Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Silly Sustainability Products


I generally don't make a lot of fun of products for being unsustainable in nature.  For one thing, if I really dedicated myself to making fun of products, I'd be doing nothing but.  For another, most products have an ideal customer; what I think is silly you may think is a justifiable luxury or a downright necessity to getting things done.  However, I have recently found a couple of products I think are just really silly:

The Williams-Sonoma Garden Implements:  Oh, this is like shooting fish in a barrel to make fun of these garden implements from America's favorite gourmet cooking store.  While I applaud their extension of cooking into gardening (which should be a natural for foodies, anyway), I laugh at the prices.  This long-handled garden fork will set you back $299.95 at the top of the price range, boasting its copper-alloy head.  Instead, I think I bought the warren hoe you see at right for about $30 from Home Depot, and high-quality garden forks that weren't so decorative were available at comparable prices.  I shudder to think of blowing my entire garden savings for the year on something beautiful I would soon be sticking into the compost to flip it.  To be fair, some of the hand tools in the line are of a more reasonable price.

Ball FreshTECH Jam and Jelly Maker:  Again, my heart hurts a little to make fun, because I buy a great deal from Ball each year in the way of jar lids, canning implements, and extra jars.  However, this labor-saving device takes the cake.  All you have to do is add fruit, pectin, and sugar, and soon you are rewarded with fresh jam to eat, freeze, or can.  Except, all you ever do to make jam is add fruit, sugar, and pectin and cook it for a while.  Making the jam is not the hard part.  Actually, nothing about making fruit jam is difficult; the canning is the only process that takes any thought.  Buying a machine to do the stirring for me seems a little silly.

Water Genie Bottomless Watering Can:  So, let me get this straight.  In order to avoid unsightly piles of hose (why are people so ashamed of garden hoses, anyway?) and to avoid trips to fill up my watering can, you've figured out a way to make a watering-can-shaped hose nozzle?  For just $39.99 of my hard-earned dollars, I can have control over my water flow and avoid looking at my hose.  Or, I can keep coiling it up on our hose rack and use my $7 multi-function hose nozzle that is working just fine.

What is the least-sustainable sustainability product you've found?
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