4 ms·

If there was a magical way of convincing every single person in the U.S. to stop buying X, what would we have to stop buying to stop this pollution?

astura 7y ago
I don't think there's much a consumer can do and it seems many of them are no longer in active use yet are still in the environment from when they were used. >The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.
- driverdan 7y ago
  While true their replacements are very similar and have almost the same risks.
retSava 7y ago
Teflon for example, is pretty stable when manufactured and in-application. But the company manufacturing it, DuPont, has shown despicable disregard for environment and people health and as such, imo, should get a healthy dose of "I ain't touching your products". edit: one example, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
- mtgx 7y ago
  I don't even know if most recent teflon products are supposed to be "safe" when scratched or otherwise, but I've been buying and recommending everyone to stay away from teflon products and buy only ceramic or stainless steel ones for a few years now. I've noticed there are a lot of ceramic alternatives to teflon these days compared to a few years ago and it's not much more expensive. I do believe ceramics aren't 100% safe for certain applications either, such as boiling sour stuff, or something along those lines.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  > Teflon for example, is pretty stable when manufactured and in-application. Chemical stability isn't necessarily a good thing. Another chemical, Perfluorooctanoic (C8), is used in the manufacture of Teflon and is extremely stable, so much so that it's found in the bloodstream of 98% of Americans. Unfortunately C8 bio-accumulates and is in fact very harmful. Also, one of the applications of Teflon is cookware and when heated Teflon undergoes thermolysis and forms toxic compounds. So stability is great until it's not. Speaking of how shitty DuPont is... 3M was DuPont's sole supplier of C8 and stopped manufacturing it amid rising concerns from the EPA, so DuPont started manufacturing it on their own.
claudeganon 7y ago
Industrial pollution like this is the lived reality of Capitalism and it’s inability to meaningfully account for the environmental degradation and destruction it causes. The problem isn’t “stop buying X” it’s that we need to “stop buying.”
- yomly 7y ago
  I don't know why you get downvoted for this. The current assumption that GDP must always grow (and consumption must keep increasing) seem to be in direct contradiction to the idea that we must stop consuming so much if we want to save the environment. Perhaps "capitalism" is a lazy proxy for this but I think it's more lazy to downvote you than engage with the discussion
  - mdemare 7y ago
    Increasing GDP does not imply increasing consumption, and increasing consumption does not imply increasing pollution.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Can you provide any examples to support your statement? I don’t see how the production of materials and transportation of the materials and people could not increase pollution, given the current infrastructure which requires use of fossil fuels, and which will not change in the short term.
      - epistasis 7y ago
        You're forgetting the #1 cheapest and most effective way to reduce our environmental impact: efficiency of energy use and efficiency of resource use. In the case of GDP, energy and resources are both costs that businesses try to minimize in order to provide end products and services, which is what the GDP measures. Therefore, the carbon intensity of a dollar of GDP is expected to decrease in time, as people discover more ways to save money and compete better, in order to increase profits. They probably aren't thinking about decreasing the amount of CO2 emitted, especially when they are making business decisions. But since CO2 indirectly has a cost, the amount of CO2 emitted per dollar GDP has been decreasing drastically: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD If we were to directly price in the costs of CO2 via a tax, the fall would be far faster. And as we come up with tech that doesn't emit, and is cheaper than fossil fuel extraction, we will stop using these damaging resources completely. There has historically been great resistance from the right to the power of energy efficiency, because of their ties to high fossil fuel consumption, and their attachment to GDP rising at all costs to fuel gains for those at the top of the capitalistic hierarchy. However, this was a miscounted belief. Lately, this misunderstanding has been picked up by the extreme left, who had assumed that global collapse was their time to finally overturn market-based systems, but now fear that we will try to address the coming disasters of climate change without overhauling market based systems, so now after the yellow jackets gave it to Macron over carbon taxes, a fundamentally market based system, the left has now decided that the enemy (rural conservatives) of their true enemy (neoliberals in urban centers), they can pick up the mantle. But it's important to fully recognize where these narratives come from and what motivation is driving those who push narratives, and return to the data for our ultimate analysis. Stopping pollution does not mean destroying GDP. It means eliminating the parts of the GDP that cause the pollution, but other activity will quickly replace the other.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
There is probably no single thing to stop buying. You would set up regulations and everything would probably become a bit more expensive. Maybe some items would disappear completely.
paulmd 7y ago
Stop eating any kind of factory-processed or packaged food (with plastic packaging, canned packaging, etc, as these are coated), stop using any clothing/shoes/furniture not based on natural fibers or with water-resistant or stain-resistant properties, using any sort of coated cookware (return to cast iron), etc and that still won't do anything about commercial or industrial uses of those chemicals that contaminate your water supply/etc. Like firefighting foam, for example. The Air Force is going to keep using it regardless of what you do personally, despite them having less toxic alternatives available. simply banning it directly wouldn't help, companies will just move on to the next thing, legally it will be presumed to be safe until there is science to prove that it's not, and we will need another 75 years of epidemiological studies to build that proof. Rinse and repeat forever. The long term answer is that we need to reverse the legal model and have companies prove that any chemical they intend to introduce is safe, rather than the public having to (first learn what proprietary chemicals are being used, as this is not legally required to be disclosed, and then) prove that it's dangerous, but that won't happen under any conservative or liberal governments in the US, it will take a leftist government pushing heavy environmental regulations before there's any chance of phasing this sort of thing out. Until then, it's on to the next poison.

