Thanks, I hate this handwaving going around. People simply don't want to compromise their lifestyle.
The China emits 29% of the global CO2 emissions, a country of 1.4 billion people where most of our goods are manufactured.
The US emits almost 15%, half of china, with less than a fourth of the population were most of the goods are imported. This lifestyle is not sustainable.
I feel they all add up together. There is a water scarcity not because of less rain but because of plastic wastes form a layer in the earth that prevents water to seep through and increase the ground water level.
I definitely agree with reusing plastic stuff, but how many times do we do it. Rather than it is cheap and easily available, how many we throw them daily? How many times can you reuse them? Cotton bags at least are not made by destroying the plant (I think) and they are reusable many times. If they are torn we can stitch them or throw it in the earth they will degrade. Is that the case for Plastic ones.
I know politicians and corporations have power. But for some time let us stop pointing things towards them and do what we can do.
I'm not arguing the validity of each point but the ranked priority of what has the biggest effect and what is needed to achieve improvement.
I'd ask you to go through each point and calculate the impact at a likely scale of participation. You won't achieve enough in the time needed. Massive political pressure is required (look at how little is being achieved right now, even in Germany where the was a large swing to the Green party).
But the point of this article is that we can initiate the change. If we collectively decide and eliminate plastic bags in our town / place or whatever subdivision then for sure we can make an impact. There is nothing bigger than people power.
While you’re correct that individual actions will ultimately decide our fate, what you’re not accounting for is this: The economics are stacked against anyone trying to do the right thing.
It’s actually cheaper, less time consuming, and more convenient to kill our planet.
To properly recycle I would have to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day.
If wanted to recycle food (compost), add another 15 to 30 minutes.
So per week, that’s about 4 to 7 hours. Time that could be spent working or sleeping.
With regards to plastic shopping bags: Yes, I can avoid it. But then I need to buy plastic waste bags anyway, because I’m required to package my waste.
With regards to meat: I don’t go crazy with meat, but in terms of cost most Western societies have masked the cost. Fresh produce is more expensive per calorie than a slab of beef per calorie.
Or how about electronics? It’s insane that it’s generally cheaper to buy new consumer electronics, rather than have someone fix it.
Or packaging: There is zero economic reason for businesses to minimize the amount of plastic packaging. Plastic has the advantages of low weight and tensile strength, so any company that tries to change would be at an immediate disadvantage.
To fix these imbalances we need social policies (with teeth) that force a new, market-driven optimum for both companies and individuals.
For that to happen we need leadership that have the courage to undertake a long, hard battle against vested interests.
I know odds are against us. If you really care about nature spend that 4 to 7 hours. Talk to your company and make it a policy, might be a fraction of your colleagues will do it.
Meat, plastic and electronics are the problems I agree completely.
We can change the packaging slightly. I already heard a lot about some vendors in Germany are going PET-less solution, TamilNadu (a state in India) also started banning plastics and packaging.
My core idea is social policies will not change unless people are willing to accept it. When your locality goes zero-plastic bags, you will start seeing the influences that it creates on your local supplier and then it expands. It is how nature works and definitely, it takes time and effort but slowly it will (may) change the world. But in the end, it will remain at least we tried.
Anyone who takes up this cause naively will lose out to people and organizations that don’t care.
By lose out, I mean they will lose political and economic influence.
If people who care have a significant overhead compared to those who don’t, guess who expands and has lobbying money and time?
At a company-level, a 1% overhead can be rather steep cost.
Really, my individual effort isn’t enough. Just look at littering. I don’t litter, but there are too many people around me that do.
And this is with an action that has almost zero cost to individuals!
The way to ensure we don’t kill ourselves is by tilting the market to favor sustainable approaches.
Steeper Import taxes. Removal of certain subsidies. Adding other subsidies. Tax breaks to encourage repairs. At-purchase disposal fees. Packaging taxes. Etc.
The scale of the problem involves billions of individuals.
The scale of the solution must match, and must not favor cheaters or don’t-care organizations. Or it will fail.
Dishwashers get old and they have their own problems. There are machines that use less water. But manually people are capable of reducing the amount of water that we use to clean the dishes.
I can clean my dishes in 10litres of water. On the other hand dishwashers on an average requires 12-20 litres of water. The tip is do not use running tap water.
> I can clean my dishes in 10litres of water. On the other hand dishwashers on an average requires 12-20 litres of water. The tip is do not use running tap water.
What's the correct technique to ensure the dishes end up being clean, and not just thoroughly immersed in a bacterial growth medium that's made of water and dissolved food? Or am I being too paranoid about sanitation here?
Assuming you rinse them off and you have a reasonably large amount of cutlery, I'd say you are definitely too paranoid about this specific thing. Your entire kitchen is a bacterial growth medium - just leaving things out means they get covered in bacteria. Those bacteria will grow and this is fine - the most efficient use of your thoughts is fixing the really large offenders, one of which is: Do you properly wash your hands (most people do not, or at all)?
It's not the growth during washing I'm worried about, but that not rinsing them will leave them covered in a growth medium that will significantly accelerate their growth over the next hours or days.
More and more forests are deforested for books. Electricity can be green (it is not at the moment) but eventually we will be there. I think it makes sense to use an electronic device rather than using a paperback book.
Plastics are cruel, but at the very least we can ask the manufacturers to use something else and those devices mostly don't end up in the trash day 1. We definitely need to find a way but papers are even more cruel.
More and more forests are deforested for agriculture - for both growing plants and pastures for animals. Paper production is a combination of forest-sourced trees, but also recycled paper, wood waste from other industries, and trees planted specifically for paper manufacturing. I get conflicting breakdowns of the proportions, but a random source[0] I'm looking at says something like this:
"However, 39 percent of the fiber used for papermaking comes from recycled paper. Most of the remaining wood is obtained either through forest thinning (removing slow-growing or defective trees) or from lumber milling residues – materials that otherwise would go unused. Only 36 percent of timber harvested in the United States is used directly to make paper and paperboard."
That's not to say we shouldn't reduce our paper use, but I wouldn't sweat it too much when it comes to buying that book (especially if it's print-on-demand), or printing that article or code listing. Paper is a ridiculously powerful cognitive and productivity multiplier, still unmatched by digital solutions. I'd argue that paper use might be essential for humanity figuring their way out of this crisis.
If you want to cut down on wasteful paper use, fight advertising. The subsection of the industry dealing with physical advertisements is literally one giant machine for moving cellulose from trees into landfills.
