There is no plan B
Marks and Spencer's enthusiastic embrace of green issues appears, in my opinion, to be little more than a marketing wheeze. Bournemouth Council has taken it hook line and sinker, putting M&S branded waste/recyclables bins across the town.
On Saturday I bought two items of clothing from them. Actually, it was a present exchange, but a pestle and mortar tipped the balance and had my debit card coming out of the wallet.
The first item had labels gushing about how you could feel that you'd done your bit by buying organic cotton, and how the cotton had been grown without pesticides etc. It didn't say if the water required to grow the cotton - probably about 5,000 litres - came from a sustainable source (probably not).
Even less was said about the plastic frame that the garment was draped over and clipped onto, completely unnecessarily. It did very little to assist in displaying the product, and had no recycling stamp, so that ended up in the bin.
The other item was actually two garments, packed in such way that both could be displayed while hanging in the shop. Usually, the packaging for such items is made out of cardboard, with a plastic hook clipped on, but that's not good enough for M&S.
No, they'd made the packaging out of plastic. They did print the plastic type on the packaging - PP - which isn't on the list that Bournemouth supports. Oddly, they'd also clipped on a plastic hook - which had me confused .. I realised my error as I tried to tear the packaging apart to release the clothes.
More for landfill. Maybe I should have put all that packaging in one of M&S's bins before I cycled home.