Along with a few thousand other people I'm sitting at an open air concert on a cold summer's evening enjoying the live performances of first Suzanne Vega then Leonard Cohen. A light but persistent drizzle mars what is otherwise a pleasant setting in the grounds of Mercedes-Benz World, plenty of favourite songs and a good sound system. If you tire of looking at the stage or the giant screens, you can always check out the line of Mercs arranged on a grassy knoll alongside the stage.
(photos with kind permission of: Dorsetbays)And yet even here the long tentacles of the global petrochemical industry are wrapped around the event. Plastic ponchos are selling like hot cakes, £4 for a small pocket-sized pack which unwraps to reveal a knee-length flimsy dry-cleaning bag with a hood. Concert-goers who have left home seriously under-dressed are now swathed in plastic, with those who came prepared for rain donning their own ponchos showing logos from previous wet-weather outings to Legoland, Disney or Wisley Garden Centre. I laugh in the face of the relentless rain (ahahaha) as I have come clad in my son's high-tech fleece-lined Berghaus jacket which conducts the music perfectly well through the hood.
At the beer concession, drinks are being dispensed in pint and half-pint plastic glasses bearing the slogan "I am not a plastic cup." Read further down the glass and you will discover that it is "100% recyclable, 100% compostable, made from plant starch."
(photo: matt.nthng.org/)
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