5 ms·

Nimby + disassociation. "That landfill is causing a lot of pollution". No, you caused that pollution. The landfill just collected it all in one place. This is

Nimby + disassociation. "That landfill is causing a lot of pollution". No, you caused that pollution. The landfill just collected it all in one place. This is similar to "China's manufacturing causes a lot of pollution". No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. Just my $0.02.

thfuran 3y ago
Pollution caused by a factory is an (almost certainly) unaccounted-for externality, a market failure hidden from the consumer of a good but known to the producer. Pinning the blame on the consumer removes it from the agent who is both directly causing it and actually able to effect change.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  I hear you, but if one maker makes you pay the real price of including the externalities, most consumers will by the equally good but much cheaper alternative. In fact, at equal price, they will choose the most convenient form factor with beautiful and practical packaging. We are not innocent in all this.
  - notjoemama 3y ago
    Nor are we at fault. Corporate consolidation has been happening for decades. They have psychologists on staff or contracted out to design products that sell based on inherent human bias and autonomic responses. We’re sold to at the subconscious level now. I agree given only two choices the average consumer will spend the least, but doesn’t that suggest trying to make aware or change human behavior is the wrong approach to solving the problem? I wouldn’t bother with land fills for a while. First on my list is standardizing electrical power at docks for container ships. They run the most polluting fuel on idle 24 hours per day while docked. The amount of carbon release is something like in the millions of automobiles per day. If they could plug into every port they can shut their engines off. They might not even need to carry the dirtiest fuel anymore.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > I wouldn’t bother with land fills for a while. First on my list is standardizing electrical power at docks for container ships. There is some sort of effort going on, but IIRC it stalled as a consequence of covid [1]. Biggest problems are frequency differences (the entire world but the Americas runs at 50 Hz, but maritime+America runs at 60 Hz), and the fact that for the many megawatts a ship can use you need extremely high voltages to get that transferred at reasonable currents, which is a safety challenge on its own [2]. [1] https://sustainableworldports.org/wpcap/wg-3/our-mission/ https://sustainableworldports.org/wpcap/wg-3/our-mission/ [2] https://sustainableworldports.org/wp-content/uploads/Landstormversorgung-von-Kreuzfarthschiffen-2009.pdf https://sustainableworldports.org/wp-content/uploads/Landsto...
      - 20after4 3y ago
        Surely the consumption is reduced when they are sitting in port idling? And do ships really need a higher voltage than common industrial power? (480v, 3 phase) I realize 480v is dangerous but not unmanageable.
        LeChuck 3y ago
        Container ships can have thousands of reefer containers on board. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerated_container https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerated_container
    - jl6 3y ago
      > Nor are we at fault. Yes, we are. The vast majority of our (first world) consumption is not something we are forced to do. We (again, first world, but particularly here, in tech world) have comparatively massive disposable incomes and wide discretion about what we spend it on. "I can't avoid plastics because it's what my sushi comes packaged in" Don't buy the sushi.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Penalising polluting producers passes the price to the product purchaser.
    - drekipus 3y ago
      That is a good thing
      - HPsquared 3y ago
        Yeah I agree, it's the best place to target it: the producers have the means, motive and opportunity to cut their pollution. The real problem comes when considering imports. How to assess the emissions of overseas producers, and then track the "embodied pollution" in each product? Becomes very messy without solid international cooperation. So it probably then becomes necessary to tax certain things when they're either imported or at the point of sale.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    The solution, of course, is to not permit any maker to foist their negative externalities upon the commons to unfairly undercut competitors. If you're going to blame a consumer for the producer's pollution, why not instead blame their landlord for charging them the rent that forced them to drive to work and so buy tires? Why not instead blame the landlord's bank for demanding repayment of the mortgage or the bank's shareholders for demanding profit instead of benevolent loan forgiveness?
    - Geisterde 3y ago
      I heard Santa had something to do with it too!
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    That's why regulation is better than leaving everything to the market in many cases.
    - incangold 3y ago
