5 ms·

A low hanging fruit in the attempt to reduce consumption (which is the only real solution) is to stop single-use items. e.g. paper napkins, straws, carry bags f

A low hanging fruit in the attempt to reduce consumption (which is the only real solution) is to stop single-use items. e.g. paper napkins, straws, carry bags from the local grocery shops etc. Just assuming that it's biodegradable or being recycled doesn't take into account the amount of energy and materials that went into production which are just wasted since the items are not reused.

tsimionescu 8y ago
While being low-hanging fruit, these things are also fully irrelevant. If the entire world stopped using them tomorrow, it would barely be a blip on any climate model or ocean pollution model.
- titzer 8y ago
  Wearing the dressings of smart people, we do nothing, while telling others to do nothing, because the something they would do would be a "blip."
  - Haga 8y ago
    It's all about didcussionshifting away from government who could enforce change for all to the individual which is sure to fall
  - MisterTea 8y ago
    > Wearing the dressings of smart people, we do nothing, while telling others to do nothing, because the something they would do would be a "blip." Talk is cheap. If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. The only way to effect change is to work towards it yourself and gently encourage others to do so. Be prepared to make sacrifices and/or compromises (this is what stops most people, humans are selfish and lazy). Don't like plastic waste? Make an effort to reduce it. Take reusable cloth bags with you when shopping. A big trend among young people today is takeout food. It seems that fewer and fewer people cook for themselves. This is a massive source of plastic waste. Don't buy new gizmos just because they are new or for status. Use things until they break. Then fix them until they cant be fixed. Just imagine if everyone stopped talking a good game and started taking small steps to making the world a better place.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Again you're just blaming the end user for companies making the bulk of pollution of all sorts. I don't want the box in a box in a box with countless plastic air pillows in an Amazon shipment. Nor do I want razorsharp clamshell packaging. Nor do I need plastic bags- I use cloth bags. Yet I'm the one somehow "responsible" for a variety of pollution and climate change. Its not my fault things are built with planned obsolescence. I can repair a variety of things, but with glues and ultrasonic welding makes things notoriously difficult. Tl;Dr. Companies are really responsible, but 3 Rs are targeting citizens.
    - titzer 8y ago
      My irrelevant "blip" for 2017 was picking up 300 bags of trash off beaches with my own bare hands. I didn't lead with that, but you brought it up.
  - tsimionescu 8y ago
    If we want to avoid the worse effe ts of climate change, we need to do something at the level of industry, not consumers. As individuals, that means we must focus on political efforts, much more than personal efforts: vote for a 'green' candidate even if you stand to lose from their financial policies; convince your friends to do the same. Call your representatives when green laws are voted on. I'm not saying it's bad to do the small things. But it is bad to assume that if only everyone did the small things, the world would be better without having to do the big things as well - it wouldn't. As long as industry continues to be as wasteful as it is, as long as we continue to transport goods over the huge distances that we do, as long as we still grow the huge amounts of animals that go to waste, we are heading for catastrophe regardless of our everyone's individual actions.
- stuaxo 8y ago
  Getting people to do something means we start to solve these problems. Plastic in the ocean and food chain is not nothing. Same for climate change, start fixing small things build awareness and move onto bigger things. Alternately tell people to stop doing anything.
  - tsimionescu 8y ago
    That could work, but it is painfully slow,and it might as well backfire - making people live worse lives so that they might be politically motivated to make industry take some of the brunt is not an obvious next step. Also, any reasonable changes to your personal buying behavior, and absolutely everyone on the planet's as well, assuming 0 changes in, say, industrial fishing dumping practices, will produce about a 0% change in ocean plastic pollution.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Getting rid of a lot of single-use items would OTOH conflict with hygiene rules though. That's probably why straws come in little plastic wrappers nowadays in some places.
- stuaxo 8y ago
  Rules are made by people and can adapt.
darkpuma 8y ago
Shallow ecology measures like that are more PR stunts than meaningful action.
- giglypuff 8y ago
  Putting it here, for fun with a serious topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lh3aPbKDn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lh3aPbKDn8
immernerstheime 8y ago
Ok good one my friend firstly I prefer to talk about plastic and think about napkins and paper bags slowly and well something eXtremely important you mention and I forgot sorry mother nature shows me I forgot is about straws for soda pop at the beach coconut water at the beach oh my you name it or no name straws made of plastic , well... so this is the classical example of something that could even be banned , and banning things is against my principles by principle , mind you , but straws are not like plastic bags yeah an old lady want to carry her fruits in a plastic bag and come on is her freewill and we have to respect by principle and be well and think and straws at the beach at least is something that could be ultimetely if not banned at least controlled with a lot of trashbins colorful for everyone to See with straws painted on them for people to trow the straws in the bin and overall find a replacement even if made of plastic but something easier and better to recycle because straws are ... well... not really necessary...at least at the beach... lets say we are recicling mineral water PET (I know and knew and know it right, lets say I know a little bit more than most humans about permeability of Nitrogen and specially oxygen on membrane barriers of different plastics in the food packing industry...and...of course...about Aluminium) so suposedly we are recicling PET water little bottles... lets supose no labels only thermofoming brands on the the inflation step of the plastic bottle thermoforming/inflating making or similar yeah so only PET suposedly righ and the recicling needs energy and some other chemicals who knows what kind of who know how to name these things, so , well...these things are replaced by substitute processes without that kind of shit, ok, lets name it and say it, chemicals added to the recicling steps of the recicling process these could be banned in theory hipotetically speaking but supose we have PET recicling with spent Energy but no spending added shit chemicals colaterally in the process... So we still spend the energy right, so, we get energy from sun light so we are clean, I think in my opinion humble as in a federal court, Your Honor

tsimionescu 8y ago

While being low-hanging fruit, these things are also fully irrelevant. If the entire world stopped using them tomorrow, it would barely be a blip on any climate model or ocean pollution model.

