Irresponsible Innovation

Volkswagen Vento Ad in Today's Times of India Pune Edition (Dated: Sep,21,2010)

Soon as I opened the newspaper today morning, I was startled as I could hear someone speaking. In that split second innumerable thoughts came to my mind, till I discovered a small piece of plastic attached to the Volkswagen ad that had a speaker and the sound was coming from it. All it was speaking was about the new Volkswagen Vento which was going on endlessly in a loop. The first thing that I tried with it was how to stop this irritating sound. Within seconds I found out that it has a light sensor attached to it so that when we close the opening of that sensor, it stopped. Cool, I got the mechanism of its working. But, as soon as I started reading the newspaper again, the irritating advertisement started all over again. Thanks to this ad, for the first time I read the news items of the Pune Times before the Main TOI newspaper. I had to finally tear out the piece of plastic from the paper and put it to rest by putting it upside down.

All the time a thought that came to my mind was how many TOI copies would have been supplied all over Pune today. The more the number, means the more tons of non biodegradable waste. True, that the advertisement was innovative and it must have caught everyone's attention, but, why could not anyone think about this simple thing. Volkswagen who talk about low emission or zero emission technology could not even think about the consequences their advertisement will have on the environment. This is such an irresponsible behavior. Having said that, I did not expect the renowned newspaper like Times of India to carry this ad and encourage such ventures. A German company creating an ad which would be having a huge impact on the environment in India and a respectable newspaper like TOI helping in such irresponsible behavior is something I could not believe. It should be strongly objected from all the quarters of people reading the newspaper. If this kind of things are encouraged, very soon we are all going to see audible newspapers and tons and tons of non-biodegradable waste. In today's time, when we are already facing so many consequences of Global warming, should this kind of irresponsible behavior be tolerated?