Cynical behaviour

I am always surprised of cynical behaviour, particularly in the context of environmental and some other related issues: A tragically funny example is the legislation that counts pizza as vegetable in school lunches, on the basis of the tomato sauce. A not so funny example, when a lawyer specialized in car accidents goes to the same school to talk about car safety and give to the children pencils, t-shirts and action figures... everything with the logo "Hurt in a car... call me" Yesterday, I was thinking on this cynical behaviour related with the environment, because I noticed that the company that makes the water bottle I got from the supermarket claims that they are environmentally friendly now producing bottles with less plastic, particularly tiny tops. While it is true the new bottle contaminates a bit less (although not sure whether the process to make the new top is less or more contaminant than before) the true motivation of the company is really not very clear to me... not just saving money but using the concept as advertisement: We are cool, we care about the environment! Typical example of this is in an hotel in which they advertise that they care about the environment with the towel business (we won't wash them on a daily basis to save energy and water) and then they give you breakfast with everything disposable knife, cup, saucer. So the real question is: are these tiny, pitiful initiatives useful? the fact is there are indeed some improvements! Is it worthy? Should we better invest in a change of attitude, saving some of this cynical gathered petty cash to really produce a change beyond the crumbs represented by the wet towel hanging on a rail?