It has long been something of a mystery quite why the local supermarkets are so liberal with their giving-out of plastic bags. Go to your nearest Eroski and at the check-out you will end up with four or five half or quarter-full bags of groceries when one or two would do the job equally as well. Not for much longer though. Perhaps. Eroski has produced a 20-page booklet all about reducing the number of plastic bags and energy efficiency. There are two "savings" to be made in the form of a "win" for you and a "win" for the environment. The booklet seems to be on recycled paper, which is just as well. The company's director of social responsibility tells us on page five that Eroski is going to make it easy for us all to save the world (well, he doesn't quite use those words, but whatever). For any bag not used, the customer gets a discount of one centimo. That should get everyone rushing to the store.
How do they figure out how many bags you don't use though? As I say it has been common to get several more bags than one actually needs. Do they have some means of calculating - by volume of sales - the resultant discount if one hacks along with a shopping trolley or reusable bag (bags) instead? "No, I think this lot's worth a three centimo discount, not just the one. Come on, hand it over."
This environmentally correct approach is all well and good, but there is also the slight matter of all those plastic bags that are used to gather fruit and veg to which are attached those sticky-backed labels with the bar code and price, assuming you know that this is the procedure. They can't be much cop when it comes to landfill either. Anyway, the huge incentive to not now use the bags at the checkout will probably lead to an increase in the sales of rubbish bags, as the checkout bags, especially when they are doubled up, have long been an alternative to actually buying rubbish bags. But the latter are at least eco-friendly in that they don't give off toxic gases when burned, or something like that.
On leaving Eroski, 20-page booklet stashed inside one of the checkout bags, there was a noticeable pile outside the front doors. A pile of newspapers, bundled and tied up, just left there. How many? Fifty, a hundred maybe? It was a pile of "Euro Weekly's". First time I had seen them at the local Eroski for some fair while. Erratic is the distribution one might say. But more importantly, what was going to happen to them? Who knows? Maybe they get turned into Eroski booklets about the environment.
To a different environmental matter. No sooner has the golf course in Muro seemingly run its course as an eco-cause célèbre than up pops another affront to the town's environment. It is the curious case of the Son Perera finca on which there has been some earth moving in readiness, or so it is being alleged, for a go-karting track. GOB, those noble defenders of Mother Earth, had "denounced" this work to the town hall which has now paralysed it, saying that there is no licence for the development. What is extraordinary about this is quite how anyone can apparently set about converting what is protected land and hope that no-one might notice. A go-karting track is pretty conspicuous, or would be were it to be built.
Alcúdia - Day of the Tourist
Well it must be said that this was a pretty good effort. Hats off to the town hall. A rather attractive Danish girl by the name of Nana who works in one of the local hotels told me that those hotels participating get the teams organised, which did at least settle one of my questions. As to other questions, such as what is the point of all this, I refrained from putting them to the chiefs of the tourism department who were talking with rather concerned expressions into mobile phones like Conservatives during an election-night kicking. Quite why they seemed concerned I was unsure, unless they'd got wind of news that the Michael Jackson tribute lined up for the evening had taken his tribute rather too far.
It was pretty obvious, though, that not all the beachgoers yesterday morning had any idea what was going on, but the music booming from the step and aerobics stage, the footy and volleyball games and all the people wandering around in "Fun 4 U" t-shirts would have given them some idea. I now know what this is all intended as - it is a major promotional campaign for the town hall's tourism website. Not that anyone's told me that, but as all the t-shirts have got the address on, then one would presume that it is at least an element of "the day".
But it was good. And fun, funnily enough.
QUIZ
Today's title - and I'm doin' very well.
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