Less stuff more living – and exactly how much stuff?

I’ve written before about ecolabels in computing: sticky labels on products giving it a green tick (or not).   This is from the DoTT07 book:

The amount of waste matter generated in the production a single laptop computer is close to 4,000 times its weight on your lap
(gulp, and what if you’re writing on that laptop high above the Atlantic!?).

I like this information. This gives me context, and much more arresting than whether my laptop meets some accreditation.   The “Publicly Available Specification” (PAS) is being developed by various groups in the UK (including Defra).  Thinglink is proposing a system where a products ecological data is available via mobile phone.

I’m not entirely convinced by this, seems uneccessarily complicated.  Walking around UK streets I was taken by the size and simplicity of the anti-smoking messages on cigarette packets (mind you, I have no idea of the efficacy of this approach – there seemed to be a lot of smoke about!).  Perhaps all products could have a similar warning for sustainability.