Thoughts from a motorway service station

Some interesting thoughts from Alison:

It was a hot and sticky August day and the threat of rain was in the air. We pulled off the M40 on the way back from another carbon-intensive wedding in London to fill up our (reasonably fuel efficient) car. My husband dealt with the fuel payment (can it really cost £70 to fill up a 1.9 litre engine car these days?!) and I walked back to the actual services to buy some lunch.

The services resembled a cross between Alton Towers during the holidays and that old favourite TV programme ‘Supermarket Sweep’. There was a hideous queue for the ladies, every seat (inside and outside) was taken with families on their way to or on their way back from holiday destinations and people were literally throwing themselves on food wherever they could grab it from.

But quite aside from the enochlophobia that suddenly came over me I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of consumption that was going on in those 50 metres squared. Cappucinos, fast food, packaged sandwiches, sweets, crisps, fruit (not much), canned drinks. I stopped and looked around me and could not see one single person without their mouths open stuffing food and drink into it.

I freely admit that on this occasion I joined them. I usually try and make our own lunch/dinner in the car, not because I’m an eco-warrior, but because I refuse to dish out for the extortionate prices they charge you at the service stations (talk about a closed market). I paid £10 for two lots of sandwiches and two bags of crisps – ouch.

If this much consumption of food and drink and this much waste was being generated at this one small service station off the M40 at that precise moment in time (which probably accounted for 0.00001% of the UK’s population), how much was being consumed and wasted around the world at that moment? A scary thought.

So what can we do? Make our own sandwiches? Well yes, but that may not be the long-term, universal solution of choice. Somehow we have to wake people up to the reality of having a finite amount of space and resources on this earth. Organisations and the culture therein can play a big part in this – what type of culture do you advocate at your organization? Do you have a Green Travel Plan but your Directors still turn up to work in their 3 litre engine sports cars? Do you order in food for meetings from local companies but then always thrown half of it away?

We have to learn to complete the sentences which we are beginning to start. “We have a Green Travel Plan…..and everyone in our company from the top to the bottom is committed to trying to uphold the plan and reduce carbon emissions”. “We order food locally…….and have implemented a system to ensure that we do not over-order and that leftovers are distributed to staff”.

We are still thinking one dimensionally about resource efficiency and consumption – it is time we stopped leaving things unsaid.