ecomorons.org

The Ecomorons Greenwashing Award for January goes to the café at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

This is why: I asked for a coffee at the counter. The woman behind it wordlessly passed me a paper cup. And the paper cup had these words printed on it:

I repeat: For a sustainable future.

What a nice touch to write this on a disposable item. This is one of the most elegant greenwashing jobs Ecomorons.org has witnessed so far. Congrats, De Young Café!

There is more. While sipping my drink I noticed signs on all the tables. Under the headline “The capacity of our planet is not limitless” they stated:

We are very mindful of the impact we are making on our environment and our intention is to tread lightly on our planet. (…) In the café, we use china every day to serve you and we encourage you to use paper only when you are eating outside of the café.

I looked around and saw that all guests who had sat down indoors with drinks were using paper cups. Then I looked around even more and my eagle eyes detected a neat row of porcelain mugs on a shelf in the staff-only area behind one of the counters. I assume they keep them up there as decoration. Which is a wise decision, because that way they’ll never break.

(photos: Marshall Astor via Flickr, Backhouse Images)

Seen in San Francisco.
The event pictured above was organized by the San Francisco Electric Tour Company.
Here are some thoughts about this:

“There are no rear-view mirrors on the Segway so the rider can’t see the people he’s just passed pointing at him and laughing.” (Encyclopedia Of Stupid)

“The Segway pisses me off. It is not only inefficient, complicated and expensive, it’s slow too.” (Panic With The Lazy Citizen)

“It’s a motorized scooter invented by a real, live mad scientist - Dean Kamen. It lets you go across dirt, up hills, through doors, forwards, backwards, left and right. Hey… wait a minute, can’t my legs do that?” (”Top Five Lame Gadgets” on kidzworld.com)

“I can’t think of a better symbol of how wasteful we can be than the Segway.” (Geekzone)

(photo: Backhouse Images)

OPEN LETTER:
Citizens of San Francisco! Can’t you do better than this? Nights of intense research lead our reporters to this dimly lit, meager display. Is that really all there is? Don’t you grasp the idea of 21st century Christmas? What part of wasting power don’t you understand?
Just trying to help.
Yours sincerely, Ecomorons

PS: We kindly invite our readers in San Francisco to join this photo contest with entries of insane Christmas lights displays.

(photo: Backhouse Images)