      …and it’s not like we don’t produce similar regulation all the time. The conversation here makes it sound like this is unprecedented, whereas it seems to me completely normal. There are no CFCs in my deodorant any more, or lead in my paint, or whatever. Once regulation is in place, producers have motivation to innovate and drive the cost of disposal and reuse down, which is a great application of market mechanisms.
11235813213455 3y ago
money exchange cause pollution, the less you spend money, the less you pollute, simple
- Johnny555 3y ago
  It's not really that simple -- there are lots of ways to spend less money while generating more pollution. I could spend less money by piling up my trash in my back yard instead of paying a waste management company to haul it away. But that's not going to reduce the amount of pollution I've caused, and will likely increase it.
  - voisin 3y ago
    If you don’t spend money, then you ultimately have less stuff to put in your back yard. Hauling it away doesn’t change the net amount of pollution - it’s still pollution in a landfill, just less unsightly. Perhaps if everyone had to put their waste in their own backyard people would opt for products that produce less waste! I live rurally and have to take my waste and recycling to the transfer station. It’s free but a pain in the ass so I try to make decisions which produce less waste so I don’t have to go as often. Previously I lived somewhere rurally where you had to pay per pound brought to the transfer station - that was an even bigger incentive to cut back on waste.
    - Johnny555 3y ago
      If you don't spend money at all, then you've removed yourself from participating in modern society, so that's not a reasonable suggestion. I spent more money to replace my aging furnace with a heat pump to reduce my emissions, so the mere exchange of money doesn't cause pollution. I could have spent a lot less money to repair or replace it with an equivalent 80% efficient furnace. My point is that it's not as simple as "money exchange causes more pollution" since I could stop sending money to my waste management company while not doing anything at all to reduce my personal pollution. Yes there are ways you can reduce your pollution impact (i.e. by buying less unnecessary goods, traveling less, etc), but there are also ways you can spend less money (i.e. by buying cheaper produce imported from another country 1000 miles away than paying a bit more for more local produce) while increasing your environmental impact.
jancsika 3y ago
> No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. Substitute "contribute to" for "cause"
- voisin 3y ago
  I think OP is correct by saying “cause”. The demand is actually causal, not merely contributory.
Johnny555 3y ago
When I pay my waste management company to haul away my trash, I do so with the expectation that they'll dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way (as environmentally conscious as dumping it into a big hole in the ground can be). If they can't afford to do methane capture based on what they are charging, then they should charge more. By not including externalized costs like environmental harm, cheap trash, just like cheap gas, leads consumers to use more of the product than if the environmental costs were factored in.
- voisin 3y ago
  > I do so with the expectation that they'll dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way (as environmentally conscious as dumping it into a big hole in the ground can be) Where does this expectation stem from? We all know they dump it in the ground as you mention but has there ever been a push for regulation to demand methane capture? I’ve never heard of such a push so I can’t imagine why anyone would expect them to have been doing it.
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    Regulation - you can't dig a hole in the ground and call yourself a municipal landfill. https://www.epa.gov/landfills https://www.epa.gov/landfills Modern landfills are well-engineered and managed facilities for the disposal of solid waste. They must meet stringent design, operation, and closure requirements established under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. I'm not an environmental expert, if Methane emission causes significant environmental harm, then the EPA should be regulating it. It's hard to tell someone that they're harming the environment through methane emissions from trash while the actual environmental experts at the EPA don't bother to regulate it.
    - jMyles 3y ago
      ...this response rings so deeply and reverberating hollow to me. You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. Of course the state occasionally displays the correct time as a broken clock would, but this is something that requires verification rather than naked presumption.
notjoemama 3y ago
Feel free to email Jeff Bezos to put a country of origin filter on Amazon.com so I can actually reduce the carbon footprint of the products I buy. Consumers have very few options within their control and the problem is not binary nor does its solution need to be zero sum.
- zizee 3y ago
