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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

...to feel uncomfortable with the way cbeebies are evangelical about the green/recycle message?

45 replies

Ready4anotherCoffee · 18/07/2008 20:00

Don't get me wrong, I recycle etc.

Can't quite put my finger on it, but I just feel uncomfortable with the heavy emphasis[sp?] placed on these issues both within the programs and in the space filling bits. Just feels as though it's being forced down viewer necks.

I know the obvious is don't watch it, but putting that aside, is it me?

OP posts:
PheasantPlucker · 19/07/2008 10:11

I think it's great!

SoupDragon · 19/07/2008 11:22

"Presumably you are paying quite a few people to sort your rubbish"

How is that a problem?

KristinaM · 19/07/2008 11:25

YABU

Lizzylou · 19/07/2008 11:28

YABU, I think it is excellent
I am pleased that the DS's are learning more about the world around them, reinforced at home and at preschool/school

QuintessentialShadows · 19/07/2008 11:29

YABU
It takes a lot to change attitudes and opinion in a whole generation. They have to start early to ensure the next generation will produce grown-ups without the wasteful "buy - use - throw it on the tip" mentality, and a sense of duty to the planet rather than "get as much as you can" from it. You should be glad tv is with a sense of social responsibility. It takes the onus off you.

Lizzylou · 19/07/2008 11:30

Growing up with these ideals will ensure that the message gets across for future generations, recycling etc will just be a part of life.
Someone should show it to George "Wubya" Bush

QuintessentialShadows · 19/07/2008 11:32

Where I live now the council provides tesco sized bags for rubbish. Red bags for magazines and newspapers, Yellow bags for card (like cereal boxes) and cartons (no purepak here), Blue bags for plastic (youghurt pots, etc), Green bags for all food waste, and White bags for the rest. Glass and Tins should be taken to the Return Station. Everybody has to recycle. Everybody does it, it has been like this for over 10 years.

QuintessentialShadows · 19/07/2008 11:34

Oh, and you pay a deposit on ALL bottles, squash bottles, fizzy drinks bottles, and you have to take it back to your shopping centre which has a machin you load them into. You get 25pence for each bottle. They are all in reusable plastic. If kids find bottles, they take them to the shopping centre, and get some money. Last time I went with a big collection I got nearly £20.....

SoupDragon · 19/07/2008 11:36

One thing to remember is that it's not our planet we're destroying. chances are we won't live to see the damage or have to deal with the aftermath of all that landfill. Our children and their children etc will.

fiplus4 · 19/07/2008 11:46

Actually it's not sorted by hand. At the depot it goes on conveyor belts through various sieves, drums, magnets etc and gets automatically assigned to the correct recycling process. Our coucil used to demand that people sorted it out before throwing because that made them more conscious of what they were doing - but then it all got thrown into the one dustcart and people got a bit upset! So it depends on what onward process your local council chooses.

susiecutiebananas · 19/07/2008 11:54

YABU, Of course you have to start this message early, for it to be second nature, to our next generation to recycle, re use, cut down, conserve resources.

How this can ever been seen as a problem I cannot understand. Why would getting it right in the future, for the sake of our future ( theirs mainly) be seen as a negative or bad thing ?

TO make a positive change, on the scale that is needed to stop the damage we are all creating/causing you have to start right at the beginning. Children are the perfect starting point, receptive, not questioning of it, its will just be the way they live their lives, so long as we as parents support it adopt it and encourage the same behaviour.

MUch like the theories behind starting sex education in early primary school age children, or, giving children small amounts of alcohol with meals, in controlled enviroments. The research and statistics speak for them selves in the countries where these things are adopted or, in the case of alcohol, the way families just behave and have done for generations. It has been proved that all the things mentioned are far more respected. Teenage pregnancy rates in countries that start early Sex Ed' are far lower than here. RAtes of Alcoholic Liver Disease and coronary artery disease are far far lower in these countries.

Just to add, out council gave us green bins for anything but paper, which was to be put into the blue bag, and food waste into a small worktop bin, and a much larger green compost bin to empty that into. They found that it was more efficient to give 1 big bag, for you to put plastic, glass, card, paper and tin into. Too many people were not sorting it correctly, ad it was found to be faster for the collectors to sort it at the time of picking up, they literally chuck it from the white bag into the right metal crates on the van. Appears to work pretty efficiently.

I realise I've gone on a bit... just feel very passionate about it.

susiecutiebananas · 19/07/2008 11:58

Oh QS > hi!! I've been looking for you for a long time, posted threads and had no luck... I really still want to take you up on your offer of the help with the back I'm really really good now, up top back not good though...

could you poss email me and we can talk of board maybe?
s u s i e b r e t t a t m a c d o t c o m

Sorry all...

lingle · 19/07/2008 12:03

I founded a local Friends of the Earth group, run a Freecyle group and a local web forum on sustainable living but I think YANBU.

