Wednesday 15 July 2009

What a waste

There is a by-election coming up in Norwich following the de-selection of Ian Gibson. I am not in that constituency, so have been spared the doorstepping and reams of leaflets that are no doubt clogging the recycling bins of Norwich North as I type, but I still see things in the local media.

Like this:
With piles of election leaflets landing on the doormats of families in Norwich North, one candidate has hit on a way to stand out from the rest - he has posted a DVD of his election address to just under 80,000 voters.

(Update: I had a link to the Evening News story, but it's now gone.)

Good grief. How many of those will even get watched? Even if they do I doubt they will be kept as a cherished souvenir. But can they be easily recycled? No. So all eighty thousand of them will end up in landfill. Wonderful.

Are you ready, fact fans?

A stack of 25 DVDs on my desk is 12cm in diameter and 4cm high, so has a volume of about 450 cm3. 80,000 will have a volume of 1,440,000 cm3 or 144 m3. That's just under an quarter of the volume of the shallow pool at the Sportspark (1.2m x 25m x 8 2.5m lanes). Or, since a quick Google (I have no scales!) informs me that 50 DVDs weigh about 900g, that means 80,000 of them have a total weight of 1440kg, i.e. 1.4 tonnes.

What a colossal waste of resources. Grr.

2 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness; that's outrageous. It will be interesting to see if it affects the votes.

    it shouldn't be allowed, surely :(

    Don't forget to send yours to recycling cds when you've finished watching it 100 times, then it can be made into a funky clock ;)

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  2. Lucky me, I live in Norwich South! No DVD through my letterbox... but I shall think of that next time I accidentally end up with a "coaster" :)

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