  The lack of information, which in turn affects consumer behaviour. Information is important to a well functioning market. Excellent point, and providing more info is often to the detriment of many sellers/producers. That excellent point aside, I did want to say that international shipping is a much smaller contribute to CO2 emissions than road freight, so a simple toggle is probably not going to cut the mustard, and goods from China are not necessarily that much worse for the environment than goods transported from one side of the US to another. The biggest problem with most goods produced these days is the disposable nature of them.
r00fus 3y ago
> No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. I disagree that the end consumer has so much agency. As a consumer I simply have the choice to buy product A or B - the pollution caused by the factory that the store ordered hoping you would buy it - is obscured by many levels. The consumer is a small part of the decision chain
- Erratic6576 3y ago
  As a consumer, I can choose the plastic bottle in which my plasticised water is sold. I cannot choose deposit glass
  - jl6 3y ago
    You can choose not to buy a bottle of water at all. You can buy a reusable bottle and get refills.
    - Erratic6576 3y ago
      I can also choose not to buy milk because they are no longer available in glass bottles. I can also choose not to buy food which comes in a plastic bag or blister.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    You can choose deposit glass if you look around. A local health food store or specialty shop surely sells water in large glass containers. I live in a very rural part of Missouri (not a very progressive state) and I know of multiple sources.
akira2501 3y ago
> This is similar to "China's manufacturing causes a lot of pollution". No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. This pretends that China's environmental standards and oversight are identical to every other countries or that worldwide shipping isn't one of the largest contributors to pollution on the planet. Which we all know is far from the truth. So, no, China actually causes that pollution. The companies in the US who take advantage of China's lax environmental and labor laws to eke out a few points of profit causes that pollution. As a consumer, I require goods to survive and thrive, and I have very little say in how that market functions, and I have zero say when it comes to setting policy. I'm happy to do more, and do as much as I can when possible, but I'm wealthy enough to play this game... most of America is not. I wish HN would punch up nearly as much as it loves to punch down.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > As a consumer, I require goods to survive and thrive, and I have very little say in how that market functions. You do have a say when/if you are willing to bear the cost of your decisions. If more people were willing to pay up the "manufactured in a place with strict environment and labor regulations" premium, then there wouldn't be so many companies flocking to China. But consumers don't want to do it. They rather save some bucks to buy the stuff they want and hide themselves under "everyone else does it".
  - kennyloginz 3y ago
    I think most everyone wants to do it, just the majority of people can’t afford to.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      I don't buy it. The iPhone is one of the most expensive devices and it is not due to a "not made in China" premium. It has close to half of the smartphone market in the US. Homeowners in the US are educated to "buy the most home they can get credit for", not "a home they can pay afford and pay off as quickly as possible." Cars in the US are growing in size. Consumers prefer the (false) safety of SUVs and trucks over the economy and fuel efficiency of smaller vehicles. I could go on. Americans are the richest people in the world, but also the most wasteful and least worried about the consequences of their consumerism.
pengaru 3y ago
> This is similar to "China's manufacturing causes a lot of pollution". No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. Except the China Effect of producing TrashOnArrival products is doing more than its fair share of amplifying how much must be produced to keep operational product in consumer hands.
justatdotin 3y ago
the problem with this conversation is that it risks never landing anywhere; or landing differently depending on who is having the conversation. In order to be sure that Someone is accountable, we need an agreed framework for ascribing accountability. I think the way this might work is that the landfill is accountable, and the cost of accountability is passed on to users; that China is accountable for pollution from its manufacturing, and the cost of that accountability is passed on to consumers. The consumer only has a binary choice, (with cost a factor in that choice) whereas the producer can be incentivised to implement efficiency measures, alternative technologies, etc.
strogonoff 3y ago
You can absolve Coca-Cola et al. switching to plastic packaging by shifting recycling and pollution blame onto the consumer. You can just as well absolve PRC’s environmental policies by shifting blame onto everyone who buys goods made in China. As a matter of fact, it’s what both want you to do: assume they have no agency in this, and hold yourself and/or free market responsible for all the damage.

