Meat-free madness!

Thanks to Stella McCartney sticking her oar in, companies are beginning to subscribe to the idea of 'Meat-free Monday', where you opt out of eating meat for one day, making the world a better place.

The idea is that the cultivation, production and transportation of meat products costs a right shitload, so by not having it for one day, you're effectively reducing the demand, ergo you reduce the global carbon footprint, theoretically by 20%

A nice idea, I'm sure you'll agree.

It'll never work, I'm sure you'll agree.

Hand in hand with this is a strategy at my company to improve their global positioning in terms of impact on the environment, improving working practices and all the other buzzword-laden twaddle people do to look good when jobs are on the line. Don't get me wrong, it's a noble project and I have the utmost respect for those trying to 'realise the dream' as it were, but they seem to have missed one small element in the uptake of their grand plan.

The attitude of the British.

More specifically, the attitude of the British at the company where I work.

We were all treated to an hour-long presentation about the aforementioned vision, taking in the various projects we're involved in and showing us exactly what they're planning to do. All very impressive and worthwhile, but people in the UK are a bit, well, cynical. I know, incredible isn't it?

After the event, a lot of "What the chuff was that all about?" could be heard around the building, as people who pack boxes for a living wondered quite why we're so bothered about working practice in the Third World. However, visiting the canteen was the best gauge of where we are in our own pursuit of the project.

"It were crap" was all I got out of our gurning plate-monkeys. They had their arse out because of the Meat-Free Monday idea, which they thought was a huge waste of time. Roughly translated, that means they can't just get away with lobbing sausages for breakfast, and they might have to open the occasional tin of beans.

The option to go meat-free has been available for a couple of weeks now, so I asked how it had been going since it's inception. Their response was thus:

"We had to stop offering it to the folk in the warehouse, cos they thought it meant they got free meat for the day"

I'm guessing that it isn't going to take off quite as well as management had hoped...