell this poison
are aware that sugar products harm and kill, but profit is their reason.
Making millions of aluminium cans helps melt the Polar ice cap.
Their advert claims that buying Coke will help save bears, What Crap.
Put these facts together and one thing simply glares,
Coca-Cola help the ice melt and kill Polar bears.

John Carré Buchanan
20 February 2013

Sunday 3 February 2013

The Hood

Image Source:

A friend of mine recently had to make the very hard decision to have her cat put down. This was clearly a terrible decision for her to make and she was very distressed by it. She asked me if I would write a poem for her. This was the first time that I had done anything like this and I was not sure how things would go, but I agreed to do it if she gave me some notes.

I was not sure what format to take or how sensitive I would need to be. In the end I decided to write a poem which at first might seem hard hitting but would have a gentle closure offering a degree of hope and comfort.

I asked a few people to read the poem before I gave it to my friend in order to ensure that it was appropriate and they all gave it thumbs up. I then gave it to my friend and it was several days before she was able to give me her feedback, which was fortunately positive. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Hood

He has gone,
Yes – The Hood has gone.
I glance at the armchair as I enter the room
expecting to see two topaz eyes watching me
from under his pure white fur,
but the back of the chair is empty.

He has gone,
Yes – The Hood has gone.
I scan the top of the cupboards as I make the bed,
hoping to glimpse the tip of a tail waving at me
or perhaps hear a disgruntled purr,
but Robin, ‘The Hood’, he’s not there.

He has gone,
Yes – The Hood has gone.
I check the flowerpots as I tend the Garden,
will I see four huge paw prints in the soil?
His claws will need cutting soon.
Then I remember - he has gone.

He has gone,
Yes – The Hood has gone.
I sit and knit in front of the TV,
he does not make me stop.
I can no longer run my fingers
gently through his soft fur.

He has gone,
Yes – The Hood has gone.
I slept in this morning,
The alarm clock ran past snooze.
There was no soft paw upon my face
To wake me should I doze.

Yet - as I straighten cushions in the lounge
a patch of white fur appears before me.
Should I drop a stitch as I watch the TV
I feel his celebratory purr on my knee.
Yes - You will always be a friend to me
I just have to close my eyes to see.

John Carré Buchanan
01 February 2013