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I meet much more people that use “other people won’t care” as an excuse for not doing anything themselves than I meet people who actually don’t care. If we jus

by Ma8ee 7y ago

I meet much more people that use “other people won’t care” as an excuse for not doing anything themselves than I meet people who actually don’t care. If we just started doing our parts and didn’t worry so much about other people doing theirs we wouldn’t in this mess.

m_mueller 7y ago
or in other words, the tragedy of commons.
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  No, it's the tragedy of blaming the tragedy of the commons.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Yes, saw recently on HN (and often IRL) "no point recycling when industry ...", and "we'll never best 10% domestic recycling, why bother". In UK councils quote 50% recycling rates. And that's with most supermarkets still producing food in unrecyclable packaging.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  At the risk of injecting extra negativity into the thread: what about the recent revelations that a lot of (if not most) recycling is really shipping the trash to poorer nations to be dumped there?
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    >"councils quote" Yeah ... I've not investigated that yet. But I have seen some of our local recycling facilities and they seem to be operating rather than secretly filling shipping containers. It does trouble me visiting my town's rubbish dump, there is so much usable stuff in the skips, so much waste. Presumably China now refusing other country's trash is shedding new light on these issues. I think we have to fix our entire economic systems in order to solve this, and I don't think that's going to work readily because people will always exploit others for financial/political gain at the expense of the environment. We're going to have to seriously curtail individual freedoms that allow people to make excessive use of resources. We can't do that under our current market-based systems. Take a simple example, fleece fabric is great, cheap, used widely but is a massive source of microplastic pollution - we're going to have to make it expensive, and stop people from throwing it away, and use the income to do proper filtration and recycling. We're going to need to start treating fraud wrt environmental issues as akin to manslaughter - actually put businessmen in jail who are responsible (knowingly, or unknowingly through negligence) for things like shipping recycling abroad and not confirming it is recycled, or lying about car MPGs, or failing to filter effluent, or allowing runoff to poison water sources, .... We probably need something akin to a global one-child policy as well. We can't go on increasing population and just expect resources to stretch. Things are going to break much harder with population rates left as they are. I better stop ... /rant
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Hah, don't worry about /rant, I agree with you. In particular wrt. treating environmental fraud issues akin to manslaughter, or at least intentionally causing bodily harm. Because that's what it is, except stretched over time and applying to more people. We have an issue like this close to home - apparently in Poland there are people who offer very cheap disposal of toxic waste. They take that waste and just dump it illegally. I'd like to see them - and those who in full knowledge use their services - to be dragged in front of the courts and jailed.
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Yes, in UK too. AIUI we've implemented a system of tracking the waste to the originators, who can't use the excuse "I paid someone" as they are jointly responsible for safe disposal. Waste disposal operatives have therefore to have licenses and domestic users must check the license so they can be assured the waste will be disposed of, use unlicensed operators, get fined. It seems to be working to some extent but as costs for proper disposal increase the "benefits" of fraud for the waste operatives increase too.

by Ma8ee 7y ago

m_mueller 7y ago

or in other words, the tragedy of commons.

Ma8ee 7y ago
No, it's the tragedy of blaming the tragedy of the commons.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

Yes, saw recently on HN (and often IRL) "no point recycling when industry ...", and "we'll never best 10% domestic recycling, why bother". In UK councils quote 50% recycling rates. And that's with most supermarkets still producing food in unrecyclable packaging.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
At the risk of injecting extra negativity into the thread: what about the recent revelations that a lot of (if not most) recycling is really shipping the trash to poorer nations to be dumped there?
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  >"councils quote" Yeah ... I've not investigated that yet. But I have seen some of our local recycling facilities and they seem to be operating rather than secretly filling shipping containers. It does trouble me visiting my town's rubbish dump, there is so much usable stuff in the skips, so much waste. Presumably China now refusing other country's trash is shedding new light on these issues. I think we have to fix our entire economic systems in order to solve this, and I don't think that's going to work readily because people will always exploit others for financial/political gain at the expense of the environment. We're going to have to seriously curtail individual freedoms that allow people to make excessive use of resources. We can't do that under our current market-based systems. Take a simple example, fleece fabric is great, cheap, used widely but is a massive source of microplastic pollution - we're going to have to make it expensive, and stop people from throwing it away, and use the income to do proper filtration and recycling. We're going to need to start treating fraud wrt environmental issues as akin to manslaughter - actually put businessmen in jail who are responsible (knowingly, or unknowingly through negligence) for things like shipping recycling abroad and not confirming it is recycled, or lying about car MPGs, or failing to filter effluent, or allowing runoff to poison water sources, .... We probably need something akin to a global one-child policy as well. We can't go on increasing population and just expect resources to stretch. Things are going to break much harder with population rates left as they are. I better stop ... /rant
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Hah, don't worry about /rant, I agree with you. In particular wrt. treating environmental fraud issues akin to manslaughter, or at least intentionally causing bodily harm. Because that's what it is, except stretched over time and applying to more people. We have an issue like this close to home - apparently in Poland there are people who offer very cheap disposal of toxic waste. They take that waste and just dump it illegally. I'd like to see them - and those who in full knowledge use their services - to be dragged in front of the courts and jailed.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Yes, in UK too. AIUI we've implemented a system of tracking the waste to the originators, who can't use the excuse "I paid someone" as they are jointly responsible for safe disposal. Waste disposal operatives have therefore to have licenses and domestic users must check the license so they can be assured the waste will be disposed of, use unlicensed operators, get fined. It seems to be working to some extent but as costs for proper disposal increase the "benefits" of fraud for the waste operatives increase too.