We may be at a green tipping point — but not everyone’s got the memo yet. The following products are so ungreen that they deserve the title “eco-nasties”.
Air Wick diffuser
Air “freshener” is a stupid idea, and this one, called “Baby after bath”, smells like a box of perfumed nappy sacks. But let’s not worry about the perfume, even though, according to the label, it “may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment”. The novel thing about this air freshener is that it plugs into a socket, so you can drain electricity while filling the air with chemicals.
Garden furniture wipes
The whole wipes industry is based on the idea that there is a separate disposable cloth for every chore: hand wipes, face wipes, tooth wipes, wood wipes, makeup remover wipes, window wipes and houseplant leaf wipes, each impregnated with some mystery compound that makes them suitable for a certain type of wiping. If we seem to have singled out these garden furniture wipes as being exceedingly unnecessary, it’s because we have never wiped our garden furniture with anything.
Wilkinson Sword Xtreme3 razors
The latest in extreme waste: disposable three-bladed razors with extra-chunky disposable handles, eight to a display pack. Do they really want us to use them, or did they just put them in the shops to piss us off?
Canderel limited edition dispenser
Contains 80 sweetener pills that pop out one at a time at the push of a button. Of course, regular Canderel users will likely already have a dispenser that they can just refill, but Canderel is telling you to throw out your old dispenser because this one is more fashionable. Putting artificial sweeteners in your tea just got a whole lot cooler.
Fairtrade one cup coffee filters
The coffee may “guarantee farmers in developing countries fair terms”, but the design means that you throw away a plastic filter for every single cup you make, plus two lids per box. If you don’t have a more efficient way to make coffee than this, get one.
Bic Luminere candle lighter
This wand is flexible enough to light all your candles, even those with hard-to-reach wicks. It’s a breakthrough innovation. At least, so says Bic. This is an enormous and ungainly lump of mud-brown plastic with a proboscis at the end that you can dangle down inside a candle holder to light the wick. It would be inspired, were it not for the gas fuel it uses and John Walker’s invention of 1827: the match. — Â