The country’s media is up in arms that the tickets for the
Olympics are being printed in the US. They are arguing on narrow patriotic
grounds that they should be printed in this country. True, that would be good
for jobs and improve our economy and rout balance of payments – wonder why the
Tories missed that one?
However, the main point is that we shouldn’t be air
freighting vast quantities (16 tons) of tickets from that distance when there
are several specialist printers who could have done the job in this country.
Why not? Because of the carbon foot print. The UK’s
greenhouse gas emissions rose by 3.1%i n 2010according to official figures:
despite lower manufacturing output due to the recession. See this article in
the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/07/uk-emissions-rose-economy-recovered
If the carbon footprint of imported goods is taken into
account our emissions have risen by 20%. We are exporting our carbon burden
onto other countries.
The real Green answer would have been to use a local firm
i.e. a UK firm to print the tickets.
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