titzer 8y ago
Wearing the dressings of smart people, we do nothing, while telling others to do nothing, because the something they would do would be a "blip."
- Haga 8y ago
  It's all about didcussionshifting away from government who could enforce change for all to the individual which is sure to fall
- MisterTea 8y ago
  > Wearing the dressings of smart people, we do nothing, while telling others to do nothing, because the something they would do would be a "blip." Talk is cheap. If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. The only way to effect change is to work towards it yourself and gently encourage others to do so. Be prepared to make sacrifices and/or compromises (this is what stops most people, humans are selfish and lazy). Don't like plastic waste? Make an effort to reduce it. Take reusable cloth bags with you when shopping. A big trend among young people today is takeout food. It seems that fewer and fewer people cook for themselves. This is a massive source of plastic waste. Don't buy new gizmos just because they are new or for status. Use things until they break. Then fix them until they cant be fixed. Just imagine if everyone stopped talking a good game and started taking small steps to making the world a better place.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Again you're just blaming the end user for companies making the bulk of pollution of all sorts. I don't want the box in a box in a box with countless plastic air pillows in an Amazon shipment. Nor do I want razorsharp clamshell packaging. Nor do I need plastic bags- I use cloth bags. Yet I'm the one somehow "responsible" for a variety of pollution and climate change. Its not my fault things are built with planned obsolescence. I can repair a variety of things, but with glues and ultrasonic welding makes things notoriously difficult. Tl;Dr. Companies are really responsible, but 3 Rs are targeting citizens.
  - titzer 8y ago
    My irrelevant "blip" for 2017 was picking up 300 bags of trash off beaches with my own bare hands. I didn't lead with that, but you brought it up.
- tsimionescu 8y ago
  If we want to avoid the worse effe ts of climate change, we need to do something at the level of industry, not consumers. As individuals, that means we must focus on political efforts, much more than personal efforts: vote for a 'green' candidate even if you stand to lose from their financial policies; convince your friends to do the same. Call your representatives when green laws are voted on. I'm not saying it's bad to do the small things. But it is bad to assume that if only everyone did the small things, the world would be better without having to do the big things as well - it wouldn't. As long as industry continues to be as wasteful as it is, as long as we continue to transport goods over the huge distances that we do, as long as we still grow the huge amounts of animals that go to waste, we are heading for catastrophe regardless of our everyone's individual actions.
stuaxo 8y ago
Getting people to do something means we start to solve these problems. Plastic in the ocean and food chain is not nothing. Same for climate change, start fixing small things build awareness and move onto bigger things. Alternately tell people to stop doing anything.
- tsimionescu 8y ago
  That could work, but it is painfully slow,and it might as well backfire - making people live worse lives so that they might be politically motivated to make industry take some of the brunt is not an obvious next step. Also, any reasonable changes to your personal buying behavior, and absolutely everyone on the planet's as well, assuming 0 changes in, say, industrial fishing dumping practices, will produce about a 0% change in ocean plastic pollution.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

Getting rid of a lot of single-use items would OTOH conflict with hygiene rules though. That's probably why straws come in little plastic wrappers nowadays in some places.

stuaxo 8y ago
Rules are made by people and can adapt.

darkpuma 8y ago

Shallow ecology measures like that are more PR stunts than meaningful action.

giglypuff 8y ago
Putting it here, for fun with a serious topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lh3aPbKDn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lh3aPbKDn8

immernerstheime 8y ago

Ok good one my friend firstly I prefer to talk about plastic and think about napkins and paper bags slowly and well something eXtremely important you mention and I forgot sorry mother nature shows me I forgot is about straws for soda pop at the beach coconut water at the beach oh my you name it or no name straws made of plastic , well... so this is the classical example of something that could even be banned , and banning things is against my principles by principle , mind you , but straws are not like plastic bags yeah an old lady want to carry her fruits in a plastic bag and come on is her freewill and we have to respect by principle and be well and think and straws at the beach at least is something that could be ultimetely if not banned at least controlled with a lot of trashbins colorful for everyone to See with straws painted on them for people to trow the straws in the bin and overall find a replacement even if made of plastic but something easier and better to recycle because straws are ... well... not really necessary...at least at the beach... lets say we are recicling mineral water PET (I know and knew and know it right, lets say I know a little bit more than most humans about permeability of Nitrogen and specially oxygen on membrane barriers of different plastics in the food packing industry...and...of course...about Aluminium) so suposedly we are recicling PET water little bottles... lets supose no labels only thermofoming brands on the the inflation step of the plastic bottle thermoforming/inflating making or similar yeah so only PET suposedly righ and the recicling needs energy and some other chemicals who knows what kind of who know how to name these things, so , well...these things are replaced by substitute processes without that kind of shit, ok, lets name it and say it, chemicals added to the recicling steps of the recicling process these could be banned in theory hipotetically speaking but supose we have PET recicling with spent Energy but no spending added shit chemicals colaterally in the process... So we still spend the energy right, so, we get energy from sun light so we are clean, I think in my opinion humble as in a federal court, Your Honor