Paper promises

Recently the pop singer Sheryl Crow was mocked globally for suggesting that toilet visits could be made more ecological if we only used one square of toilet paper.

Later she explained this was supposed to be “a joke”. That’s the trouble with pop stars being in the vanguard of the new green movement. Sometimes it’s terribly, terribly difficult to tell.

Anyway, if you stick by Sheryl’s maxim, they’re giving away a lifetime’s supply tomorrow at UK store Sainsbury’s. If you spend three pounds in groceries there tomorrow, they’ll give you a free twin pack of Sainsbury’s Super Soft paper. They’re doing this, they say, to promote their Forest Stewartship Council-approved brand.

The FSC certify paper products that come from sustainable woodlands, which is a Good Thing. Sainsbury’s say they’re putting on the promotion to promote the FSC’s work and encourage people to use eco-friendly varieties.

And, of course, to paint themselves as green as they can. This has been going particularly well for them. They just won The Observer’s Ethical Award for Best Supermarket Initiative for their pushing compostable packaging.

(Personally, I’m far from convinced by this “compostable packaging” idea. Sainsbury’s packaging is made from potato starch, maize and sugar-cane. In a world in which crop shortages will be increasing, especially in the Third World, I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about the whole concept of using food to, ah, wrap food…)

So, given that Sainsbury’s are keen to present themselves as the greener supermarket, this morning’s news should prove a bit of a blow. Today it emerged that the supermarket chain have dropped two major organic suppliers because their vegetables “did not meet standards”.

Who were those dodgy suppliers? Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, and some bloke called Prince Charles, founder of Duchy Originals and em… not sure what else he does. A furious Patrick Holden hit back this morning saying, that he and Chas were being forced to truck their veg hundreds of miles across Britain to East Anglia to Sainsbury’s industrialised food distribution centre, from where they were then trucked hundreds of miles back to “local” supermarkets. After the loading, industrialised-batching and cleaning, warehousing, unloading and travel, some of their produce may indeed have looked a bit iffy.

Patrick Holden said, pretty much, that chains like Sainsbury’s are incapable of providing the kind of local organic food customers want.

And, of course, Sainsbury’s are still responsible for closing down precisely the kind of local shops that could deliver this service. Earlier this month 86% of 7,700 residents polled in Barnes, South-West London, voted that they didn’t want Sainsbury’s to develop a new store there because of the detrimental effect it would have on local infrastructure. They fear, reasonably, that local shops will be forced out of business: