Look at your desktop. And in the bag you take to work. And in the plastic drawer, where all of Mom’s boxes are kept, under the clichés about her never getting them back. Now answer honestly: how many ecological bottles do you have? And how many of them did you pay out of pocket?
The conference season is indeed behind us, but it – and those that preceded it – left a deep mark on our lives. For years we’ve been showered with branded stainless steel bottles from every swag stand, as if there was an HR meeting where it was decided that climate awareness is the new character of all of us (not that there’s anything wrong with that, my closest friends, etc.). Actually, I’m really making a generalization here: the exceptions are the booths that give out pop doll key chains. It will be as exciting the twentieth time as the first.
Now, I have to say a few things before you scroll to talkback: swag is a bonus, fun loot to come home with, no one owes us anything and we don’t have to take, it’s superficial to even refer to it, just a treat for hightists. the margin of the margin. Okay, I’ll continue.
Despite the enthusiasm that accompanies looting, most of the swag we collect at conferences (and office work meetings) is unnecessary. Some of it is useful (there’s always room for another notebook or a cup of espresso), but the truth is that most of it will end up in the trash during the next spring cleaning. We know this as we’re hauling branded Hungarian dice and an ugly passport case into our bag, but it’s stronger than us. And if you don’t collect swag at conventions, something inside you is probably dead (try growing a pot or something, I’ve seen them handing out).
But in this respect, the reusable bottles are unusual swag: they contribute to the environment by definition, and behind them there is an important agenda that has grown with great effort into the mainstream. We all had some yogbe walking around with a weird stainless steel bottle in college a decade ago, back before Greta had a green eye and we were still streaming 70 minutes a day on megavideo. These bottles made a difficult, long and honorable way until they reached the swag stands and became the least requested item in them.
But at every conference and company event the idea is recycled over and over again, probably with the same suppliers, the main thing is to spread the logo. Maybe they’re right, from any liquid to mobile is indeed a very broad common denominator among the human beings who tap keyboards for a living. So it turned out that we have more ecological bottles at home than disposable plastic bottles, and then the stupidest paradox that man could have created in the shadow of the climate crisis is revealed.
In other words, the ecological bottles were emptied of their contents and became polluters themselves. A bottleneck of good intentions (or lack of creativity, depending on who you ask). Unequivocally, this is a product that repels, if only slightly, the climatic apocalypse that is upon us. Increasing awareness of the climate crisis is indeed an important goal, but sometimes a bottle is just a bottle; The default of the swag world, which may have been exciting a few years ago but has become a trend that is served at room temperature and leaves a strange taste in the mouth.