There's no point preaching to 4 year olds and it's not fair on them. By the time they are grown up, the key decisions to preserve our quality of life will already have been made (or not). It's our generation, not theirs that needs to do something. We were educated about these things in the 1970s and 80s so we could make the right decisions when it counted, which is now, not when these kids grow up. If we do the right thing now, they won't need tv programs to convince them to continue.

Also, sanctimoniousness turns people off like nothing else and if these programmes irritate us, heaven knows what effect they have on people who were already cynical.

Same problem in our "eco-schools" project at the moment. Lots of educating the kids (fine, but would be more useful if we could wait 15 years to save the planet) but no energy going into reducing our energy consumption as of NOW.

All we do by diverting the energy into preaching at 4-year-olds is run the risk that they'll feel guilty as well as living in a degraded environment.

MadamePlatypus · 19/07/2008 13:13

I guess I'm just a cynic. Everything is "green" nowadays - even Ariel because they promote "washing at 30". I think I saw on the Disney Channel the other day that children were being encouraged to send in a model of their favourite Disney character made out of loo rolls. It might have been Nick Jr. I wonder how biodegradable all those In the Night Garden/Dora the Explorer/Tigger and Pooh toys are?

I remember reading recently that its really hard to get the recycling message across to people on low incomes. I can't help thinking that people on low incomes are probably consuming less in the first place.

QuintessentialShadows · 19/07/2008 13:59

Susie, good to see you! I have emailed you, just to confirm I got it right, please check....

3andnomore · 19/07/2008 14:10

hm, my Kids don't really watch cbeebies anymore, so, can't really say....however, I think it's a very good thing if they raise awareness from such young age....and obviously it will have to be a simlified message as it is aimed at such young viewers....
I do think, issues like that sort of have to be rammed down peoples throat!

wannaBe · 19/07/2008 14:22

yabu.

How on earth is this a political issue?

If you don't recycle then you are responsible for putting unnecessary waste out there. all the millions of you's make up the destruction of the planet.

Change has to happen at an individual level, and the younger we teach our children, the more likely it is that they will get the message.

How many things do we complain about our parents doing and the argument is that "well they come from a generation who did things differently" in 20 years time our children will do things differently to the way we did and we will be "the generation that did things differently".

And you don't have to watch it. Actually by not having the tv on you will be helping the environment too

susiecutiebananas · 19/07/2008 14:43

QS replied x

TheMagnificent7 · 19/07/2008 14:57

Anyone else thinking FFS? Green message received and understood. The recycling thing is a nonsense when the council send plastic bins that bow in the wind, with different colours, and liners wrapped in plastic. Some of the councils until recently were just shipping the rubbish to poorer countries anyway. What do you do if you're colour blind ?

Recycling would be a piece of cake if it was tackled at source. Three words erveryone...Childrens Toy Packaging! Barbie lives in a a reverse Doctor Who world where everything is ten times bigger on the inside. Open the box, all waste triples in size.

Less packaging, and more pressure on stores to use products with less packaging which must be cheaper, right ? Brown paper bags instead of carriers. America has done that forever.

Fuel tax and car bullying is slowly making everyone buy smaller, more fuel efficient cars (not diesel though plese, it stinks). Hybrids are the way forward. Car bullying is the stupid ecogrungy beliefe that a bigger car gives off more emissions but if it's a "fuel guzzling 4x4" then it has just eaten the sweet baby Jesus and must be burned in hell immediately. Duh! If you drive you poxy people carrier three times further than someone with a Chelsea Tractor that gives off a third as many emmissions then I'm afraid it's you that's next for a witch dunking. How far you drive, i.e. how much fuel you use and convert into emmissions is the ONLY thing that counts. The size of the car is purely a bigoted opinion. Personally I think giving any 'thoughtful caring family friendly parent' a chuffing great big 7 seater people carrier after they've had to give up there Smart car is a safety disaster of immense magnitude. And before you all get your recycled paer panties in a bunch, I downsized my car to a much more emission friendly one that was much smaller. But as I only drive half of the national average anyway, I contribute next to nothing to the emissions. However, because it is a 'nice' car, with a bigger engine than average, I pay much more even though I have consciously, and actively, contributed to reducing emissions. Swampies and Eco warriors love a shout, but know SFA about what really goes on.

Anyway, back to the plot. No, far too much left wing PC policies on CBeebies. Far too much positive racism, although must congratulate on their disability awareness and integration. CBBC maybe, but I don't think UpsyDaisy gives a flying one about putting her green make up from the blue box into the yellow bag if it is the second tuesday in a month ending in Y but because it's she has to allow an extra day after Sunday unless its for the 7DA.

YANBU, I turn off the BBC regularly now and stop my children from watching any shows that discriminate.

YANBU

TheMagnificent7 · 19/07/2008 14:58

I'm changing my name to Esther Rants-on

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