thfuran 3y ago

Pollution caused by a factory is an (almost certainly) unaccounted-for externality, a market failure hidden from the consumer of a good but known to the producer. Pinning the blame on the consumer removes it from the agent who is both directly causing it and actually able to effect change.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
I hear you, but if one maker makes you pay the real price of including the externalities, most consumers will by the equally good but much cheaper alternative. In fact, at equal price, they will choose the most convenient form factor with beautiful and practical packaging. We are not innocent in all this.
- notjoemama 3y ago
  Nor are we at fault. Corporate consolidation has been happening for decades. They have psychologists on staff or contracted out to design products that sell based on inherent human bias and autonomic responses. We’re sold to at the subconscious level now. I agree given only two choices the average consumer will spend the least, but doesn’t that suggest trying to make aware or change human behavior is the wrong approach to solving the problem? I wouldn’t bother with land fills for a while. First on my list is standardizing electrical power at docks for container ships. They run the most polluting fuel on idle 24 hours per day while docked. The amount of carbon release is something like in the millions of automobiles per day. If they could plug into every port they can shut their engines off. They might not even need to carry the dirtiest fuel anymore.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > I wouldn’t bother with land fills for a while. First on my list is standardizing electrical power at docks for container ships. There is some sort of effort going on, but IIRC it stalled as a consequence of covid [1]. Biggest problems are frequency differences (the entire world but the Americas runs at 50 Hz, but maritime+America runs at 60 Hz), and the fact that for the many megawatts a ship can use you need extremely high voltages to get that transferred at reasonable currents, which is a safety challenge on its own [2]. [1] https://sustainableworldports.org/wpcap/wg-3/our-mission/ https://sustainableworldports.org/wpcap/wg-3/our-mission/ [2] https://sustainableworldports.org/wp-content/uploads/Landstormversorgung-von-Kreuzfarthschiffen-2009.pdf https://sustainableworldports.org/wp-content/uploads/Landsto...
    - 20after4 3y ago
      Surely the consumption is reduced when they are sitting in port idling? And do ships really need a higher voltage than common industrial power? (480v, 3 phase) I realize 480v is dangerous but not unmanageable.
      - LeChuck 3y ago
        Container ships can have thousands of reefer containers on board. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerated_container https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerated_container
  - jl6 3y ago
    > Nor are we at fault. Yes, we are. The vast majority of our (first world) consumption is not something we are forced to do. We (again, first world, but particularly here, in tech world) have comparatively massive disposable incomes and wide discretion about what we spend it on. "I can't avoid plastics because it's what my sushi comes packaged in" Don't buy the sushi.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Penalising polluting producers passes the price to the product purchaser.
  - drekipus 3y ago
    That is a good thing
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Yeah I agree, it's the best place to target it: the producers have the means, motive and opportunity to cut their pollution. The real problem comes when considering imports. How to assess the emissions of overseas producers, and then track the "embodied pollution" in each product? Becomes very messy without solid international cooperation. So it probably then becomes necessary to tax certain things when they're either imported or at the point of sale.
- thfuran 3y ago
  The solution, of course, is to not permit any maker to foist their negative externalities upon the commons to unfairly undercut competitors. If you're going to blame a consumer for the producer's pollution, why not instead blame their landlord for charging them the rent that forced them to drive to work and so buy tires? Why not instead blame the landlord's bank for demanding repayment of the mortgage or the bank's shareholders for demanding profit instead of benevolent loan forgiveness?
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    I heard Santa had something to do with it too!
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  That's why regulation is better than leaving everything to the market in many cases.
  - incangold 3y ago
    …and it’s not like we don’t produce similar regulation all the time. The conversation here makes it sound like this is unprecedented, whereas it seems to me completely normal. There are no CFCs in my deodorant any more, or lead in my paint, or whatever. Once regulation is in place, producers have motivation to innovate and drive the cost of disposal and reuse down, which is a great application of market mechanisms.