astura 7y ago

I don't think there's much a consumer can do and it seems many of them are no longer in active use yet are still in the environment from when they were used. >The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.

driverdan 7y ago
While true their replacements are very similar and have almost the same risks.

retSava 7y ago

Teflon for example, is pretty stable when manufactured and in-application. But the company manufacturing it, DuPont, has shown despicable disregard for environment and people health and as such, imo, should get a healthy dose of "I ain't touching your products". edit: one example, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...

mtgx 7y ago
I don't even know if most recent teflon products are supposed to be "safe" when scratched or otherwise, but I've been buying and recommending everyone to stay away from teflon products and buy only ceramic or stainless steel ones for a few years now. I've noticed there are a lot of ceramic alternatives to teflon these days compared to a few years ago and it's not much more expensive. I do believe ceramics aren't 100% safe for certain applications either, such as boiling sour stuff, or something along those lines.
cptskippy 7y ago
> Teflon for example, is pretty stable when manufactured and in-application. Chemical stability isn't necessarily a good thing. Another chemical, Perfluorooctanoic (C8), is used in the manufacture of Teflon and is extremely stable, so much so that it's found in the bloodstream of 98% of Americans. Unfortunately C8 bio-accumulates and is in fact very harmful. Also, one of the applications of Teflon is cookware and when heated Teflon undergoes thermolysis and forms toxic compounds. So stability is great until it's not. Speaking of how shitty DuPont is... 3M was DuPont's sole supplier of C8 and stopped manufacturing it amid rising concerns from the EPA, so DuPont started manufacturing it on their own.

claudeganon 7y ago

Industrial pollution like this is the lived reality of Capitalism and it’s inability to meaningfully account for the environmental degradation and destruction it causes. The problem isn’t “stop buying X” it’s that we need to “stop buying.”

yomly 7y ago
I don't know why you get downvoted for this. The current assumption that GDP must always grow (and consumption must keep increasing) seem to be in direct contradiction to the idea that we must stop consuming so much if we want to save the environment. Perhaps "capitalism" is a lazy proxy for this but I think it's more lazy to downvote you than engage with the discussion
- mdemare 7y ago
  Increasing GDP does not imply increasing consumption, and increasing consumption does not imply increasing pollution.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Can you provide any examples to support your statement? I don’t see how the production of materials and transportation of the materials and people could not increase pollution, given the current infrastructure which requires use of fossil fuels, and which will not change in the short term.
    - epistasis 7y ago
      You're forgetting the #1 cheapest and most effective way to reduce our environmental impact: efficiency of energy use and efficiency of resource use. In the case of GDP, energy and resources are both costs that businesses try to minimize in order to provide end products and services, which is what the GDP measures. Therefore, the carbon intensity of a dollar of GDP is expected to decrease in time, as people discover more ways to save money and compete better, in order to increase profits. They probably aren't thinking about decreasing the amount of CO2 emitted, especially when they are making business decisions. But since CO2 indirectly has a cost, the amount of CO2 emitted per dollar GDP has been decreasing drastically: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD If we were to directly price in the costs of CO2 via a tax, the fall would be far faster. And as we come up with tech that doesn't emit, and is cheaper than fossil fuel extraction, we will stop using these damaging resources completely. There has historically been great resistance from the right to the power of energy efficiency, because of their ties to high fossil fuel consumption, and their attachment to GDP rising at all costs to fuel gains for those at the top of the capitalistic hierarchy. However, this was a miscounted belief. Lately, this misunderstanding has been picked up by the extreme left, who had assumed that global collapse was their time to finally overturn market-based systems, but now fear that we will try to address the coming disasters of climate change without overhauling market based systems, so now after the yellow jackets gave it to Macron over carbon taxes, a fundamentally market based system, the left has now decided that the enemy (rural conservatives) of their true enemy (neoliberals in urban centers), they can pick up the mantle. But it's important to fully recognize where these narratives come from and what motivation is driving those who push narratives, and return to the data for our ultimate analysis. Stopping pollution does not mean destroying GDP. It means eliminating the parts of the GDP that cause the pollution, but other activity will quickly replace the other.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

There is probably no single thing to stop buying. You would set up regulations and everything would probably become a bit more expensive. Maybe some items would disappear completely.

paulmd 7y ago

Stop eating any kind of factory-processed or packaged food (with plastic packaging, canned packaging, etc, as these are coated), stop using any clothing/shoes/furniture not based on natural fibers or with water-resistant or stain-resistant properties, using any sort of coated cookware (return to cast iron), etc and that still won't do anything about commercial or industrial uses of those chemicals that contaminate your water supply/etc. Like firefighting foam, for example. The Air Force is going to keep using it regardless of what you do personally, despite them having less toxic alternatives available. simply banning it directly wouldn't help, companies will just move on to the next thing, legally it will be presumed to be safe until there is science to prove that it's not, and we will need another 75 years of epidemiological studies to build that proof. Rinse and repeat forever. The long term answer is that we need to reverse the legal model and have companies prove that any chemical they intend to introduce is safe, rather than the public having to (first learn what proprietary chemicals are being used, as this is not legally required to be disclosed, and then) prove that it's dangerous, but that won't happen under any conservative or liberal governments in the US, it will take a leftist government pushing heavy environmental regulations before there's any chance of phasing this sort of thing out. Until then, it's on to the next poison.