Page 165 - Just Deserts

Scrubbers

governing smokestack emissions; Cocker and Philpott, having
constructed their industrial plant in the immediate postwar era, were
far from being in compliance. After crunching the numbers, the
company’s directors confronted a dilemma: the cost of reducing
harmful pollutants as a by-product of their manufacturing process
would slash deeply into their corporate profit and personal gain. A
certain amount of this cost, it is true, could be passed on to the
consumer; and a certain other portion could, they were advised, be
manipulated into a useful loss for tax purposes. But these offsets
were insufficient. Thus was the stage set for temptation.”
Professor Wachs blinked and peeped at his watch. Plenty of time
to make his point, whatever it was.
“The devil, in this instance, was a waste disposal company
operating on the fringes of the law. Its name—I have it here in my
notes—ah, its name was Fomalhaut Industries. It had its own
method of removing unwanted chemicals from the effluvia of
industrial appurtenances such as smokestacks, a method, it assured
Cocker and Philpott, far cheaper than the conventional use of
ammonia in catalytic converters. And where it took its truckloads of
caustic substances was not the concern of its clients, who effectively
washed their hands of the problem; they could, of course, have easily
deduced that the substantially lower fees Fomalhaut charged than its
competitors indicated a shady operation. But: caveat emptor! Cocker
and Philpott found a way to cut the cost of their clean-up. They were
in the clear, so they thought; responsibility had been passed on to the
lowest bidder.”
“This arrangement had been in place for quite some time when
Cocker and Philpott decided to launch a new bathroom product, a
self-sudsing washcloth. Their chemists had labored long and hard to
solve the technical problems involved, and at last the company had a
process which they could patent and protect from imitation. In order
to market this innovation, Cocker and Philpott went to a New York
advertising agency, Bodkin/Thomler, with which they had an existing
relationship. The creative people there came up with a name and a
slogan for the commodity: Scrubbers, ‘Clean up with Scrubbers.’
Cocker and Philpott put its full resources behind Scrubbers, gearing

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