11235813213455 3y ago

money exchange cause pollution, the less you spend money, the less you pollute, simple

Johnny555 3y ago
It's not really that simple -- there are lots of ways to spend less money while generating more pollution. I could spend less money by piling up my trash in my back yard instead of paying a waste management company to haul it away. But that's not going to reduce the amount of pollution I've caused, and will likely increase it.
- voisin 3y ago
  If you don’t spend money, then you ultimately have less stuff to put in your back yard. Hauling it away doesn’t change the net amount of pollution - it’s still pollution in a landfill, just less unsightly. Perhaps if everyone had to put their waste in their own backyard people would opt for products that produce less waste! I live rurally and have to take my waste and recycling to the transfer station. It’s free but a pain in the ass so I try to make decisions which produce less waste so I don’t have to go as often. Previously I lived somewhere rurally where you had to pay per pound brought to the transfer station - that was an even bigger incentive to cut back on waste.
  - Johnny555 3y ago
    If you don't spend money at all, then you've removed yourself from participating in modern society, so that's not a reasonable suggestion. I spent more money to replace my aging furnace with a heat pump to reduce my emissions, so the mere exchange of money doesn't cause pollution. I could have spent a lot less money to repair or replace it with an equivalent 80% efficient furnace. My point is that it's not as simple as "money exchange causes more pollution" since I could stop sending money to my waste management company while not doing anything at all to reduce my personal pollution. Yes there are ways you can reduce your pollution impact (i.e. by buying less unnecessary goods, traveling less, etc), but there are also ways you can spend less money (i.e. by buying cheaper produce imported from another country 1000 miles away than paying a bit more for more local produce) while increasing your environmental impact.

jancsika 3y ago

> No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. Substitute "contribute to" for "cause"

voisin 3y ago
I think OP is correct by saying “cause”. The demand is actually causal, not merely contributory.

Johnny555 3y ago

When I pay my waste management company to haul away my trash, I do so with the expectation that they'll dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way (as environmentally conscious as dumping it into a big hole in the ground can be). If they can't afford to do methane capture based on what they are charging, then they should charge more. By not including externalized costs like environmental harm, cheap trash, just like cheap gas, leads consumers to use more of the product than if the environmental costs were factored in.

voisin 3y ago
> I do so with the expectation that they'll dispose of it in an environmentally conscious way (as environmentally conscious as dumping it into a big hole in the ground can be) Where does this expectation stem from? We all know they dump it in the ground as you mention but has there ever been a push for regulation to demand methane capture? I’ve never heard of such a push so I can’t imagine why anyone would expect them to have been doing it.
- Johnny555 3y ago
  Regulation - you can't dig a hole in the ground and call yourself a municipal landfill. https://www.epa.gov/landfills https://www.epa.gov/landfills Modern landfills are well-engineered and managed facilities for the disposal of solid waste. They must meet stringent design, operation, and closure requirements established under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. I'm not an environmental expert, if Methane emission causes significant environmental harm, then the EPA should be regulating it. It's hard to tell someone that they're harming the environment through methane emissions from trash while the actual environmental experts at the EPA don't bother to regulate it.
  - jMyles 3y ago
    ...this response rings so deeply and reverberating hollow to me. You can't just presume that "regulation" is magically removing the externalities of your consumption, particularly given that the data show so convincingly that regulatory capture is endemic. Of course the state occasionally displays the correct time as a broken clock would, but this is something that requires verification rather than naked presumption.

notjoemama 3y ago

Feel free to email Jeff Bezos to put a country of origin filter on Amazon.com so I can actually reduce the carbon footprint of the products I buy. Consumers have very few options within their control and the problem is not binary nor does its solution need to be zero sum.

zizee 3y ago
The lack of information, which in turn affects consumer behaviour. Information is important to a well functioning market. Excellent point, and providing more info is often to the detriment of many sellers/producers. That excellent point aside, I did want to say that international shipping is a much smaller contribute to CO2 emissions than road freight, so a simple toggle is probably not going to cut the mustard, and goods from China are not necessarily that much worse for the environment than goods transported from one side of the US to another. The biggest problem with most goods produced these days is the disposable nature of them.

r00fus 3y ago

> No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. I disagree that the end consumer has so much agency. As a consumer I simply have the choice to buy product A or B - the pollution caused by the factory that the store ordered hoping you would buy it - is obscured by many levels. The consumer is a small part of the decision chain

Erratic6576 3y ago
As a consumer, I can choose the plastic bottle in which my plasticised water is sold. I cannot choose deposit glass
- jl6 3y ago
  You can choose not to buy a bottle of water at all. You can buy a reusable bottle and get refills.
  - Erratic6576 3y ago
    I can also choose not to buy milk because they are no longer available in glass bottles. I can also choose not to buy food which comes in a plastic bag or blister.
- 20after4 3y ago
  You can choose deposit glass if you look around. A local health food store or specialty shop surely sells water in large glass containers. I live in a very rural part of Missouri (not a very progressive state) and I know of multiple sources.

akira2501 3y ago

> This is similar to "China's manufacturing causes a lot of pollution". No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. This pretends that China's environmental standards and oversight are identical to every other countries or that worldwide shipping isn't one of the largest contributors to pollution on the planet. Which we all know is far from the truth. So, no, China actually causes that pollution. The companies in the US who take advantage of China's lax environmental and labor laws to eke out a few points of profit causes that pollution. As a consumer, I require goods to survive and thrive, and I have very little say in how that market functions, and I have zero say when it comes to setting policy. I'm happy to do more, and do as much as I can when possible, but I'm wealthy enough to play this game... most of America is not. I wish HN would punch up nearly as much as it loves to punch down.

rglullis 3y ago
> As a consumer, I require goods to survive and thrive, and I have very little say in how that market functions. You do have a say when/if you are willing to bear the cost of your decisions. If more people were willing to pay up the "manufactured in a place with strict environment and labor regulations" premium, then there wouldn't be so many companies flocking to China. But consumers don't want to do it. They rather save some bucks to buy the stuff they want and hide themselves under "everyone else does it".
- kennyloginz 3y ago
  I think most everyone wants to do it, just the majority of people can’t afford to.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    I don't buy it. The iPhone is one of the most expensive devices and it is not due to a "not made in China" premium. It has close to half of the smartphone market in the US. Homeowners in the US are educated to "buy the most home they can get credit for", not "a home they can pay afford and pay off as quickly as possible." Cars in the US are growing in size. Consumers prefer the (false) safety of SUVs and trucks over the economy and fuel efficiency of smaller vehicles. I could go on. Americans are the richest people in the world, but also the most wasteful and least worried about the consequences of their consumerism.

pengaru 3y ago

> This is similar to "China's manufacturing causes a lot of pollution". No, you, the consumer, cause that pollution. Except the China Effect of producing TrashOnArrival products is doing more than its fair share of amplifying how much must be produced to keep operational product in consumer hands.

justatdotin 3y ago

the problem with this conversation is that it risks never landing anywhere; or landing differently depending on who is having the conversation. In order to be sure that Someone is accountable, we need an agreed framework for ascribing accountability. I think the way this might work is that the landfill is accountable, and the cost of accountability is passed on to users; that China is accountable for pollution from its manufacturing, and the cost of that accountability is passed on to consumers. The consumer only has a binary choice, (with cost a factor in that choice) whereas the producer can be incentivised to implement efficiency measures, alternative technologies, etc.

strogonoff 3y ago

You can absolve Coca-Cola et al. switching to plastic packaging by shifting recycling and pollution blame onto the consumer. You can just as well absolve PRC’s environmental policies by shifting blame onto everyone who buys goods made in China. As a matter of fact, it’s what both want you to do: assume they have no agency in this, and hold yourself and/or free market responsible for all the damage.